Stabilizing the price of gold in US dollars requires adjusting the interest rate (akin to how the exchange rate is managed). Herman Cain’s call for a return to the gold standard would imply that the Fed funds rate would have to be about 15 percentage points higher than it was in January 2000 in order to keep the dollar’s value stable at January 2000 levels — a rate 18 percentage points higher than actually recorded in March 2019.
A Pyrrhic Victory (Perhaps) on China Trade
From Bradsher in NYT:
…spurred by tariffs and trade tensions, global companies are beginning to shift their supply chains away from China, just as some Trump administration officials had wanted.
Does Policy Uncertainty Matter?
The Atlanta Fed along w/Bloom (Stanford) and Davis (Chicago) survey business operators and finds it does!
“A Requiem for “Blame It on Beijing”: Interpreting Rotating Global Current Account Surpluses”
Empirically Assessing “a whole world of hurt”
That’s how an unidentified White House official characterized the impact of closing the southern border.
Two Years of “Winning”: Messages from GDP, International Investment Releases
The release of the final release for GDP, and the international investment position provides an opportunity to assess progress on the trade war. I for one have gotten tired of “winning”.
Measuring unemployment and labor-force participation
The underlying data from which the U.S. unemployment rate and labor-force participation rate are calculated contain numerous inconsistencies– if one of the numbers economists use is correct, another must be wrong. I’ve recently completed a research paper with Hie Joo Ahn that summarizes these inconsistencies and proposes a reconciliation.
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UK Gross Fixed Capital Formation
Why I think the UK is in a world of hurt, regardless of where Brexit goes. It’s just a matter of how bad…
“Integration or Disintegration? The Future of Global Governance and the Global Economy”
That’s the title of the La Follette School Spring Symposium, taking place this Wednesday, 1-6PM at the Wisconsin Memorial Union, ending with:
Assessing the Empirical Work of Stephen Moore
As noted earlier, Stephen Moore has a dearth of peer-reviewed publications; however, he has coauthored work purporting to be analytical. One of these is these is the Economic Outlook ranking published by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). In Rich States, Poor States, 2015: