Back nearly a year ago, Political Calculations asked if California was in recession.
Going by these [household survey based labor market] measures, it would appear that recession has arrived in California, which is partially borne out by state level GDP data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. [text as accessed on 12/27/2017]
The release of the 2018Q2 state GDP figures provides an opportunity to revisit this question — it’s likely no recession occurred.
Some people are getting a little spooked by recent stock market movements. Here I offer a few thoughts.
Continue reading
Robin Vos has suggested Wisconsin would be much more Republican (hence “better”) without Madison and Milwaukee. I wondered what an ex-Madison and ex-Milwaukee Wisconsin economic output would look like. Here’s the picture.
Continue reading
The NBER BCDC memo and the data.
Continue reading
That’s the amount of time between 10 year-3 month yield curve inversions and the beginning of the subsequent NBER-dated recession (these are the three recessions in the Great Moderation period). This is shown in Figure 1.
Economic Policy Uncertainty, 5 December 2018:
A shrinking economy.
What are the effects on the economy when the Fed raises interest rates? This is a key question in empirical research, but is notoriously hard to answer. The reason is that when the Fed raises interest rates, it usually does so in anticipation of a stronger economy or rising inflation. If we look at what happens to inflation or output following an interest rate hike, it is impossible to distinguish the effect of the Fed’s actions from the effects of the changing fundamentals that led the Fed to act in the first place. New research by a graduate student at UCSD may have finally solved this problem.
Continue reading
The University of Wisconsin’s Department of Economics was represented at the Federal Reserve System’s national Fed Challenge competition, this last Thursday. Wisconsin participated, after prevailing in the Chicago region’s competition.
Continue reading
From NYT:
In a significant concession, Mr. Trump will postpone a plan to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods to 25 percent, from 10 percent, on Jan. 1. The Chinese agreed to an unspecified increase in their purchases of American industrial, energy and agricultural products, which Beijing hit with retaliatory tariffs after Mr. Trump targeted everything from steel to consumer electronics.