According to data released today, Wisconsin ranks 40th in the first read on 2018Q1 state GDP growth. Washington state ranks first (even though it’s ranked 37th for economic outlook in the 2018 ALEC-Arthur Laffer-Steven Mooore-Jonathan Williams Rich States Poor States).
Not Quite Twin Peaks
Nominal asset prices, including S&P500 and home, continue to rise, but real prices have not regained prior levels (S&P500) or have plateaued (home prices).
PoMo Micro
A reader writes (in discussing the Taylor rule):
Like [the] price elasticity of demand, we have an analytical approach that is appealing in theory, but so ill defined as to be useless in practice.
Wow. I haven’t read anything like that since I read Anti-Samuelson. Believe it or not, this was written by a person who purports to do policy analysis.
Taylor Rule Implied Rate, Trump-Annotated
“I don’t like all of this work that we’re putting into the economy and then I see rates going up.”
and a tweet on Saturday:
Tightening now hurts all that we have done.
A Primer on Tracking the State Economies
In a new paper, Ryan LeCloux (Legislative Reference Bureau) and I discuss the challenges to assessing the economic outlook at the state level. We examine the various indicators available to track macroeconomic indicators at the higher than annual frequency. We find that quarterly GDP at the state level is correlated with different macroeconomic indicators for different states. Hence, tracking the economic activity of each state accurately might require focus on different variables.
US Trade Policy Uncertainty in These Times
Just in case you were wondering.
Continue reading
Stephen Moore Lies and Lies and Lies (and Hence Belongs in the Trump NEC)
On CNN today, as Stephen Moore was trying to spin the point that presidents have always tried to pressure the Fed, he made the assertion (maybe not verbatim):
Obama never got us close to 3% growth…
Measured Economic Policy Uncertainty, Post-Fed Critique, Pre-$500 billion China Tariffs, Pre-Trump/Playboy Tapes
I expect a downward revision tomorrow for today’s value, but tomorrow’s value?
Thinking about Macro Data and Revisions and Recessions: A Cautionary Tale
Indications are that a week from tomorrow, we will receive a very strong report on GDP growth (Jim will have his recession probabilities assessment soon after the release). (GS at 4.1%, MacroAdv at 5.0%, NY Fed at 2.8%, FRB Atlanta NowGDP at 4.5%.) At the same time, we are seeing a flattening of the yield curve. I urge observers to not take as “hard data” the advance release of any macro data as firm. Here is a cautionary tale.
Return of the Log (Function)
Ed Hanson writes, after plotting the data:
The graph shows, in general, Minnesota’s increasing gap of per capita income over Wisconsin since at least 1970. It is not just since 2011 that this trend began.
This observation is right in a way — wrong in a deeper, more economically interesting, way. Investigation highlights the usefulness of the log function.