When, oh, when, will we be rid of these conniving back-stabbers?
Yikes! Trade and Economic Policy Uncertainty
First, overall (news-based) economic policy uncertainty:
Figure 1: Economic Policy Uncertainty index (blue), and centered seven day moving average (red). Source: policyuncertainty.com accessed 6/11, and author’s calculations.
Trade Deficit Rising!
Since 2017Q1. By Mr. Trump’s own metric, we’re losing. But it’s a stoopid metric for evaluating “unfair”-ness.
A Reminder of Why It’s the G-7 and Not G-8
And also why we have sanctions against several Russian citizens, firms and financial institutions. Hint: It has something to do with the orange areas:
Source: Euromaidenpress.
EconoFact: “What is the National Security Rationale for Steel, Aluminum and Automobile Protection?”
From EconoFact, an update:
The Trump administration has implemented a number of trade related measures purportedly on the basis of national security. First, it invoked the seldom-used provision of the trade law to investigate whether imposing import restrictions for steel and aluminum is justified by national security reasons. The Commerce Department’s investigation concluded that imports of both metals pose a national security risk and subsequently the administration applied tariffs and quotas to both products. In a new investigation, the Commerce Department has started looking into whether imports of cars or automobile parts could impair U.S. national security.
Another Thing I Thought I’d Never Have to Explain on Econbrowser: Confidence Interval
Mr. Steven Kopits takes issue with the Harvard School of Public Health led study’s point estimate of (4645) and confidence interval (798, 8498) for Puerto Rico excess fatalities post-Maria thusly:
Does Harvard stand behind the study, or not?
Garbage and Non-Garbage Estimates: Puerto Rico Edition
Since the Puerto Rican government ceased publishing mortality data in February, there has been a debate over the death toll arising from Hurrican Maria. The official death toll, focusing on direct deaths, remains at 64. However, starting in November, a number of scholars attempted to gain further insight into the extent of the human disaster in the Commonwealth. One commentator has labeled another study “garbage”. What is the import of these competing analyses?
Measured Economic Policy Uncertainty, 4 June 2018
It’s elevated. Hard to say exactly why. Hard to say why it isn’t higher.
Figure 1: US Economic Policy Uncertainty index (blue) and centered 7-day moving average (bold red). Source: policyuncertainty.com accessed 4 June 2018, and author’s calculations.
Spreads Watch
In all the excitement between the Italian crisis and the US lashing out with tariffs to be levied against our allies, it was easy to overlook this event:
Figure 1: Ten year constant maturity Treasury minus three month Treasury bill yield spread on secondary market (blue), and ten year minus two year yield spread (green), both daily, %. Last observation is 6/1. Source: Federal Reserve via FRED, Bloomberg, and author’s calculations.
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Please, Do Not Comment on This Post Unless You Understand the Following Terms
- Population mean
- Sample mean
- Population standard deviation
- Sample standard deviation
- Standard error
- Administrative data
- Survey data
- Point estimate
- Confidence interval
- Sampling bias
- Reporting bias
Now, let’s begin. Here is a graph of estimates of cumulative fatalities in Puerto Rico over time.
Figure 1: Estimates from Santos-Lozada and Jeffrey Howard (Nov. 2017) for September and October (calculated as difference of midpoint estimates), and Nashant Kishore et al. (May 2018) for December 2017 (blue triangles), and Roberto Rivera and Wolfgang Rolke (Feb. 2018) (red square), and calculated excess deaths using average deaths for 2015 and 2016 compared to 2017 and 2018 using administrative data released 6/1 (black square), and Santos-Lozada estimate based on administrative data released 6/1 (large dark blue triangle), end-of-month figures, all on log scale. + indicate upper and lower bounds for 95% confidence intervals. Orange + denotes Steven Kopits 5/31 estimate for range of excess deaths through September 2018. Cumulative figure for Santos-Lozada and Howard October figure author’s calculations based on reported monthly figures. [Figure revised 6/3]
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