The Puerto Rico Department of Health has released official data, up to May (May data can be updated, so is as of 6/1).
Figure 1: Official death statistics, by month, from Puerto Rico Department of Health. Source.
Estimates of Excess Fatalities in Puerto Rico, Post-Maria
Given some criticisms of the Harvard School of Public Health led study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, I thought it useful to compare point estimates and 95% confidence intervals of several extant studies, placed in a time context.
Figure 1: Estimates from Santos-Lozada and Jeffrey Howard (Nov. 2017) for September and October, and Nashant Kishore et al. (May 2018) for December 2017 (blue triangles), and Roberto Rivera and Wolfgang Rolke (Feb. 2018) (red square), end-of-month figures, all on log scale. + indicate upper and lower bounds for 95% confidence intervals. Cumulative figure for October author’s calculations based on reported monthly figures.
The growth rate of cumulative excess fatalities is in the range of 70% per month.
Steven Kopits has characterized the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine as “garbage”, noting that it uses survey data. He has instead relied on Demographic Registry Data in his assessment. He places cumulative excess deaths at 200-400. Interestingly, Rivera and Rolke (2018) also used Demographic Registry Data and concluded that 822 excess deaths occurred from September 20 through October 31 alone, with 95% CI (605, 1039). Extrapolating linearly through end-December (time span conforming to the NEJM article) would imply 2603 excess deaths, well within the 95% confidence interval of 793-8498.
It should be also remarked upon that the Santos-Lozada and Howard study uses actual statistics for baseline from Puerto Rico Vital Statistics System, and cited numbers processed through Puerto Rico Department of Health for September (extrapolated for October). Hence, this estimate is also not survey based.
Hence, we have two sets of non-survey based estimates that as of October exceed Mr. Kopits’ upper bound of 400.
On China: Applying 19th-century remedies to 21st-century problems
My op-ed in today’s The Hill:
Is it a trade dispute with China, or is it a trade war? If the latter, is it on hold, or not? The flip-flops in America’s trade relationship with China are coming in ever more frequently, as President Trump issues and rescinds threats.
Guest Contribution: “Trump’s On-Again Off-Again Trade War with China”
Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. An earlier version appeared in The Hill.
What Will Policy Uncertainty Be Tomorrow?
Below is reported Economic Policy Uncertainty through 5/31/2018, reflecting newspaper accounts through 5/30.
Figure 1: US Economic Policy Uncertainty index (blue) and centered 7-day moving average (bold red). Source: policyuncertainty.com accessed 31 May 2018, and author’s calculations.
As of 2PM EST, Dow down 1%, VIX up 6.69%.
Measurement and Forecasts of the Puerto Rico Economy
As one of the largest social and humanitarian disasters in the American homeland, remarkably little coverage has been devoted to evaluating the economic consequences of Hurrican Maria. Here is a high frequency index, the GDB-EAI (Government Development Bank-Economic Activity Indicator):
Source: Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico.
Continue reading
All that is old is new again
Tonight:
In Nashville tonight, @realDonaldTrump insists not only is Mexico going to pay for the wall… "they’re going to enjoy it"
— Cecilia Vega (@CeciliaVega) May 30, 2018
Nearly century and a half ago, political cartoonist Tomas Nast presents a “harsh commentary on the hypocrisy of these new Americans and their willingness to oppress others who are in the same circumstances in which they found themselves 30 years earlier. The once oppressed have now become the oppressors.”:
“Throwing Down the Ladder by Which They Rose,” by Thomas Nast, 23 July 1870. Source
For more, see this.
Heckuva Job, Donny! Puerto Rico Edition
From New England Journal of Medicine, results of a study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center:
Figure 4. Estimates of Excess Deaths and Reported Causes of Death.
Panel A shows a comparison of estimates of excess deaths from official reports, press (New York Times)8 and academic (Santos–Lozada and Howard)9 reports, and from our survey. Panel B shows deaths according to the month of death and the age at death as reported in our survey, categorized according to the cause of death reported by the household member. Two persons who died of similar causes at the same age are represented by dots that are superimposed in December; thus, the 37 points shown represent 38 deaths after the hurricane.
Continue reading
Iowa under Consolidated Republican Control
Since January of 2017, Republicans have controlled both houses of Iowa legislature and the governorship. This month, the legislature passed tax cut legislation sharing elements of the Kansas tax cuts. Are we seeing another Kansas disaster in the making?
Recession 2020?
Goldman Sachs (Hatzius et al., May 24):
Ongoing rate hikes are likely to tighten financial conditions, at least gradually, and we expect growth to slow to a trend pace through 2019 even with fiscal stimulus still helping. From 2020, when the fiscal impulse ends, the risk of recession looks set to rise, but the lack of cyclical excesses in borrowing and spending suggest that an outright contraction is far from a foregone conclusion—so long as Fed officials manage to prevent a big overheating.