Maury Obstfeld this month completes his exemplary term as Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund. His departing economic outlook foresees slowing growth in the world economy in 2019 and 2020.
Is California in Recession? (Part X)
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.
Perspective on the stock market
Some people are getting a little spooked by recent stock market movements. Here I offer a few thoughts.
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Wisconsin GDP ex-Madison ex-Milwaukee
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.
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The 1990-91 Recession
The NBER BCDC memo and the data.
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14 Months, 8 Months, 16 Months
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.
Up, Up and Away
Economic Policy Uncertainty, 5 December 2018:
Scott Walker’s Parting Gift to Wisconsin
A shrinking economy.
Measuring monetary policy shocks
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.
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Wisconsin in Washington (the College Fed Challenge)
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.
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