Semi-automatic Rifle Use and Mass Shooting Casualties, 1982M08-2018M04


Figure 1: Cumulative mass shooting fatalities from incidents where semi-automatic rifles used (blue), non-fatal injured (light blue), fatalities where other weapons (handguns, semi-automatic handguns, rifles, shotguns) used (red), non-fatal injured (pink), through April 2018. Light green denotes assault weapons ban. Orange denotes 2017M01-2018M04. Source: Mother Jones, accessed 5/18/2018, and author’s calculations.

The above graph does not incorporate the estimated 10 deaths and additional injuries incurred today in Santa Fe, TX.

Cumulative Mass Shooting Casualties since 2009M01, 2017M01

Thankfully, Mr. Trump in conjunction with the Republican controlled Congress have implemented policies to address this issue in manner supported by evidence-based research.


Figure 1: Cumulative fatalities from mass shootings since 2009M01 (blue), since 2017M01 (red), on a log scale. May observation assumes lower bound of 8 fatalities. Source: Mother Jones accessed 5/18, news accounts, author’s calculations.

It took 4-1/2 years from 2009M01 to match the number of fatalities that have been recorded in the 16 months since 2017M01.

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A Wisconsin Fixed Effect

Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has dropped to 2.8 percentage points in April. The national rate is 3.9 percentage points. Proof of Walkernomics success? Well, since on average Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is typically 0.9 percentage points below, the answer is “no”. Consider the Wisconsin and US unemployment rates.


Figure 1: Unemployment rate for United States (blue), for Wisconsin (red). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray; Walker administrations shaded orange. Source: BLS, DWD, NBER.

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How Many Times Have the 10y2y and 10y3m Spreads Concurrently Broken the 1% and 0.5% Thresholds w/o Subsequent Recession?

If one uses a three year window, it’s three times: February, 1986, May 1995, September 1997. Three other times, a recession follows.

The last time around — when people were saying “this time is different” — was May 2005. Inversion occurred in February 2006 (and in November 2006, skepticism of impending recession). The recession is dated by NBER as starting in December 2007.

For additional discussion of the implications of a flattening yield curve, see Michael Klein’s EconoFact article, and (for cross country empirics) Chinn and Kucko (2015).

The US Petroleum Trade Balance

As oil prices start heading up, the usual questions arise regarding the macro implications. One view is that with the revolution in tight oil production, the US will experience less of a negative impact than before. This conclusion relies on a set of assumptions, possibly including the US being substantially less dependent on oil imports. Is this true?


Figure 1: US petroleum trade balance (blue), and negative of US petroleum imports (red). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, 2018Q1 advance release, NBER, author’s calculations.

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