That’s the topic of this year’s La Follette Spring Symposium, being held Thursday, April 6th at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Discovery Building, 330 N. Orchard Street, Madison).
Soft vs. Hard Data: US Economic Outlook Edition
Gavin Davies in the FT has an interesting article about how survey/sentiment based information and hard data have diverged. Here is a picture of US GDP, from the official BEA series (3rd release), Macroeconomic Advisers, and e-forecasting, as well as the Atlanta Fed nowcast.
Kansas Employment Rises to 0.3% below Previous Peak
Kansas nonfarm payroll employment rose 4,200 (0.3%) from January to February, and fell 400 (0%) relative to February 2016. In both cases the change was not statistically significant. In contrast, Missouri NFP rose 3,500 (0.1%) over the last month, and 54,000 (1.9%) over the last year.
How Well Is UK Business Fixed Investment Holding Up in the Brexit Era?
The UK Office of National Statistics released revised figures for GDP and investment today. What can we glean from these numbers?
How the Federal Reserve controls interest rates
The way in which the Federal Reserve controls the short-term interest rate today is completely different from the way things worked ten years ago. I was looking for a good description of how the current system works and couldn’t find one, so decided to write my own.
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Guest Contribution: “Mnuchin, Multilateral Meetings, Money Manipulation, and Message Mayhem”
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. A shorter version appeared on March 22nd in Project Syndicate.
CBO Projections of Coverage under the ACA
We all know that the CBO has been under assault over the recent scoring of the AHCA (14 million reduction in coverage by 2018, 26 million by 2026; relatively unchanged by recent amendments), with allegations that their previous projections have been “wrong”. I document in this post that CBO macro projections have been comparable to Blue Chip averages, in terms of accuracy (mean bias, RMSE’s). In terms of the issue at hand, here is a graph depicting various vintages of CBO projections of reduction in uninsured.
EconoFact: “The Agricultural Implications of Mr. Trump’s Policies”
That’s the title of a new EconoFact memo written by me:
Nearly 70 percent of rural votes cast in the 2016 election went to Donald Trump. This phenomenon has been attributed in part to the declining fortunes of farmers. But rather than helping reverse this trend, several of the Trump administration’s policy proposals would negatively affect the fortunes of the agricultural sector by depressing the prices received by farmers, reducing the demand for American agricultural exports, and raising production costs. Moreover, that portion of the agriculture budget aimed at supporting farm prices and incomes is likely to be squeezed to accommodate the increase in defense spending.
Nowcasting with OMB Director Mick Mulvaney
TrumpCare Evaluated
“I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”
— Donald J. Trump, September 27, 2016