In my last post, I noted a conference on uncertainty in macroeconomics. Here are two papers of particular interest to me.
“The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks on the Global Economy”
That’s the title of the conference being held today and tomorrow at University College London, and cosponsored by School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL, the Banque de France, University of Leicester, the Money, Macro and Finance group, and the Centre for Macroeconomics.
“Spillovers of Conventional and Unconventional Monetary Policy”
That was a title of a conference last summer held by the Swiss National Bank, and noted in this post. Mark A. Wynne and Julieta Yung discuss the conference proceedings.
Expectations of inflation
The FOMC and professional forecasters expect the Fed eventually to achieve its 2% inflation target. The market seems more skeptical.
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Kansas Relative Employment Performance since 2005
Not terribly great, especially since 2013.
Guest Contribution: “Exports, Exchange Rates, and the Return on China’s Investments”
Today, we’re fortunate to have Willem Thorbecke, Senior Fellow at Japan’s Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) as a guest contributor. The views expressed represent those of the author himself, and do not necessarily represent those of RIETI, or any other institutions the author is affiliated with.
Chinese leaders are determined to rebalance their economy away from an overdependence on exports. How are they progressing?
Guest Contribution: “Where is global economic growth heading?”
Today, we are pleased to present a guest contribution written by Laurent Ferrara (Banque de France, Head of the International Macro Division) and Clément Marsilli (Banque de France, Economist in the International Macro Division). The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Banque de France.
The latest update of the IMF WEO report has been released on April 12, 2016, and can be downloaded from the IMF web site (for a summary see also this Econbrowser post here). The salient fact of this report is that global GDP growth in 2016 has been revised downwards by -0.2pp years, from 3.4%, as assessed in the WEO update of January 2016, to 3.2%. Those revisions are quite homogeneous across countries (-0.2pp for both advanced and emerging/developing countries), although some commodity-exporters countries are more impacted.
Fed Tightening: Reasons to Go Slow from the GDP Release
The 2016Q1 advance release, discussed at length by Jim, provides additional evidence in favor extreme caution in tightening monetary policy — maybe even a reconsideration of the June rate hike that seems, according to conventional wisdom, a done deal.
Identities, Parameters and Regressions
A reader comments:
Your final jab in this post regresses the state output gap on the fiscal gap. You then conclude that there is a positive relation between the two and that this somehow implies that a reduction in gov’t spending is a drag on the economy. I’ll just point out that …. that gov’t spending is a component of GSP. Of course they’re positively related.
Another weak quarter for U.S. GDP
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that U.S. real GDP grew at a 0.5% annual rate in the first quarter. That’s disappointing, even by standards of the weak growth that has become the norm since getting out of the Great Recession.
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