The second quarter of 2016 is now more than half over, but we won’t receive the first reading on 2016:Q2 GDP from the BEA until the end of July. A forecast of something that is happening right now is sometimes described as a “nowcast”. The Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Atlanta are providing a valuable service by publishing continuously updated nowcasts of GDP. But what should we do if they’re giving us rather different numbers?
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Kansas: Zero 12 Month Employment Growth
Or, “ouch!”
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Wisconsin Employment: Falling Further Behind
Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development released employment figures today. Nonfarm payroll employment down 12,000, private NFP down 11,000, month-on-month.
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More on Uncertainty in Open Economy Macro
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.