Defenders of the Kansas and Wisconsin misadventures in supply side economics keep on pointing to North Carolina as the counter-example that proves tax cuts do prompt faster growth (e.g., [1] [2]). A quick look at the data provides the following observations: (1) North Carolina GDP growth has merely matched nationwide growth since 2013Q1, (2) NC GDP has just been revised downward so that 2015Q3 GDP is now 1.5% lower than previously thought, and (3) NC GDP is less than the counterfactual indicated by historical correlations with national GDP.
No, I Don’t Think This Is the Reason BEA is Predicting a Massive Downward Revision in GDP
Political Calculations arrives at an alarming conclusion that real GDP will be downwardly revised by a large amount when the annual benchmark revision comes out in July.
Wisconsin Employment Evaluated against a Counterfactual based on Historical Correlations
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development trumpeted May figures today. What if the relationship between US and Wisconsin employment over the 1994-2009M06 period persisted into the Walker era? We would have expected 60,000 more jobs than we got.
Mass Shooting Casualties, by Religion of Perpetrator: Muslim vs. Non-Muslim, Updated
A previous post on mass shooting casualties has been widely circulated. Here I update to include recent data, and to normalize by population. An upward trend indicates the incidence of casualties is rising.
Manufacturing and the Dollar’s Value
New industrial output numbers, including for manufacturing, confirm a slowdown in at least part of the tradables sector.
Figure 1: Real value of the US dollar against broad basket (black, left scale), manufacturing production (red, right scale), manufacturing employment (blue, right scale), all in logs, 2013M01=0. Source: Federal Reserve Board, BLS, and author’s calculations.
Both production and employment now on a slight downturn, despite recent dollar depreciation. The dollar is 14% higher in log terms relative to mid-2014.
Kansas in (Technical) Recession
The BEA released quarterly state GDP figures today. As of 2015Q4, Kansas has just experienced two consecutive negative GDP growth, a distinction shared with only three other states — Alaska, Oklahoma and Wyoming (North Dakota experienced three quarters of negative growth, but experienced positive growth in Q4). Over the past five quarters, Kansas has experienced four quarters of negative GDP growth.
Recession Risks: The View from Wall Street Economists
The Wall Street Journal‘s June survey of economists is out. Interestingly, no one’s mean forecast is for two quarters of negative growth in 2016Q2-Q3 (or even one quarter!), but the assigned probabilities of recession remain elevated.
Data Paranoia Watch: Employment Edition
Which one of these texts is drawn from a real article?
Thinking about Wages, Inflation and Productivity… and Capital’s Share
On the release of the Productivity and Costs release, the WSJ reports “Weak Productivity, Rising Wages Putting Pressure on U.S. Companies: Economists fret how trends may affect inflation and broader growth”.
Recession Watch, June 2016
Since Friday’s employment release, [1] there’s been a surge in articles discussing the possibility of a recession.
Figure 1: Google Trends index for “Recession”, last 30 days, in Business and Finance category. Source: Google, accessed 6/7, 11PM Pacific.
Time for a look at some key indicators the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee [1] has looked at in the past.