Today, we are pleased to present a guest column 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. This is an extended version of a column appearing at Project Syndicate, July 13.
Helicopter money
Despite aggressive actions by central banks, many of the world’s economies are still stagnating and facing new shocks, leading to renewed calls for helicopter money as a serious policy prescription for countries like Japan and the U.K.. And, if things go badly, maybe the United States?
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On Kansas: Mendacity by Misdirection
Do shocks to agriculture and aircraft really explain Kansas’s dismal economic performance? If only one looked at Kansas GDP, would Kansas look just terrific?
Decomposing Changes in Term Spreads around the World
Guest Contribution: “Importer and Exporter Market Share in Exchange Rate Pass-Through”
Today we are pleased to present a guest contribution written by Michael Devereux at the University of British Columbia and Wei Dong and Ben Tomlin at the Bank of Canada. The views expressed below are those of the authors and do not represent those of the Bank of Canada. This post is based on a revised version of this paper.
The Seattle Minimum Wage Increase: Disaster or Not?
Dark warnings were voiced in the wake of the passage of the minimum wage ordinance. “Seattle’s Minimum-Wage Hike Is Sure to End in Disaster”. “Seattle sees fallout from $15 minimum wage” In an early — and widely debunked — assessment, Mark J. Perry writes “New evidence suggests that Seattle’s ‘radical experiment’ might be a model for the rest of the nation not to follow”.
The Real Term Spread and Recessions
There’s an argument being made that because of the zero lower bound, the standard nominal term spread is unlikely to be as accurate a predictor of recessions as it has in the past. A prominent example of this view circulating now is that forwarded by Deutsche Bank’s Dominic Konstam; his analysis indicates a 60% likelihood of recession (WSJ RTE), in contrast to the estimates obtained from the standard model, ranging in the low teens (see for example this post).
Assessing Industrial Policy in Wisconsin
The Wisconsin Budget Project concludes “Costly Tax Credit has Done Little to Boost [manufacturing] Employment”.
Markets post-Brexit
U.S. stock prices fell more than 5% in the two-day aftermath of the British vote to leave the European Union. But equities have since regained those losses and are back near all-time highs.
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US Policy Uncertainty post-Brexit Revised Down
But still looks darned high. Wonder what it is in the UK…