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. An earlier version appeared at Project Syndicate.
Employment in December
Contrary to expectations, nonfarm payroll employment surprises +256K vs. +164K Bloomberg consensus. The standard deviation of changes is 85K, with mean +186 (over 2024), which means the surprise is about one standard deviation.
Economic Report of the President, 2025
Rhodium Group: Another Estimate of Chinese GDP Growth
From Rhodium Group (h/t Stephen Nagy):
Making Sense (If Possible) of Expected Inflation and the Dollar
Five year breakeven up, dollar up.
Teaching Macro Policy (Upper Division Undergrad), 2025
Iterating toward new readings for Econ 442 (Macroeconomic Policy). Last year I added to the undergrad course climate change and r*. Thanks for suggestions I asked for in this post. Here’s this year’s additions:
100% Tariffs on Goods from Denmark – Doubling the Price of Ozempic?
Per DJT. That’ll show those elitist diabetes/weight-loss drug consumers! Some back of envelope calculations for Wegovy and Ozempic (both manufactured by Novo Nordisk).
Wisconsin Economic Outlook (Nov 2024)
This forecast from the Wisconsin Dept of Revenue based on S&P Global national forecast finalized before the election.
Miran’s Manifesto
The nominated CEA chair designate, Stephen Miran, has an exposition (h/t Politico)of how protectionism and a depreciating dollar can go together. As far as I can make out, it involves massive forex intervention, possibly sterilized, along with “user fees” on foreign held-UST’s…
Term Spreads in Advanced Economies One Year Ago, and Conditions Today
A year ago, Laurent Ferrara and I documented the explanatory power of the term spread for recessions across countries. Here’re the 10yr-3mo spreads in November 2023, and Q/Q GDP growth rates for 2024Q3.