Bits and bytes can be stolen just like the cash under your mattress.
Estimated Gross State Product for Wisconsin and Minnesota
Ed Hanson argues that 2013 Gross State Product (GSP) data for 2013 will show a Wisconsin renaissance:
Elevating the Minimum Wage, in Wisconsin and the Nation
With update links to CBO and the CEA comment on the minimum wage.
Despite the likely benefits, policymakers in Wisconsin make statements such as the following (from Fox6Now):
“I’m not a big supporter of artificially increasing the minimum wage. I think the marketplace is a much better way to go,” [Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin] Vos said.
Who anticipated the Great Depression?
Here’s the abstract from a paper by Doug Irwin in the February issue of the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking:
The intellectual response to the Great Depression is often portrayed as a battle between the ideas of Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. Yet both the Austrian and the Keynesian interpretations of the Depression were incomplete. Austrians could explain how a country might get into a depression (bust following a credit-fueled investment boom) but not how to get out of one (liquidation). Keynesians could explain how a country might get out of a depression (government spending on public works) but not how it got into one (animal spirits). By contrast, the monetary approach of Gustav Cassel has been ignored. As early as 1920, Cassel warned that mismanagement of the gold standard could lead to a severe depression. Cassel not only explained how this could occur, but his explanation anticipates the way that scholars today describe how the Great Depression actually occurred. Unlike Keynes or Hayek, Cassel analyzed both how a country could get into a depression (deflation due to tight monetary policies) and how it could get out of one (monetary expansion).
Guest Contribution: “Unemployment and Unnecessary U-turns in Forward Guidance”
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard University, and former Member of the Council of Economic Advisers, 1997-99.
CBO deficit projections
The U.S. federal deficit fell from around $1.1 trillion for fiscal year 2012 to under $700 billion for 2013, and is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to be below $500 B by 2015. Although it sounds like continuing improvement, the CBO’s projected path is actually unsustainable. Here’s why.
Assessing the Widening Wisconsin-US Gap
The cumulative growth gap since January 2011 between the US and Wisconsin coincident indices was 2.2% in December. The forecast indicates a continued widening to 2.8% in six months time.
Observations on the GDP Release and the CBO Outlook
The output gap remains large, even as the external sector supports growth; this outcome is partly due to excessively rapid fiscal consolidation
Eswar Prasad on the “The Dollar Trap”
“[I]n the aftermath of the financial crisis, U.S. policies and a dysfunctional international monetary system have paradoxically strengthened the dollar’s importance.”
Economics of Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a digital currency for which no government, bank, or corporation takes responsibility. Like many others, I was curious to learn how it works and why it seems to be succeeding.