The BLS released preliminary annual benchmark revisions for March 2012. Nonfarm payroll series and private nonfarm payroll series, in logs, normalized to 2009M01, are shown below; adding on the revised levels for March 2012 yields the series shown in red.
The Employment Situation in Governor Walker’s Wisconsin in 2012: “Grim”
From IHS-Global Insight, “U.S. Regional – Perspective Article: Swing States: Wisconsin,” 9/24/2012:
China’s economic slowdown
As Niels Bohr (and others) observed, prediction is difficult, especially about the future. But if the challenge is predicting the number of 20-year-olds 5 years from now, you can get a pretty darn good start if you know the number of 15-year-olds right now.
Lost Decades: Two Years Later
The paperback edition of Lost Decades (W.W. Norton) is to be officially released October 1st. This seems as appropriate a juncture as any to assess the predictions Jeffry Frieden and I wrote almost two years ago.
Fat fingers and the price of oil
Can the wild swings in the price of oil over the last few weeks have anything to do with supply and demand?
Thresholds in the economic effects of oil prices
As U.S. retail gasoline prices once again near $4.00 a gallon, does this pose a threat to the economy and President Obama’s prospects for re-election? My answer is no.
Global Imbalances
Some observations on the difficult tasks of identifying and explaining such imbalances
Effects of QE3
On Thursday the Federal Reserve announced a series of measures that will come to be referred to as a third round of “quantitative easing,” or QE3. Here I review what effects this is intended to have and some of the developments so far.
Imperfect Information, Biased Reasoning, and the Energy Efficiency Gap
In a new working paper, David Austin argues that for a variety of reasons, private agents do not optimize with respect to energy efficiency measures. From Addressing Market Barriers to Energy Efficiency in Buildings:
Geopolitical unrest and key oil producers
Some people observed 9/11 by lighting candles, others by killing more Americans.