It was an exciting basketball tournament, right down to the final game.
Looks good to me
Finally we’re starting to see some convincing indications of economic recovery.
“Export or Die”
From today’s Economist, Greg Ip writes:
America’s economic transformation will require businesses to rely less on selling to Americans and more on selling abroad…. The emphasis will be on high-value products and services rather than on labour-intensive items such as furniture and clothing.
PPACA and “What If?” Scenarios
Or, if we have Excel, why can’t journalists and bloggers add and subtract, and do sensitivity analysis?
From Dobridge, Hooper, Slok, “Overview of the 2010 Health Reform Bill,” Deutsche Bank Global Economic Perspectives March 31, 2010. [not online]
Congress seeks more information on health care charges
AT&T announced last week that it would charge $1 billion against its earnings as a result of the recently passed health care bill. Other companies also announcing charges include Caterpillar ($100 M), John Deere ($150 M), and
MMM ($85-90 M). Analyst David Zion of Credit Suisse estimated that S&P 500 companies will rack up a combined $4.5 B charge.
Robert Samuelson on Economics
And on unavoidable spending, and debt crises, and on budget accounting…
From the Washington Post: comes this headline:
With health bill, Obama has sown the seeds of a budget crisis
Interest rates spike up
How scary is it?
Does Unemployment Insurance Necessarily Raise the Unemployment Rate and Decrease Employment?
Some analysts (e.g., most recently Professor Mulligan) have stressed the disincentive effects of unemployment insurance on the unemployment rate and the level of employment. I think it useful to consider the offsetting effects arising from various effects, and hence distinguishing between the two variables. In my view, the impact of UI is more complicated than it would seem at first glance, with UI potentially increasing employment while concurrently increasing the unemployment rate. In addition, according to newer research, even if UI extends unemployment duration, it still might be welfare-enhancing. In other words, some researchers appear to have had their worldview frozen in 1990.
A Still Relevant GAO Classic: Floating Exchange Rates in an Interdependent World and “Overvaluation”
Following up on my misalignment post from Tuesday, here’s a volume compiled by the GAO when it was the General Accounting Office containing a symposium on exchange rates. The symposium took place in the midst of currency overvaluation: “Floating Exchange Rates in an Interdependent World”. The authors included Richard Cooper, Stanley Black, Rudiger Dornbusch, Jeffrey Frankel, and Jacob Frenkel.
Policy Analysis in DSGEs
A few weeks ago [0], I wished for a comparative survey of the properties of many macro models, along the lines of the Brookings comparison project of the early 1980’s. I got part of my wish (at least in part), in the form of a (very cool!) comparison of key policy agency dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, in Effects of Fiscal Stimulus in Structural Models (h/t Mark Thoma).