Reader JohnH is surprised that BEA reports distributional NIPA data, despite having commented on a blogpost on the subject two and a half years ago (he commented three times!)
In an unmentioned recent development, BEA is actually providing data on income distribution, something which should be of interest to macro students.
Given that some folks do not remember what they’ve read and commented on, I re-post, with link to updated information.
First time teaching undergrad macro (elective, after intermediate macro) in three years, so I thought time to revise the syllabus (Econ 442) to account for new issues (compare against Fall 2001).
EV’s flat. Hybrids up. From Kevin Drum.
One of the mysteries of recent times has been the divergence between conditions (say, as measured by the Misery Index) and measured consumer sentiment. Figure 1 shows the U.Michigan sentiment index (FRED variable UMCSENT) vs. the sum of inflation and unemployment rates over the 2016-24M01 period. The jump in UMCSENT of 9 was about 2 standard deviations (for the 2016-23 period), on top of the nearly two deviation jump in December, and goes some way to redressing the gap.
WMC has a survey of 180 member firms out indicating only 22% of respondents believed that the Wisconsin economy is strong.
That’s the title of a panel discussion at AEI with With Steven B. Kamin moderating, and Jason Furman, Julia Coronado, Nathan Sheets and Desmond Lachman participating.
Nowcasts are outstripping forecasts. For now.
The mean forecast trajectory keeps on rising as actual GDP outcomes keep on surprising on the upside (Q4 mean growth rose from 0.9% to 1.7% q/q AR since October), but forecasts are pretty dispersed, as shown in Figure 1.
Industrial production and manufacturing production both beat Bloomberg consensus (+0.1% vs 0%). Here’s the picture of some key indicators followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, plus monthly GDP and GDPNow (latter up today to 2.4% vs. 2.2% SAAR on 1/10).