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).
Not a textbook rebound
Is this as good as it gets? For the time being at least, it seems to be.
A Misalignment Primer
As the release of the next Treasury Report to Congress on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policies looms, it might be useful to recount the various ways in which different observers define currency “misalignment”.
Why reform health care?
Amidst all the preoccupation with the procedural details of how health care legislation is likely to be implemented, I was glad to see Paul Krugman make the case for why reform is needed in the first place.