The Current Downturn: Labor-leisure tradeoff or technological regress

Some views from an economist who is not “advancing the science”.

Reader Joseph commenting on the stimulus bills brings my attention the Cato ad, wherein several Nobel laureates write against a stimulus plan. Ed Prescott is the Nobel laureate who won for work on growth/macroeconomics, so attention must be paid! I looked a bit for his reasoning, and only found this quote from the East Valley Tribune:

“I don’t know why Obama said all economists agree on [the need for a stimulus bill],” Prescott said. “They don’t. If you go down to the third-tier schools, yes, but they’re not the people advancing the science.”

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Estimated Output Gap, post Trade, Inventory Releases

The picture says it all, but here’s the quote from RealTime Economics “Fourth Quarter Looking Worse Every Day”:

Yesterday, wholesale inventory numbers came in smaller than expected, prompting economists to revise down fourth-quarter GDP estimates a bit. But a much bigger adjustment is likely in store thanks to today’s data on trade.

The trade deficit for December was wider than anticipated, and economists estimate it will shave up to 0.9 percentage point off of the fourth-quarter number. “These figures were much worse than BEA assumed in preparing the advance fourth quarter GDP estimate,” said Morgan Stanley economist Ted Wieseman, who now expects fourth quarter GDP to be revised down to a 5.2% decline. That figure was in line with other estimates from J.P. Morgan, Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Global Insight and RDQ Economics, who all expect the number to be around 5%.

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Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? The Great Multiplier Debate

I’ve been thinking about why the numbers that are typically bandied about in policy circles (at least that I’m familiar with) have so little impact on the overall general and blogosphere debate (see some examples here and here). I think it’s part ideological, and part methodological. I can’t do much about the first (e.g., tax cuts good, spending on goods and services bad — unless on defense; or alternatively “let the market adjust no matter how long it takes”). But at least I can lay out why reasons why there is disagreement on the size of the multipliers.

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