Since the Puerto Rican government ceased publishing mortality data in February, there has been a debate over the death toll arising from Hurrican Maria. The official death toll, focusing on direct deaths, remains at 64. However, starting in November, a number of scholars attempted to gain further insight into the extent of the human disaster […]
Population mean Sample mean Population standard deviation Sample standard deviation Standard error Administrative data Survey data Point estimate Confidence interval Sampling bias Reporting bias Now, let’s begin. Here is a graph of estimates of cumulative fatalities in Puerto Rico over time. Figure 1: Estimates from Santos-Lozada and Jeffrey Howard (Nov. 2017) for September and October […]
Given some criticisms of the Harvard School of Public Health led study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, I thought it useful to compare point estimates and 95% confidence intervals of several extant studies, placed in a time context. Figure 1: Estimates from Santos-Lozada and Jeffrey Howard (Nov. 2017) for September and October, […]
From New England Journal of Medicine, results of a study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: Figure 4. Estimates of Excess Deaths and Reported Causes of Death. Panel A shows a comparison of estimates of excess deaths from official reports, press (New York Times)8 […]
Steven Kopits, in response to my caution over using state level household based employment series, writes: If you are telling me you’re smarter than BLS, go ahead. Well, I don’t think I’m smarter than BLS. I just think it’s a good idea to know what kind of imprecision is associated with the series one works […]
Governor Walker blames the workers.
One of the arguments for acting sooner rather than later on monetary policy is that if the slack disappears, inflationary expectations will surge. That’s represented in this quote from reader Peak Trader’s comment. While I don’t rule out this possibility, it seems reasonable to me to empirically assess whether this is true for the United […]
Blue Creek fire, close to Walla Walla, WA. Photo: Greg Lehman, AP. Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Reader CoRev asserts wildfire intensity has not been severe of late. I’ll just graph some data to bring reality to the interested.
Reader Patrick R. Sullivan keeps on talking about the post-World War II boom, and telling people to watch The Best Years of Our Lives (A fine movie, by the way). I think I know why he thinks times were great for all, if your history comes from Hollywood. Rick Stryker chimes in with the statement: […]
Reader Steven Kopits writes “potential GDP model is also a binding constraint model”, so GDP “…is subject to some sort of natural speed limit which cannot be exceeded”. This assertion is so amazingly absolutist in nature, and represents such a misunderstanding of how macroeconomists typically think of potential, that I am moved to observe that […]