Notes:

Latest blog posts from Econbrowser

Durable Goods and the Collapse of Global Trade
From a Dallas Fed Letter by Jian Wang: Durable goods represent a moderate share of the economy in most industrial countries -- in the U.S., for example, they accounted for 23.6 percent of real GDP in 2008. However, durable goods make up a large share of international trade. In the U.S., they...
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

Whither the Yuan?
Political pressure seems to be mounting for yuan appreciation. [0] Figure 1 depicts the stability in the USD/CNY nominal exchange rate over the past year.
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

Modeling problems in credit markets
On Friday I joined fellow blogger Mark Thoma (and a good many other economists) at a very interesting conference on financial markets held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Here I share some ideas I expressed at the conference about the directions I feel this research ought to go.
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

Aspirin
Russ Roberts writes: Menzie Chinn invokes the CBO "estimates" to argue against those who say the stimulus didn't work. Did the stimulus help turn the economy around and create jobs? I'm skeptical on logical grounds but I confess that I do not have strong empirical evidence on my side. But those...
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

Speaking of Unfunded Liabilities: Medicare Part D
The Financial Report of the United States Government, 2009 was released last week. Perusing the tables, one encounters the gigantic new, unfunded entitlement enacted in 2003, namely Medicare Part D.
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

A new index of financial conditions
What do current financial indicators tell us about where the economy is headed?
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

The Global Financial Crisis: Explaining Cross-Country Differences in the Output Impact
From "The Global Financial Crisis: Explaining Cross-Country Differences in the Output Impact," IMF WP 09/280, by Pelin Berkmen, Gaston Gelos, Robert Rennhack, and James P. Walsh: We provide one of the first attempts at explaining the differences in the crisis impact across developing countries...
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

Who Are You Going to Believe?
Professor Casey Mulligan says (and yesterday unequivocally reiterates) the stimulus program would not stimulate the economy. The nonpartisan CBO says otherwise: ...CBO estimates that in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2009, ARRA's policies: Raised real GDP by between 1.5 percent and 3.5...
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

Crawling forward
Another month of weakly improving auto sales.
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

Net Fiscal Stimulus
From the abstract to "On the ease of overstating the fiscal stimulus in the US, 2008-9", by (my sometime coauthor) Joshua Aizenman and Gurnain Kaur Pasricha: This note shows that the aggregate fiscal expenditure stimulus in the United States, properly adjusted for the declining fiscal expenditure...
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

What Are These Three Numbers?
These numbers are expressed in billions of FY2010 dollars. Figure 1, in billions of FY2010 dollars.
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published

What drives media slant?
University of Chicago professors Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro propose an answer.
Click here to read more at Econbrowser...
Published