Kevin Drum notes that the 4 week average ratio of new unemployment insurance claims to employment is the lowest ever recorded He wonders if it has anything to do with tighter standards for receiving unemployment insurance. I think it is just that the labor market is authentically tight. The Job vacancy rate is roughly tied […]
I think it is best to just click and read this. In a study published this year in Nature Neuroscience, several co-authors and I found that family income is significantly correlated with children’s brain size — specifically, the surface area of the cerebral cortex, which is the outer layer of the brain that does most […]
Janet Yellen gave a speach which has received a lot of attention and not just because she is one of the most powerful people in the world. I agree with Lorcan Roche Kelly that the best parts are footnotes 28 and 26. I got into a twitter debate with Andy Harless who was unconvinced by […]
“Pundits are regularly outpredicted by people you’ve never heard of. Here’s how to change that.” is a very interesting article at the monkey cage by Sam Winter-Levy and Jacob Trefethen. (h/t @MarkThoma) They note a study of people you’ve never heard of vs intelligence analysts (not pundits) and write accountability. While many pundits may not […]
This is my usual post lamenting the fact that reasonable people allow supply side dynamic scorers to set the terms of debate. They confidently assert that tax cuts for the rich cause more rapid GDP growth and want to argue whether that means they pay for themselves . Jeb!’s economists admit that they don’t without […]
At 12:07 Eastern standard time 9/10/2015 Alan Rappaport wrote an article on Jeb Bush’s tax proposal whose headline seemed to me to be the title of a Bush campaign press release — it stressed the proposal to close the carried interest loophole and not the huge cuts to top tax rates. About 4 hours later […]
While the world is focused on the Syrian refugee crisis (now that the refugees have arrived in Europe) aid to refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and, especially, Jordan has been cut. The cash-strapped World Food Programme has had to drop one-third of Syrian refugees from its food voucher program in Middle Eastern host countries this year, […]
Recently a very old debate among macroeconomists has been reopened (this happens from time to time). Paul Romer decided to discuss a key conference held in 1978 (yes really). Some (including me) think that’s about when the profession took a wrong turn largely following Robert Lucas. But in the discussion until about yesterday, it was […]
Noah smith has a question which I paraphrase as : Interest rates on corporate bonds are very low. The return on capital for business as a whole is quite high. Why isn’t investment very high ? My thoughts This is related to average v marginal. I think it is important to distinguish fixed capital into […]
People who know more than I do are discussing the rational expectations revolution and the division of macroeconomics into hostile fresh-water and salt-water schools of thought. I am very favorably impressed by this post by Simon Wren-Lewis which you should probably just read. ).