Food Prices Rose 28% In 5 Years. Here’s Why, – by Taryn Phaneuf NerdWallet No single factor can explain why food is so much more expensive now than before the pandemic. Food prices — which are up 28% since 2019 — remain high because of the combined impact of rising operating costs, supply-chain disruptions and […]
There are a huge number of anomalies and biases which can be understood as confusing the claims that the probability of p conditional on q is high if the conditional probability of q conditional on p is high. One is diagnostic expectations – the conditional probability that a person has red hair if the person […]
In 1998, I traveled to Moscow for the first time to teach in a summer course at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The week before, we were on vacation in Colorado and I heard on the radio “Today, the ruble lost 100% of its value.” That meant that the ruble was worthless, which seemed unlikely. […]
– by New Deal democrat I suspect that both hurricanes as well as mortgage rates somewhat distorted all of the housing reports for October. Last week with existing home sales I noted that “While sales remained in range, price appreciation increased and the pace of inventory accumulation decreased.“ There was something of a mirror image […]
An explanation of over-reaction to new data starts with a principal agent model. The idea is that the forecasts are made by agents who are trying to impress people who pay for the forecasts. Another, and more important, case is that of professional money managers who are investing other people’s money and trying to convince […]
I’ve read where Musk and Ramaswami are proposing a 75% cut in the federal workforce. That’s absurd. • National security-related agencies account for roughly 70% of the civilian workforce. The largest employers were the Department of Veterans Affairs, with 487,000 workers, followed by the armed services, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Justice Department. […]
If you have been reading New Deal democrat all along, you will remember NDd’s commentary on October 23rd (the link is below) discussing the possible stall of corporate profits. Maybe it is an easy call and maybe not. There are negatives to corporate profits stalling. Read on . . . – by New Deal democrat […]
Economist reports on what countries are less costly when driving EVs. If you go to the Economist site, you can find more countries by hovering over each colored circle. And is it always greener? Our ranking shows how costs and emissions vary. OWNERS OF ELECTRIC vehicles (EVs) have a lot to brag about. Their cars are […]
– by New Deal democrat Let me start to update this week’s data with jobless claims. Initial claims fell another -2,000 to 213,000, the lowest since last May. The four-week moving average declined -1,250 to 217,000, also a six-month low. With the usual one-week lag, continuing claims rose 9,000 to 1.907 million: As with one […]
There is an approach to cognitive psychology and modelling beliefs and forecasts which is natural for economists and very misleading. The assumptions are that we have a complete set of subjective probabilities updated with Bayes’ formula, that for any possible combination of events we have a belief about the probability that they will occur and […]