At the CEPR blog, Beat the Press, Dean Baker and Jason Hickel are debating degrowth. Dean makes the excellent point that “claims about growth” from oil companies and politicians who oppose policies to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, “are just window dressing.” I also agree, however, with the first comment in response to Dean’s post that his point […]
Strong manufacturers new orders in November ISM report There are a lot of economic writers who won’t tell you when something moves against their thesis. Those guys trumpeting a flatlining of commercial and industrial growth last year? They never heard of it this year (hint: because it’s up!). To the contrary, one of the reasons […]
Why this Friday I’ll pay particular attention to the temporary jobs number With the long leading indicators outside of corporate profits and ease of credit having turned neutral to negative, at least for now, my attention is turning more and more to the short leading indicators. And one of those — temporary employment — is […]
The division of labor is limited by the extent of the market. The model is a modified version of the simplified Romer 90 model. The modification is that there is a minimum efficient scale for the production of intermediate goods. Gross output in the growing sector is (sum i = 1 to N of x_i^alpha)L1^(1-alpha) […]
Krugman argues that the Bank of Englands worst case scenario for no deal Brexit is implausibly bad. I agree with his conclusion, but strongly disagree with one argument (on a point which he stresses is quantitatively minor) … the BoE includes some nonstandard effects of trade: they assume that reduced trade (and foreign direct investment) […]
The recent rise in initial jobless claims: signal or noise? Yesterday initial jobless claims for the prior week were reported at 234,000, a six month high. That’s 32,000 above the recent one week low. The four week moving average rose to 223,250, more than 15,000 higher than its recent low: Is it cause for concern? […]
October personal income and spending strong In October personal income increased 0.5%, and personal spending increased 0.6%. These are both very strong increases. Further, as the graph below shows, real inflation adjusted income and spending both also rose: These are coincident indicators that form part of the quintessential nowcast. Real personal income adjusted by transfer […]
(Dan here….better a little late than not…) by Kenneth Thomas Amazon Wins!!! Well, what did you expect? With 238 entrants and 20 finalists, the Amazon HQ2 location tournament resulted in a resounding victory for Amazon: Billions of dollars in subsidies and binders full of detailed information on the contestants. Plus, we got a surprise twist […]
Q3 corporate profits increase Third quarter corporate profits were released as part of the first revision of GDP this morning. Since corporate profits deflated by unit labor costs are a long leading indicator, let’s take a look. Here is the raw corporate profits table released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis: Lines #3 and #11 […]
October new home sales plummet — but take it with a big grain of salt As you may have already read elsewhere, new home sales plunged -8.9% in October to the seasonally adjusted annual rate of 544,000. Here’s the accompanying graph: BUT … take this with a big grain of salt. The reason I rely […]