I had my hair cut last week.  It’s a big event as it happens about twice per year.  While there I always get into political conversations with the lady cutting my hair.  This time, as often it was the economy.  Her position still is that the individual citizens collecting welfare are effecting her income.  We’ve […]

I see some evidence that higher domestic energy production and improved competitiveness of US manufacturing is having a positive impact on the US trade balance and US industrial production. But I still expects the impact to be limited. In particular, the real non-petroleum trade balance continues to deteriorate. Increased supplies of cheap natural gas helps […]

Looking for some back articles and wanting to try out posting with our new setup I found this one by Mike Kimel (formally known as Cactus) from July, 2010.   It is always fun to look back.* He presents his data and argument regarding where we’re going and concludes: This time, I’m not as comfortable; given where and how […]

The other day I dissed the analysis in Reinhart and Rogoff’s Growth in a Time of Debt as being on the level of a blog post from an amateur internet econocrank. I still hold that opinion. But I want to walk back on that, or at least clarify, and give lots of credit where due. Because they did make […]

I finally figured out a simple way to explain my confusion (and that of many others, including many economists) with the whole Saving issue. I may also have figured out a useful solution to that confusion, which I present at the bottom here for my gentle readers’ delectation and denunciation. Econ profs: I’m really curious. […]

Here I  analyze the data set used by Reinhart and Rogoff (R-R) and by Herndon Ash and Pollin (HAP) in their critique and in particular the stata data set RR-processed.dta with data on public debt to GDP ratios and real GDP growth in 20 developed countries since 1946. I show evidence that low growth causes […]

Or: Thinking About Periods and Lags No need to rehash this cock-up, except to point to the utterly definitive takedown by Arindrajit Dube over at Next New Deal (hat tip: Krugman), and to point out that the takedown might just take even if you’re looking at R&R’s original, skewed data. But a larger point: I frequently see econometrics like R&R’s, comparing […]

This story has rapidly made the rounds in the blogosphere, and it is indeed a big deal. One of the most significant economics papers underlying the argument for why high government debt (especially over 90% of gross domestic product) is bad for growth was published in 2010 by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, “Growth in […]

Mark Thoma, among many others, discusses some implications for readers to consider for macro overall: Empirical Methods and Progress in Macroeconomics (Quote)The blow-up over the Reinhart-Rogoff results reminds me of a point I’ve been meaning to make about our ability to use empirical methods to make progress in macroeconomics. This isn’t about the computational mistakes that Reinhart […]

I really like Hellestal’s comment and linguistic take on this whole business: I’m comfortable changing my language in order to communicate. I have very little patience for people who aren’t similarly capable of changing their definitions. This discussion is really about the words we use to describe different accounting constructs. Nick totally gets that as […]