by Joseph Joyce America’s Current Accounts Deficits: Not Quite Déjà Vu The U.S. current account deficit has narrowed since 2006, when it reached $807 billion, which represented 5.8% of U.S. GDP. By 2013 the deficit had fallen to $400 billion, worth 2.4% of GDP. But the IMF last October projected it would reach $484 billion […]
Publisher’s (New Press) webpage: Social Security Works! More below the fold.
Yes I am playing with FRED. My thoughts about the graph after the jump.
I am trying to understand what, if anything, was agreed by Greece and the rest of the EU yesterday. I’m not sure they even agreed to kick the can down the road. update 11:00 AM EST Tuesday 2/24/2015: It’s a deal. Greece has four more months without promising a 4.5% of GDP primary surplus. I […]
@sandymaxey points me to a new report from the North Carolina Justice Center that is making my head spin. Picking Losers shows that the state’s flagship development program, the Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG), has seen 62 of its 102 projects fail in the period from its inception in 2002 until 2013. That is, 60% […]
How much is a human life worth ? Michelle Chen links to and discusses a new study which concludes that welfare reform reduced life expectancy. I am reminded of an earlier study (there is overlap — the new study analysed the results of two actual experiments one of which was analysed in the old study)
Today we see an article, Betting the house: Monetary policy, mortgage booms and housing prices by Oscar Jorda, Moritz Schularick, Alan Taylor. They warn of excessive easy monetary policies. Their research uses a large data set. “In our new paper (Jordà et al. 2014), we analyse the link between monetary conditions, mortgage credit growth, and […]
I’m not sure if there are studies looking at the long term effects of such advice on one’s health especially in this economy, but I can see where in the words of Arlo Guthrie, it could create a movement. Health Experts Recommend Standing up at Desk, Leaving Office and Never Coming Back ROCHESTER, MN—In an […]
Third Way (h/t TPM), a Democratic pro-trade think tank, has released a new study, “Are Modern Trade Deals Working?” It examines the various “free trade” deals the U.S. has signed since 2000 to conclude that 13 of 17 have led to an improvement in our goods (not including services; see more below) trade balance with […]
I am marking my beliefs to market as Brad DeLong does from time to time. One of my old beliefs whose market quotation has declined is extreme skepticism about the effectivenss of US monetary policy at the zero lower bound. This skepticism was largely caused by what I perceived to be the weak effects of […]