Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Bleg – Yesterday’s FT (US PDF)

One advantage the electronic subscribers have over us print people when dealing with The World’s Worst Newspaper Website(TM) is that if they forget to download a holiday (read:not printed in the US) issue, they can access the phosphors without having to deal with The World’s Worst Newspaper Website. Anyone have a PDF of yesterday’s FT […]

The Cost of Labor

The standard model of Economic Development is Romer’s (1989, JPE 1990) adaptation* of Solow’s (1956, 1957) Model.  Basically, became Y = AKα(HL)(1-α) where the H stands for “human capital,” which multiplies the ability of labor. (Think high-skills labor—construction work, plumbing, teaching—where the worker continually “learns by doing” [op cit., Arrow, 1962]. The additional “human capital” […]

The Effect of Individual Income Tax Rates on the Economy, Part 4: 1950 – 1968

by Mike Kimel This post is the fourth in a series that looks at the relationship between real economic growth and the top individual marginal tax rate. The first looked at the period from 1901 to 1928, the second from 1929 to 1940, the third from 1940 to 1950. This week we look at 1950 […]

Updates to emlpoyment/population ratios

Bill McBride offers a look at the employment/population ratios by age at Calculated Risk, also offered at Mark Thoma’s Economist View: There will probably be some “bounce back” for both men and women (some of the recent decline is probably cyclical), but the long term trend for men is down. And several updates in graph […]

Employment report….

Spencer came home from vacation and found downed trees and lines and sporadic wifi connections he attempted in the neighborhood. His report will have its own timetable this week. I found Michael Konczal’s take at New Deal 2.0 useful. There was certainly a lot of reactions to the information. Payroll data came in this morning […]

Spanish consumers AND savers take a forced siesta

by Rebecca Wilder Recently we saw retail sales figures come out of Spain, Germany, France, and Italy. Across Europe, the seasonally-adjusted pattern of real retail sales is diverging. The chart above illustrates the real seasonally-adjusted and working-day-adjusted (for Europe) level of retail sales across key countries in Europe and the US (for comparison). The raw […]

Texas Again: Which Rick Does More Harm?

That Rick Perry is a clueless candidate and skilled campaigner is something for Barack Obama’s minions to suffer.* That Perry’s curiosity goes no further than “Where’s My Next Corndog?” cannot be held against him; he only became what they made him, just as his predecessor did, though with a poorer transcript and lack of his […]

A Bleg – Private Consumption Multiplier

from Mike Kimel Hi. For a project I’m working on, I need to find estimates of a private consumption multiplier. That is to say, the multiplier resulting from changes in private consumption rather than, say, from changes in gov’t spending or taxation. Any pointers? Please let me know in comments are by email (mike period […]

Sources and Uses: Kash Delivers

Two posts on European Banks and their view of what constitutes a “Safe Harbor.” His conclusion isn’t just The Pull Quote of the Year, it’s the Pull Quote That Explains the Year: Putting it all together yields a compelling story: European banks are shifting their cash assets out of European banks and putting much of […]