Interest rates continue their climb… and long rates have risen by enough in recent weeks (today they’re roughly at their highest levels since mid-2002) to shut down discussion of the “inverted yield curve”, at least temporarily. This raises a good question: is it more contractionary for the economy (or less expanionary, depending on how you […]
Well, I could have saved myself and all of you a lot of time and energy if I had just started off the week linking to Max Sawicky on the topic of immigration. The post would have been entitled “Immigration: Just See Max.” In one concise post, he made all of the points on immigration […]
David Altig says yes. He also reviews a recent paper by Stephanie Aaronson, Bruce Fallick, Andrew Figura, Jonathan Pingle and William Wascher entitled The Recent Decline in Labor Force Participation and its Implications for Potential Labor Supply that gives evidence that David may have a point. David cites a couple of paragraphs that might support […]
Max Sawicky takes on this comment from Michael Lind: Why do right-wing Republicans, and conservative Southern Democrats like Lloyd Bentsen, love the EITC? Because it is a taxpayer subsidy to employers which enables them to pay below-poverty wages to their workers. In other words, the EITC is corporate welfare, a massive redistribution of wealth to […]
In thinking about the merits and faults of the VAT, I came across some interesting data. The first source is a paper by Timothy Smeeding entitled “Public Policy and Economic Inequality: The United States in Comparative Perspective“. Professor Smeeding used a unique data set from a project called the Luxembourg Income Study to gain various […]
Via Brad Setser comes a very nice summary of the competing views on the sustainability our massive trade deficit from Barry Eichengreen. While I’m not buying the “savvy investor” view of John Kitchen, his paper is worth the read. Kitchen notes the Dark Matter thesis and adds: Cline (2005, p. 262), one of the few […]
Imagine waking up in Chicago on some cold wintry morning, putting on your heavy overcoat – only to have someone tell you that the coat will not keep your any warmer. After all, who in Hawaii ever wears a heavy overcoat? Now, I know this tale sounds absolutely stupid but check out the latest from […]
In the new issue of The Economists’ Voice, Robert Shiller has a piece on house prices: “Long-Term Perspectives on the Current Boom in Home Prices.” Here’s the picture that tells a thousand words: Despite massive population growth over the periods shown in all three countries, there’s very little upward trend in home prices. Fluctuations in […]
The issue of immigration has been well-documented as exposing a rift among Republicans in recent days; articles in the Washington Post, The Economist, and the Financial Times are but a few examples. But the political left seems to me to be nearly as split on the issue. Numerous readers of this blog have expressed serious […]
The BEA released its final estimate of GDP growth and the national income account for 2005. The figures on GDP show no surprises. But the news release also highlights corporate profits in 2005. The figures show that 2005 was a good year to be an owner of a corporation: Profits from current production increased 16.4 […]