Economist Blog

From the Department of Unbiased Research

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:25:35 +0000

Submitted by unsettling economics “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of national business groups opposed to President Obama’s health-care reform effort are collecting money to finance an economic study that could be used to portray the legislation as a job killer and threat to the nation’s economy, according to an e-mail solicitation from a [...]

WASHINGTON’S NEW MATH

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:23:54 +0000

Submitted by The Capital Spectator Only in the hallowed halls of Congress could the notion of spending vastly higher amounts of money convince so many that the net result will be a reduction in spending. But such is the conceit with the new health care bill being hammered out these days. The new legislation to expand health [...]

SLOW BURN

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:21:03 +0000

Submitted by The Capital Spectator Today’s update on weekly jobless claims may be the warning sign. New filings for jobless benefits were unchanged last week, hovering at 505,000, matching the previous week’s tally. Although this number is down sharply from it’s recessionary peak of 674,000, set back in late-March, 500k reflects distress in the labor market. [...]

GDP: Revisions and Forecasts

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:17:40 +0000

Submitted by Econbrowser There’s been some discussion of how the GDP estimates for 2009Q3 might be revised downward in light of the September trade release [1]. e-Forecasting has presented its latest estimates up to October, and Macroeconomic Advisers through September. Macroeconomic Advisers writes: …The increase in September was more than accounted for by a large positive contribution [...]

U.S. Share of World GDP Remarkably Constant

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:15:19 +0000

Submitted by CARPE DIEM Somewhat surprisingly, the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has some great international historical macroeconomic datasets. According to its website: The International Macroeconomic Data Set provides data from 1969 through 2020 for real (adjusted for inflation) gross domestic product (GDP), population, real exchange rates, and other variables for the 190 [...]

Leading Indicators Rise for 7th Month to 2-Yr. High

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:12:30 +0000

Submitted by CARPE DIEM The Leading Economic Index (LEI) increased for the 7th straight month to 103.8, the highest level since the fall of 2007, and the first time in more than five years of 7-consecutive monthly increases (since early 2004). Details: Six of the ten indicators that make up The Conference Board LEI for the [...]

Odds for Health Care Reform Fall From 50% to 2%

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:10:23 +0000

Submitted by CARPE DIEM Last summer the odds for a federal government-run health insurance plan to be approved before the end of the year were around 50%, according to futures contracts traded on Intrade.com. Those odds have now fallen to a contract-low of only 2.2%. Odds for health care reform passing by March 2010 or [...]

Jobless Claims (Four-Wk. Avg.) Drop for 11th Straight Week to 514,000, Lowest Level in A Year

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:07:03 +0000

Submitted by CARPE DIEM Weekly jobless claims fell for the 11th straight week to 514,000 (four-week moving average), reaching the lowest level in a year (since November 15, 2008), according to today’s report from the Department of Labor (see chart above). Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

THE NEW NEW BALANCING ACT

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:50:44 +0000

Submitted by The Capital Spectator Definitive statements about the future are always suspect in finance and economics, but it’s reasonable to assume that the threat of deflation as a clear and present danger has passed. But we can’t say for sure. To the extent that a double-dip recession remains a possibility, so too will does hazard [...]

Receiver operating characteristics curve

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:47:58 +0000

Submitted by Econbrowser Travis Berge and Oscar Jorda of the University of California, Davis have an interesting new paper on statistical criteria for distinguishing economic expansions from recessions. Berge and Jorda evaluate rules of the form that would declare the economy to be in a recession when some indicator Yt falls below a specified threshold c, for [...]

Assessing the Impact of Government Policy on Widget Consumption and Widget Sector Capital Usage

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:44:36 +0000

Submitted by Econbrowser Let supply and demand for widgets (y) be given by the following two equations, respectively: (1) yt = αt + β x t + ε t (2) yt = γ + δ x t + Γ z t + u t Where x is the relative price of widgets, z is a government procurement policy for [...]

Real Estate Recovery in So. California: Home Sales Increase 16th Straight Month, Prices 6rd Month

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:41:29 +0000

Submitted by CARPE DIEM Southern California home sales rose in October as prices showed more signs of firming. The median sale price fell by the smallest amount in two years, the result of a shrinking inventory of homes for sale and government and industry efforts to stoke demand and curtail foreclosures. Last month 22,132 new [...]

Expanding Coverage = Increased Costs for Current Dysfunctional Health Care System, Less Innovation

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:38:50 +0000

Submitted by CARPE DIEM Our health-care system suffers from problems of cost, access and quality, and needs major reform. Tax policy drives employment-based insurance; this begets overinsurance and drives costs upward while creating inequities for the unemployed and self-employed. A regulatory morass limits innovation. Deep flaws in Medicare and Medicaid drive spending without optimizing care. Speeches and [...]

More Selective Concern on Sex Imbalances

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:33:53 +0000

Submitted by CARPE DIEM From a new report “Staying Competitive: Patching America’s Leaky Pipeline in the Sciences” from the Center for American Progress: The “leaky pipeline” for women in the sciences, sometimes referred to as the “pool problem” because of the low number of women in job applicant pools relative to their rates of doctoral degrees granted, [...]

Baltic Dry Index Roars Back: 102.5% Gain in 39 Days

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:29:10 +0000

Submitted by CARPE DIEM The Baltic Dry Index closed today at 4381, advancing for the 14th straight day, and registering positive gains in 31 out of the last 35 days. From the late-September low of 2163, the benchmark index for freight costs to ship dry bulk commodities such as iron ore, coal and grains has [...]