How bad a year was 2020?
During the year, the United States economy lost a net 9.4 million jobs — 6.2% of the jobs it had at the end of […]
Category: Commentary
Recovery, Expansion, and an Old Normal Yield Curve
In December of 2019, the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 3.6% and prime age labor force participation, at 82.9%, was at an 11 year high. Today, December 2020 jobs figures […]
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NYT > Business > DealBook
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Sorkin: Dark Money Is on the Supreme Court's DocketView More
Closing the Fire Station, to Motivate Less Smoking in Bed
In the spring of 2009, amid the darkest moments of the Great Recession, I published a book and a blogpost. The book, reviewed here, championed the notion that mainstream […]
What Do GDP Figures Show?
The United States, unlike many countries, releases its GDP figures as annual rates. That makes no sense now, when there are clearly forces at work that will not continue for […]
The Worst Recession On Record, By One Measure
It is tempting to look at the continued recovery of the labor market in July and be encouraged – even if there are indications that August may see a reversal. […]
Squeezing States and Cities
One number stands out in today’s estimate of second quarter GDP, and it isn’t the overall real GDP decline of 32.9%, on an annualized basis, even though the headlines will […]
538 survey of macroeconomists
The 538 webpage, part of ABC news and originally set up by Nate Silver, has just done a survey of academic macroeconomic forecasters about the coronavirus recession. Allan Timmermann at […]
COVID-19 Data: Signal versus Noise
Two burning questions confront all of us:
How big is our public health problem?
How sharp is our economic retrenchment?
We think that the toolkit of economic forecasters has something […]
Embracing Distancing and Cushioning the Blow to the Economy
The global COVID-19 outbreak now sports exponential growth rates for cases and deaths on every continent save Antarctica. Students of the economy must add that we are also in the […]
Oily Disaster
The United States has become the world’s largest oil producer. That honor is likely to vanish, and with it a lot of companies.
If so – and it is almost […]
The Saudis, the Russians, the Chinese…and the Greens, Four Dimensional Chess in the Time of Corona
Crude oil prices plunged on Monday, as Saudi Arabia has announced that they will ramp up production to punish recalcitrant OPEC members, including and especially Russia. Rising supply alongside a […]
China’s 2018 Economic Slowdown: Much Worse than the Official Tally
By Robert Barbera and Yingyao Hu
Our nighttime illumination estimate for 2018 Chinese growth, 4.2%, is roughly one third weaker than the Chinese official claim of a 6.5% climb for […]
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