Gulnara Nolan

When to run the economy hot?

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Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen has recently suggested it is a good time to run the US economy hot (in the short-run) underpinned by the argument that the further fall in unemployment rate didn’t drag the inflation up.

The justification behind this is that the Phillips curve appears to have become quite flat.  As a result, stronger demand need not drive up inflation by much – suggesting we have a situation where, even with relatively low unemployment, inflation expectations are strongly anchored. 

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Matt Nolan

The problem with Economists

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I am disappointed with Paul Krugman (ht Economist’s View).

Now don’t get me wrong, I am against almost everything that Trump plans to do.  I am socially liberal, his tax policies (and the sharp cuts and spending that will need to be implemented) will redistribute away from the poor, his tariffs programs will hurt the vast majority of Americans and undermine the rate of reduction in absolute poverty in other low income nations, and his lack of trust in the Federal Reserve is likely to erode independent monetary policy.  Furthermore, his divisive rhetoric and willingness to create “other” groups to blame failures on point to a dark undercurrent within the US and within his administration.

But none of these things suggest:

Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.

Or:

So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.

When these things don’t happen, it will further undermine the credibility of economists – and implicitly tell Trump supporters and opponents that ALL the costs economists had said would occur from his election do not exist!

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jamesz

The Fed vs the BoE

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Yesterday the Fed pirouetted neatly, simultaneously beginning to taper its quantitative easing and suggesting that policy will not tighten until well beyond its guidance threshold for unemployment. The sum impact has been a loosening of policy but what interested me is the sequencing of its actions.
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Matt Nolan

Thinking on the US Fed mandate

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Via Mark Thoma, I spotted this piece in the Washington Post about the US Fed’s mandate. 

I disagree with this piece.  But, it is well laid out and argued – which makes it a good piece!  So let us go through the reason why I take issue:

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Matt Nolan

NZ isn’t the US: Employment rates

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So often we hear that, even though the unemployment rate is falling in the US, employment is low.  It is the low level of employment, and the lack of integration in the community that entails, that is causing so much anger over there.  The lack of opportunity illustrated through the low employment rate is one of the key pieces of information pulled out to suggest something must be done.

Often people in New Zealand talk as if whatever is happening in the US is happening here, therefore something must be done.  However, lets be a bit more careful – especially as in the case of the employment rate that is untrue.

 

remprSource:  Stats NZ.  Quandl.

Yes, the story is more complicated (Working for families increased the number of second earners in the labour market, a factor that will in of itself have pushed up the participation and employment rates).  But if anything that suggests we need to be a lot more careful applying “lessons” from the US situation to New Zealand.  We are not the United States – a point we’ve noted when looking at median income comparisons in the past 😉

 

 

Matt Nolan

Bleg: Grimes on bubbles

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Arthur Grimes recently gave an interview to Reuters, all I’ve seen so far is this write up via Raf on Twitter (cheers).  Now Grimes is an incredibly good New Zealand economist, to put things in perspective I would generally put more weight on a single line of his opinion of something than I would on my own intuition and analysis of issues – an given that as individuals we are strongly biased towards our own views that is pretty significant.

But anyone who reads TVHE knows what I’m like, I just really really want to know ‘why’ certain things are being said!  I emailed a few economists and some suggested I do a bleg asking, so why not!

In the Yahoo story there are a couple of segments I’m a touch confused on and I’d like it if someone could answer them for me 🙂 (Note:  Seamus from Offsetting offers some example answers at the bottom of this post)

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