HT: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-16/the-entire-global-economy-in-two-big-slides
After reading the annual reports of the Fed, Milton Friedman noticed the following pattern
16 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, great depression, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics Tags: lags on monetary policy, monetary policy
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Finn Kydland on the myth of the Celtic Tiger
14 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman
Finn Kydland has a simple explanation for the so-called Celtic Tiger. It was a recovery from a deep depression in the 1970s and 1980s in the Irish economy.
HT: “Ireland’s Great Depression,” Finn Kydland, Alan Ahearne and Mark A. Wynne, The Economic and Social Review 37(2), Summer/Autumn 2006, 215-243. (pdf)
Who gains and who loses from employment protection laws over the business cycle?
13 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economics of regulation, Euro crisis, job search and matching, labour economics, law and economics, macroeconomics, unemployment Tags: employment protection laws, Euroland, Eurosclerosis, labour market regulation
77% more long-term unemployed people than before the crisis – We need them back in work! bit.ly/1JTTzYm #Jobs http://t.co/EFRGclFVms—
OECD Social (@OECD_Social) July 10, 2015
HT: IMF
Unemployment by education
11 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, great recession, human capital, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - USA, unemployment Tags: labour demographics
Noah Smith and economists cannot forecast when the next recession will be
06 Mar 2015 1 Comment
in business cycles, macroeconomics Tags: conjecture and refutation, forecasting errors, Karl Popper, methodology of economics, Noah Smith, philosophy and social sciences, prophecy
Noah Smith is ranting today about how economists cannot forecast the timing of recession. He doesn’t use the most obvious argument.
That argument is if you are any good at picking the timing of the next recession, you wouldn’t go around talking and telling other people and publishing in the paper for all the world to hear.
You would keep quiet and trade in your own account, signing futures contracts and share options to take maximum advantage of seeing further than others. Show me the money, as Murray Rothbard explained:
Many studies, formal and informal, have been made of the record of forecasting by economists, and it has been consistently abysmal.
Forecasters often complain that they can do well enough as long as current trends continue; what they have difficulty in doing is catching changes in trend. But of course there is no trick in extrapolating current trends into the near future.
You don’t need sophisticated computer models for that; you can do it better and far more cheaply by using a ruler.
The real trick is precisely to forecast when and how trends will change, and forecasters have been notoriously bad at that. No economist forecast the depth of the 1981–82 depression, and none predicted the strength of the 1983 boom.
The next time you are swayed by the jargon or seeming expertise of the economic forecaster, ask yourself this question: If he can really predict the future so well, why is he wasting his time putting out newsletters or doing consulting when he himself could be making trillions of dollars in the stock and commodity markets?
Karl Popper argued that the job of the economist and other social scientists is not to be a prophet but to make conditional predictions such as if circumstances A apply, B will ensue. To do any more is to fall for the age-old allure of the prophet and his prophecies.
Edmund Phelps on Keynesian macroeconomic policy
25 Feb 2015 2 Comments
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, F.A. Hayek, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), great recession, macroeconomics, monetary economics Tags: Austrian real business cycle theory, Edmund Phelps, FA Hayek, Keynes in macroeconomic policy
The economic performance of the USA, Japan and the European Union prior to the global financial crisis
23 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, Edward Prescott, Euro crisis, global financial crisis (GFC), great recession, macroeconomics, politics - USA Tags: Euroland, GFC, global financial crisis
Source: Edward Prescott
US post-war economic booms compared
22 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, economic history, macroeconomics, politics - USA Tags: Edward Prescott
Source: Edward Prescott
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