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Blog aggregator for economics research

2026-01-02

• Bolghèria & Croèscia
  by Alberto Bagnai in Goofynomics, 2026-01-02 21:39:00 UTC

  (... titolo ispirato a questo grande classico: che comunque i suoi quattro milioni e mezzo di visualizzazioni li ha fatti: onore al merito!... ) Dilettissimi seguaci (e seguace), come sapete da ieri la Bolghèria (per gli amici Bulgaria), è stata chiamata all'ultimo (per ora) dei tanti appuntamenti cui la sua tormentata storia la ha condotta nel corso degli ultimi quattordici secoli: l'entrata nella moneta unica. Il suo ingresso segue a tre anni di distanza quello della Croèscia (per gli amici Croazia) che commentammo a tempo debito . Come in quella occasione, anche in questa si è registrato l' [...]

2025-12-30

• The Weeb Economy
  by Noah Smith in Noahpinion, 2025-12-30 09:43:45 UTC

  This March I published a book in Japanese, called Weeb Economy . Half of the book was republished (translated) posts from my blog, and half was a new section. I’ve been publishing that new section as a series of posts ( Part I , Part II , Part III ). But instead of publishing the final part as a fourth post, I figured I’d just publish the entire new section as a single post. So here you go! This is the entire new section of my book. It’s about a big idea for how to partially reverse the economic stagnation that has gripped Japan since the late 2000s. Part I: I want the Japanese future back! Ja [...]

2025-12-29

• Tracking recent financial market conditions
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-12-29 14:00:00 UTC

  The FRED Blog has discussed how the daily operations of the Federal Reserve Banks and, specifically, the New York Fed generally maintain the effective federal funds rate within the target range set by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). As part of this management effort, the New York Fed monitors a variety of overnight interest rates that help take the pulse of financial markets and the overall cost of borrowing. Data added to FRED last October allow us to see how recent changes to the Federal Reserve System’s balance sheet have impacted money market conditions. The FRED graph above sho [...]

2025-12-23

• The NIMBY Christmas cinematic universe
  by Jerusalem Demsas in The Argument, 2025-12-23 11:02:45 UTC

  Chad Michael Murray presenting his evil plan at a community meeting ( An Autumn Romance trailer screenshot) If you’ve been enjoying The Argument and would like to share it with friends and family for the holidays, you’re in luck! You can save 15% now through Dec. 24 when you gift a subscription to The Argument using the link below. Gift a subscription If I only watched movies where the character turns directly to the camera and says “I’m exactly the kind of liberal you are,” I would not watch very many movies. Still, it’s hard not to doom when every holiday season I’m accosted with anti-develo [...]

2025-12-20

• Wallowing in poverty
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-12-20 10:37:52 UTC

  Imagine we were to suffer an economic catastrophe in which our real incomes fall by 30%, which would be by far the greatest recession in modern times. The response, one might imagine, would be equally dramatic; there’d be a backlash against the government - very likely causing serious political unrest - and our politics would be dominated by the question of what caused the slump and what to do about it. In fact, we don’t have to imagine such a disaster. It has actually happened. In the last 20 years real GDP per person has grown by just 0.6% a year compared to 2.3% per year in the previous 50 [...]

2025-12-17

• FDI is the Missing Piece of Japan’s Puzzle
  by Noah Smith in Noahpinion, 2025-12-17 10:04:22 UTC

  Photo by Sanjo via Wikimedia Commons My book, Weeb Economy came out in March, but only in Japanese. Half of the book was a series of translated posts from my blog, so those are already in English. The other half was a new part that I wrote in English and had translated into Japanese by my excellent translator, Kataoka Hirohito. So while I’ll eventually republish the whole book in English, what I can do right now is to publish my English-language first draft as a series of posts on this blog. The first installment was entitled “ I Want the Japanese Future Back! ”. In that post, I explained why [...]

2025-11-18

• From Statute to Zero-Cost: Section 31A and the Bombay High Court's Zero-Cost Culture
  by Anurodh in Ajay Shah's blog, 2025-11-18 08:38:56 UTC

  by Prashant Narang and Vishnu Suresh. Why this matters now In 2015, Parliament rewrote Section 31A of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act to make loser-pays the default i.e., compensate the winner and deter abuse. A decade on, our mixed-methods study of the Bombay High Court's arbitration docket(2023-24) shows a stark gap between that legislative design and courtroom reality. Out of 102 decisions under Sections 11 (appointment) and 34 (set-aside), costs were imposed in only four (3.9%). Even then, costs were framed as exceptional sanctions for egregious conduct - not as routine reimbursement [...]

2025-11-06

• On competenciness
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-11-06 12:24:17 UTC

  Geoff Mulgan has written a great piece on the shortcomings of a centrism which wants “to be thought of as practical competent problem-solvers, sensible, grown-up and realistic.” I agree that Mulgan is right to call this a dead-end. I want to argue, though, that it is a dead-end in its own terms: a genuinely realistic competence would see that a government cannot survive merely by aspiring to competence. Charlie Munger once said something very wise and important: One skill is knowing the edge of your own competency. It’s not a competency if you don’t know the edge of it. And even the best polit [...]

2025-10-11

• 40年を迎えた大平穏期：横断面分析から分かること
  by himaginary in himaginaryの日記, 2025-10-11 14:59:00 UTC

  という ECB論文 をタイラー・コーエンが 紹介している *1 。原題は「The Great Moderation at 40: learning from the cross section 」で、著者は同行のLivio Stracca 。 以下はその結論部。 This paper provides a novel perspective on the Great Moderation by focusing on cross-sectional heterogeneity among advanced countries. The Great Moderation can be interpreted as a collective learning processa ”technology” enabling control of inflation in a fiat money regime without an external anchoremerging around the mid-1980s.13 While advanced economies were collectively exposed to this positive global shock, their readiness and ability to benefit [...]

2025-09-29

• Trends in the US distribution of net worth
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-09-29 13:00:00 UTC

  Net worth is the difference between total assets and liabilities. Tracking changes in the distribution of net worth can provide insight into how individual economic groups are faring, at least compared with each other. Our FRED graph above uses Board of Governors financial accounts data from third quarter 1989 to first quarter 2025 to track five percentile groups of US households: Top 0.1% Top 1% 90th to 99th percentiles 50th to 90th percentiles 1st to 50th percentiles For most of the time, the 90th to 99th percentile group (pink line) has had the largest share of overall net worth. Much of [...]

2025-09-23

• Reinforcing the Anchor: The Next Five Years of Inflation Targeting in India
  by Anurodh in Ajay Shah's blog, 2025-09-23 17:24:00 UTC

  by Rajeswari Sengupta and Ajay Shah. The adoption of inflation targeting (IT) in 2015 marked a watershed in India's monetary policy. It is a delight to look back to those dramatic weeks . For the first time since its establishment in 1934, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) graduated from being a `temporary provision', to a clear legal mandate to maintain consumer price index (CPI) inflation at 4 percent. This shift to a rule-based and transparent framework, with price stability as the explicit objective, strengthened the RBI's credibility, and helped anchor household inflation expectations by r [...]

2025-09-18

• The ups and downs in credit card borrowing lines
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-09-18 13:00:00 UTC

  During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many credit card holders improved their repayment histories and enjoyed a noticeable boost in credit scores . However, research by Juan M. Sánchez and Masataka Mori at the St. Louis Fed has underscored the temporary nature of the factors driving that improvement in creditworthiness. Our FRED graph above uses large bank credit card data, reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia , to offer a complementary perspective on this topic: The solid blue line shows the percentage of credit card accounts that recorded an increase in their borrowing [...]

2025-09-11

• Trends in US labor force participation rates for men
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-09-11 13:00:00 UTC

  The labor force participation rate (LFPR)—the percentage of civilians employed or actively seeking work—has declined since the turn of the century as shown in our first FRED graph above. Previously, total LFPR had risen after an increase in women entering the workforce and a corresponding but smaller drop in men’s LFPR. Since 1990, women’s LFPR has stabilized but men’s LFPR has continued to decline at an average rate of 2.7 percentage points per decade. Our second FRED graph above splits male workers into three age groups—15 to 24 (high school and college age); 25 to 54 (prime working age); [...]

2025-09-08

• Afghanistan: Losing the Republic
  by Sarkar,N in India at LSE, 2025-09-08 00:53:05 UTC

  Afghanistan’s Republic (2001–21) did not fall only because the US left or because the Taliban captured territory and adapted faster than expected. As Basir Arian argues, it collapsed because of a variety of systemic reasons leading to a crisis of everyday legitimacy in the Republic, leading to an inevitable collapse. * Most post-mortems of the dramatic collapse of the Republic in Afghanistan in August 2021 emphasise proximate triggers: the Doha Agreement , the timetable of withdrawal and Taliban adaptation. These did matter. Yet the decisive pathway ran through corruption, which widened [...]

2025-08-25

• Overdue mortgage payments by property type : New data insights from the Philadelphia Fed
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-08-25 13:00:00 UTC

  The FRED Blog has discussed the dwindling supply of multifamily dwellings with 2 to 4 units. This trend even has its own name: the “missing middle.” Today, we tap into newly added data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia to offer additional insights into this segment of the housing market. Our FRED graph above shows the share of mortgage balances that are 60 or more days past due, broken down by property type: single family (solid blue line) condo/co-op (dotted light blue line) 2 to 4 units (dashed orange line) townhouse/planned (dashed-dotted purple line). Quarterly data are avai [...]

2025-08-23

• Work-from-Home as a Lever Against the Motherhood Penalty
  by Dani Sandler in Dismal Scientist, 2025-08-23 14:32:53 UTC

  Emma Harrington and Matthew Khan recently posted their paper "Has the Rise of Work-from-Home Reduced the Motherhood Penalty in the Labor Market?" as an NBER working paper . I first encountered this paper at the Society of Labor Economics annual meeting in May 2024 and I have been a little obsessed over the idea ever since. The motherhood penalty seems like such an intractable problem. It has been measured in countries that have lots of supports for families like extended parental leave and subsidized childcare like Denmark , Sweden , and Norway , as well as those with almost none (ie the US ). [...]

2025-08-08

• The political communications problem
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-08-08 13:22:00 UTC

  Sir Keir Starmer thinks the government has a communications problem. He's right, but not in the way he thinks. James Austin summarized succinctly what many believe Starmer's problem to be: There simply isn't a 'good' way to get a message out now; traditional platforms have diminished and have been replaced by a incredibly uncontrolled and fragmented system. That makes it very hard to get central messaging out. The PM has made two responses to this. On the one hand, he has invited "influencers" into Downing Street in the hope of reaching voters who don't consumer legacy media. But on the other [...]

2025-08-02

• Stagnation: get used to it
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-08-02 13:27:00 UTC

  The debate about how to raise UK economic growth begs a question: is rapid growth possible even with the best feasible policies? My chart shows growth in real GDP per head over 30-year periods since 1750. Trend growth of much above 1% per year is unusual, seen mostly only in the post-1945 period. From a long-run perspective, therefore, the stagnation of recent years are a reversion to the norm. Why was the post-1945 period so unusual? On one view, it was because WWII created a large backlog of civilian investment opportunities as well as a need to repair war-damaged assets, not least of them h [...]

2025-07-27

• Some leftist economic policies
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-07-27 13:35:00 UTC

  The launch of a new leftist party poses the question: what should its economic policies be? I'll tell you what they shouldn't be: fiscal expansion. The macroeconomic policy stance must be a matter of fact, not ideology. And the fact is that we are close to the point at which increased aggregate demand would add to inflation expectations. That would mean higher interest rates, which in turn would depress much-needed housebuilding and other forms of capital spending. Rachel Reeves might be wrong to talk about fiscal rules but she is dead right to want fiscal restraint. Here, every leftist is scr [...]

2025-07-24

• What is authoritarian backscratching – and why is this a threat?
  by Isabelle DeSisto in The Monkey Cage, 2025-07-24 13:48:58 UTC

  Quid pro quo policies help authoritarian regimes stay in power. Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in Saint Petersburg, Russia, June 2022 (cc) Kremlin.ru , via Wikimedia Commons. Even the most isolated authoritarian regimes cannot survive completely on their own. North Korea may be the model pariah state, but it still relies on allies – like China and Russia – to provide basic goods like raw materials and food . Still, as every good dictator knows, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In one recent example, Russia secretly transferred over a [...]

• International comovement in economic indicators : Recent insights from the Richmond Fed
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-07-24 13:00:00 UTC

  FRED has data from multiple sources that can help reveal correlations between macroeconomic indicators and policy variables across major economies. For example, the FRED Blog has discussed international comovements in monetary policy before. Today, we dig deeper into economic comovement by looking at recent research from the Richmond Fed. Researchers Katherine Anderson, Paul Ho, and Nathan Robino used GDP and inflation data from 27 countries between 1981 and 2023 to study how much the U.S. economy moves in parallel with other countries. They found substantial correlations among all countries: [...]

• The Working-Class Trump Voters Who Can Still Be Won
  by ? in Jacobin Mag, 2025-07-24 10:13:06 UTC

  Despite what Democrats say, working-class support for Trump is complicated and nuanced. Some could never be won over to a populist economic program. Others, though, are still reachable — and there are just enough of them to win elections. A s… [...]

2025-07-20

• Not debating immigration
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-07-20 13:39:00 UTC

  How should we debate immigration? Here's my advice: don't. Debates don't work , at least not as they should. They don't favour the truth, but plausible liars and for those who can best appeal to prejudice and cognitive bias. Jonathan Portes, who is doing great work in trying to bring facts and rationality to the issue, describes his opponents' strategy : "Flood the zone with a mixture of lies, half-truths, misleading claims and statistics taken out of context." Against this, rational discussion is bringing a knife to a gunfight. We needn't look far for a parallel here. It's now obvious that Br [...]

2025-06-16

• IAREP Kahneman Lecture: Economic Psychology and Behavioural Public Policy
  by Liam Delaney in Economics, Psychology and Policy, 2025-06-16 22:23:00 UTC

  Those masterful images because complete / Grew in pure mind but out of what began? / A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, / Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, / Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut / Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone / I must lie down where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. WB Yeats - The Circus Animals' Desertion I will be giving one of the keynote lectures at the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology in Estonia in June. The talk will outline ideas on the role of economic psyc [...]

2025-06-14

• Why we need a strong left
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-06-14 13:49:00 UTC

  Anyone hoping that the marginalization of the Labour left would lead to rational, liberal policy has been badly disappointed by Starmer's recent remarks (pdf) on immigration echoing Enoch Powell and speaking of "incalculable" damage. "Disgraceful and damaging" says Simon Wren-Lewis; "untethered from reality" says Jonathan Portes; and "a moral, political and economic embarrassment" says Ian Dunt. I want to suggest that there's a causal link here. The absence of leftist voices in mainstream political discourse is a cause of dishonesty, lies and stupidity in policy-making. I'm not going to try to [...]

2025-06-12

• Lard prices during the world wars
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-06-12 13:00:00 UTC

  The FRED Blog has discussed the economic impact of war on labor markets and energy prices . Today, we discuss the impact on the price of lard . Stay with us, here… Our FRED graph above shows data from the NBER’s Macrohistory Database on the retail and wholesale prices of lard in New York between 1911 and 1943. There were very large price swings during that time, so let’s break it down: Between 1911 and early 1916, lard prices were stable in the range of $0.10 – $0.15 per pound, even though World War I began in 1914 and the US didn’t enter the conflict until almost three years later. Between [...]

2025-05-28

• California Leads the Charge in Systematically Dismantling US Federal Antitrust Law
  by Lazar Radic in Truth on the Market, 2025-05-28 17:12:22 UTC

  The California Law Revision Commission (CLRC) is currently reviewing proposed amendments to the state’s antitrust statutes, particularly the Cartwright Act. As made clear in a recently published memo , a major goal of the effort is clearly to distance California from the perceived constraints of federal antitrust law that limit liability for single-firm conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.  California intends to achieve this by strategically overturning specific U.S. Supreme Court decisions and departing from the error-cost framework that has traditionally shaped federal antit [...]

2025-04-29

• The lives of precarious workers in Western China
  by ? in LSE Review of Books, 2025-04-29 11:21:26 UTC

  The Precariat in Western China by Xueyang Ma examines the experiences of workers in precarious employment in Ya’an, a city in Sichuan province, Western China. Drawing on interviews with workers and using Amartya Sen’s capability framework, the [...]

2025-04-25

• Improving legal transparency at the RBI
  by Anurodh in Ajay Shah's blog, 2025-04-25 08:15:00 UTC

  by Amol Kulkarni and Renuka Sane. A core function of several Indian regulators is adjudication, which involves investigating potential violations, determining culpability, and imposing appropriate sanctions. In India, most financial sector regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), issue reasoned orders outlining the investigation, findings, and the rationale behind the imposed sanctions (SEBI, ADJ; IRDAI, ENF). These orders are not only accessible to the concerned parties but are also made [...]

2025-04-21

• When Did The Marginalist Theory Of Labor Markets Become Obsolete?
  by Robert Vienneau in Thoughts on Economics, 2025-04-21 11:05:00 UTC

  Chemists once believed, before Lavoisier and Priestly discovered oxygen, in the theory of phlogiston. Physicists, before Galileo, believed in the impetus theory of motion. Academic economists once believed that, in competitive markets, wages and employment tend to the point of intersection of supply and demand curves. The supply curve is supposed to slope up, showing that with a higher real wage, the hours offered for employment increase. The demand curve slopes down, modeling a smaller quantity demanded of labor services at higher wages. A short-run and long-run version of the theory existe [...]

2025-04-17

• The FTC’s Zombie Antitrust Action Against Meta Continues to Lurch Forward
  by Daniel J. Gilman in Truth on the Market, 2025-04-17 19:11:47 UTC

  FTC v. Meta Platforms Inc. has gone to court, and trial is just underway in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleges that Meta is currently, in 2025, engaged in monopolization in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by dint of having acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Quasi-spoiler alert: I’m going to discuss various aspects of the case, burdened by a nagging question: What’s the point of the FTC’s lawsuit? It’s a simple question, but I’m not sure I have a good answer. I have reviewed, among other things, the [...]

2025-04-03

• Beyond loyalty: restoring technocratic leadership in Indonesia’s democracy
  by Rifky Pratama Wicaksono in Development Policy Blog, 2025-04-03 19:00:43 UTC

  Indonesia is currently entering a new chapter under President Prabowo Subianto and the Merah Putih Cabinet. Yet, this chapter opens with a government structure that is increasingly complex, with new institutions being created and existing ones divided. These structural shifts affect organisational hierarchies, budget allocations and personnel assignments across government bodies. The balance between political loyalty and professional competence in leadership appointments is important. However, the selection of cabinet and strategic institutional leaders has increasingly prioritised political a [...]

2025-03-31

• Do delinquency rates anticipate recessions?
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-03-31 13:00:00 UTC

  Recent research has linked macroeconomic shocks with household financial distress. For instance, José Mustre-del-Río, Juan M. Sánchez, Ryan Mather, and Kartik Athreya show that regions with a higher share of credit card delinquency had more severe responses to macroeconomic shocks during the past two recessions. This post takes the topic a step further by exploring whether delinquency rates for households and businesses can help anticipate recessions. We use delinquency rates on business loans and credit card loans for all banks, published by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Syst [...]

2025-03-30

• QED 107: il Giavazzo bifronte
  by Alberto Bagnai in Goofynomics, 2025-03-30 20:41:00 UTC

    Ho fatto male questa mattina a maramaldeggiare sulla sorprendente papera del Prof. Ing. Giavazzi. Ho fatto male perché, nell'accesso di ilarità causatomi dallo strafalcione del supercilioso oracolo, ho tralasciato di leggere il suo pezzo. C'è un motivo per cui il Prof. Ing. Giavazzi non mi invita particolarmente alla lettura: perché trovo decotte e tendenziose le sue analisi. Faccio a meno di andare dove so che mi si vuole portare, soprattutto se so che la direzione che mi si indica è quella sbagliata (e di questo vi darò qualche esempio). Leggere i pezzi del Prof. Ing. Giavazzi insomma non [...]

2025-03-11

• Evaluating India's Customs Authority for Advance Rulings (CAAR) and charting a path for reform
  by Anurodh in Ajay Shah's blog, 2025-03-11 12:12:00 UTC

  by Vijay Singh Chauhan, Prashant Narang, and Monika Yadav. Advance rulings are critical for trade facilitation - they offer clarity on tariff classifications, customs duties, and valuation, enabling importers and exporters to navigate complex regulatory environments with confidence. India's journey with advance rulings began in 1999 with the establishment of the Authority for Advance Rulings (AAR), which handled both direct and indirect tax matters. However, the AAR faced severe criticism for its procedural inefficiencies and delays. As one senior customs consultant quoted in the paper not [...]

2025-02-12

• The Effect of Monetary and Exchange Rate Frameworks on Exports: Evidence from Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Economies
  by ParconHC@bsp.gov.ph (Hazel Parcon-Santos) in Asia Economics Blog, 2025-02-12 12:25:29 UTC

  Co-author:  Jose Adlai M. Tancangco   The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was established in 2020, with effect in 2022, for the purpose of deepening regional economic integration among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the association's free trade agreement partners ( ASEAN.org ). RCEP comprises 15 Asia-Pacific economies: Brunei (BRN), Cambodia (KHM), Indonesia (IDN), Laos (LAO), Malaysia (MYS), Myanmar (MMR), the Philippines (PHL), Singapore (SGP), Thailand (THA), Vietnam (VNM), Australia (AUS), China (CHN), Japan (JPN), Korea (KOR), and New [...]

2025-02-07

• Using and misusing markets
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-02-07 14:53:00 UTC

  The marriage between free market thinking and the right has ended in divorce, on the grounds of adultery by the latter with a mercantilist buffoon. It was only ever a marriage of convenience; the right liked markets when they forced wages down, but aren't so keen when tight labour markets force them up. They were always fonder of wage "flexibility" than rent flexibility. This clears the path for a more intelligent approach to thinking about the use and misuse of markets. Textbooks tell us that the virtue of competitive markets is that they achieve allocate resources efficiently . If a company [...]

2025-02-06

• The implications of employer-to-employer transitions on inflation dynamics
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-02-06 14:00:00 UTC

  Employer-to-employer (EE) transitions are when workers move from one job to another without being unemployed in between. EE transitions are important for the aggregate economy for several reasons. Persons typically change jobs when they’re offered higher salaries, so an economy with a high EE rate may have a higher level of labor earnings and more demand for goods and services. EE transitions also facilitate the reallocation of workers across jobs, so an economy with a high EE rate may have higher productivity and thus a higher supply of goods and services. As a result, the EE transition ra [...]

2025-01-17

• The two agendas
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-01-17 15:06:00 UTC

  Why are UK infrastructure projects so expensive , and what can be done about this? To what extent is the rise of the far-right the result of economic stagnation ? How can we raise economic growth given that we're close to full employment and so ordinary deficit financing would be inflationary? How do we divert labour towards construction, social care and public services without accelerating pub closures and high street decline , both of which could strengthen the far-right? Are tax rises sufficient to do this, or do we need microeconomic interventions as well? What can be done to cut the UK's [...]

2025-01-12

• The centre-right: killed by economics
  by Chris Dillow in Chris Dillow, 2025-01-12 15:10:00 UTC

  Why has the Tory party abandoned the centre-right*? This is the question posed by what Lewis Goodall has called the "Powellization" of the party. When Robert Jenrick echoed Enoch Powell by speaking of us "importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures" Badenoch's response was to defend him, in contrast to Ted Heath immediately sacking Powell in 1968. But we needn't go back so far to see how Badenoch differs from previous Tories. In 1974 Keith Joseph spoke of "the balance of our human stock" being "threatened". That killed his bid to be leader of the party. And in 2001 MP John To [...]

2025-01-06

• Regional differences in medical care prices
  by ? in FRED blog, 2025-01-06 14:00:00 UTC

  The FRED Blog has tapped into US Bureau of Economic Analysis data before to discuss the small regional differences in the price of goods and the much larger regional differences in the price of housing. Today, we tap into US Bureau of Labor Statistics data to compare differences in medical care consumer prices across urban areas. The FRED graph above shows the annual inflation rate, calculated as the percent growth rate from the previous year, in medical care service prices recorded in eight core-based statistical areas (CBSAs). These geographies are urban clusters with high degrees of social [...]

2025-01-02

• Financial Inclusion, Wealth, and Consumption Smoothing in India
  by a.kumar@soton.ac.uk (Abhishek Kumar) in Asia Economics Blog, 2025-01-02 00:54:00 UTC

  This post draws from a paper presented at the 2025 Allied Social Science Association Annual Meeting in the ACAES session on Digitalization in Asian Economies.� � Co-Authors: Sushanta Mallick and Apra Sinha Financial technology (fintech) is transforming household access to financial services. For households previously excluded from formal financial markets, fintech offers a pathway to financial stability, enabling consumption smoothing against income fluctuations and more effective responses to emergencies. However, use of fintech carries potential risks as well. Digital financial products may [...]

2024-12-30

• Innovating for a Healthy Context (Blog)
  by ? in SSIR Articles, 2024-12-30 12:00:00 UTC

  By Christian Seelos, Tanya Accone & Stuart Campo Improving the effectiveness of development innovations [...]

2024-12-26

• The rising average value-weighted maturity of car loans : Driving cars longer or borrowing more to buy them?
  by ? in FRED blog, 2024-12-26 14:00:00 UTC

  Buckle up and come along on a joyful ride with FRED. Like a three-point turn, this post covers the average maturity of new and used car loans by making three maneuvers. First, we define the terms. The maturity of a car loan is the target date for full repayment of the borrowed amount. It can be reported in years or months. A value-weighted maturity refers to assigning more importance to loans that are for a larger percentage of the vehicle’s value. Second, we describe the data. The FRED graph above shows data from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on the value-weighted aver [...]

2024-12-24

• We Need More Three Mile Islands
  by André Béliveau in Hit & Run blog, 2024-12-24 11:30:15 UTC

  Jane Fonda isn't a nuclear expert, but she played one on TV. In the 1979 film The China Syndrome , Fonda portrayed Kimberly Wells, a vivacious news reporter who discovered a cover-up at a nuclear power plant. The conspiracy involved the possibility of a meltdown that could "render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable."  The movie's timing and location were both impeccable. Twelve days after Fonda's film hit theaters, a reactor at Three Mile Island (TMI) in central Pennsylvania partially melted down. The accident resu [...]

2024-12-21

• Belief in a lottery curse is comforting, but winning lots of money does make you happy | Martha Gill
  by ? in Science news, comment and analysis | theguardian.com, 2024-12-21 17:30:22 UTC

  The notion that vast windfalls inevitably bring misery is based on a handful of sad casesDoes winning the lottery wreck your life? When an anonymous Briton won £177m in the EuroMillions draw last month – making them the third biggest national lottery winne [...]

2024-12-20

• The US Economy’s Trust Deficit
  by Michael Spence in Project Syndicate, 2024-12-20 16:47:48 UTC

  MILAN – While official sources and the media highlight strong consumer-spending and jobs data in the United States, or tout high US stock-market valuations , more than three-quarters of Americans view economic conditions as poor (36%) or fair (41%). This disconnect between performance and perception can have far-reaching consequences; it already helped to propel Donald Trump to victory in last month’s presidential election. So, what is causing it? Here, it is worth considering how market participants deal with asymmetric information – when one party has more or better information than anothe [...]

2024-12-09

• Employer-to-employer transitions : Data from the Philadelphia Fed
  by ? in FRED blog, 2024-12-09 14:00:00 UTC

  Workers switch employers for several reasons, including better opportunities and pay. Working for one employer one month and a different employer the next is known as employer-to-employer worker transition . FRED recently added new data from Fujita, Moscarini, and Postel-Vinay (FMP) that track these transitions: The Employer-to-Employer (E2E) Transition Probability data, from the Philadelphia Fed, show how likely US workers are to engage in the practice of switching employers. The FRED graph above shows the FMP-E2E data series presented in three formats: seasonally adjusted (orange line), not [...]

2024-12-08

• Current account reversals
  by Alberto Bagnai in Goofynomics, 2024-12-08 21:51:00 UTC

  Avrei molte cose da dirvi, su vari argomenti. Siamo in un momento particolarmente lurido, quello che Claudio aveva magistralmente descritto dodici anni or sono : (purtroppo la fonte originale, cioè il suo intervento a "L'Ultima Parola", non sono in grado di fornirvela), e i cambi di paradigma (per dirla con un termine che vi diventerà familiare fra una settimana), o, se vogliamo, i voltafaccia, sono all'ordine del giorno. Potrei parlarvi del Giavazzo bifronte (e in effetti dal 25 aprile scorso ho in bozza un post così intitolato...), potrei parlarvi di come le istituzioni europee confessano se [...]

2024-11-22

• Why Subsidizing Energy Efficency Is a Bad Idea
  by Kenneth W. Costello in The Beacon, 2024-11-22 01:04:37 UTC

  Many state utility regulators, policymakers, utilities, and others construct an orthodox and politically palatable argument that market failure justifies utility energy efficiency (EE) programs and that the vast majority of those programs would pass a cost-benefit test. (Incidentally, the alleged major culprits of market failure are energy consumers incapable of making the correct calculations from a societal perspective, or making decisions contrary to their self-interest. That so-called “ EE gap ” provides the raison d’etre for both government and utility subsidies to encourage the adoption [...]

2024-11-05

• To Prosper, India Must Close Its Gender Employment Gap
  by Kanika Mahajan in Project Syndicate, 2024-11-05 14:34:16 UTC

  NEW DELHI – While female workforce participation consistently lags behind men’s globally, there are deep regional disparities, with the largest gender employment gaps found in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and South Asia. India is a striking example of this dynamic. Among women aged 25-60 in rural areas, the labor-market participation rate dropped sharply from 54% in 1980 to 31% in 2017 (National Sample Survey (1980) and Periodic Labor Force Survey (2017)). In urban areas, the decline has been less dramatic, from 26% to 24%. Meanwhile, male employment rates remained relatively stab [...]

2024-10-29

• 99. Informe IDEE-24-3: Recursos de personal sanitario en España y otros 5 países europeos
  by Euro American Association EAAEDS in Economía y desarrollo de España y Galicia, 2024-10-29 17:11:00 UTC

  Esta tabla muestra datos de recursos sanitarios en 6 países europeos. y la siguiente tabla muestra algunos indicadores de resultados de la actividad sanitaria según la Encuesta Europea   EHCI  (Euro-Health Consumer Index). Suiza aparece como el país de la tabla con mayor presupuesto de gasto en salud por habitante (con más de 7000 Dólares), seguido por Alemania y Francia (con más de 5000 Dólares). Reino Unido presenta un valor menor (con más de 4000 Dólares) y le siguen Italia y España con menos de 4000.  El bajo presupuesto de España en comparación con Suiza, Alemania y Francia, tiene como un [...]

2024-10-23

• Climate and Trade Explainer
  by ? in Development Economics, 2024-10-23 16:37:28 UTC

  The Gender and Trade Coalition was initiated in 2018 by feminist and progressive activists to put forward feminist trade analysis and advocate for equitable trade policy. This article is the fourth in a series of short, Q&A format ‘explainers’ unpa… [...]

2024-10-11

• Can Claudia Sheinbaum Escape AMLO’s Shadow?
  by Guillermo Ortiz in Project Syndicate, 2024-10-11 13:05:20 UTC

  MEXICO CITY – When Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico in 2018, the question was which AMLO – as he is commonly known – would govern. Would he be the pragmatic politician who had pledged fiscal rectitude, advocated free trade, and supported an independent central bank? Or would he be a populist leader who, like the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of the 1970s and 1980s, would seek to co-opt voters through enormous social programs and giveaways and expand the role of state enterprises? AMLO’s presidency preserved economic stability by adhering to [...]

2024-10-10

• Study Reveals a Striking Health Disparity Between US And UK Adults
  by ? in Science Alert, 2024-10-10 10:00:20 UTC

  What's going on? [...]

2024-09-19

• ¿Deuda paga deuda?
  by Elisa Failache in Razones y personas: repensando Uruguay, 2024-09-19 19:14:00 UTC

  ¿Deuda paga deuda? Reflexiones sobre el mercado de crédito y la situación de endeudamiento de las personas en Uruguay Por Elisa Failache ¿Cuántas personas tienen algún vínculo con el mercado de crédito? ¿Este número se ha ido incrementando en el tiempo? ¿Para qué usan las personas los créditos? ¿En qué condiciones las personas se endeudan? El acceso al mercado de crédito puede ser una oportunidad de mejoras en la situación socioeconómica de las personas, así como un motor del desarrollo económico de los países. Sin embargo, también puede esconder problemas sociales, así como generar efectos [...]

• Women’s labor force participation by age
  by ? in FRED blog, 2024-09-19 13:00:00 UTC

  Women have increased their representation in the labor force over time. In this post, we discuss how this process has differed by age group. The FRED graph above tracks women’s share among the employed for two age groups: 20-24 years old and 35-44 years old. Women in both age groups have increased their share of employment since 1950, although growth slowed considerably after 1990. In the younger group, women account for about 50% of total employment today, implying that young women are just as likely to work as young men. In the older group, which includes a greater representation of the mar [...]

2024-09-13

• Education makes women, not men, more likely to have children
  by ? in LSE Business Review, 2024-09-13 04:00:05 UTC

  Given the wide-ranging consequences of declining fertility rates, academics and policymakers around the world are increasingly interested in understanding what influences men’s and women’s decision to start a family. Hanna Virtanen, Mikko Silliman, Tiina K [...]

2024-09-11

• 55. IDER. International Development Reports 2021-2024. Euro-American Association of Economic Development Studies
  by MCG Blogs de Economía in Euro-American Association: World Development, 2024-09-11 13:06:00 UTC

  Reports of year 2024 Reports of year 2023 In Entry 47 we include the titles and links to the following International Development Reports of years 2021 and 2022 � IDER INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT REPORTS year 2022 2022-4 Quality of Life in Countries and Regions of Europe, America, Asia and Oceania: Subjective and Objective Indicators, 2000-2020 , Guisan, M.C.� Abstract and article in RSES 22-2. 2022-3 CO2 Total Emissions in the World 1970-2015: Europe, United States, China, India and other countries. 2022-2 L [...]

2024-09-07

• The end of the great order under the Heaven
  by Branko Milanovic in globalinequality, 2024-09-07 19:54:00 UTC

  The very well-written and easy to read book by Gary Gerstle ( The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order ) makes two key points. First, and continuing from Gerstle’s previous book ( The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order , coauthored with Steve Fraser) it insists on the idea of a political and economic “order”. An “order” is the ruling ideology at a given point in time, synthesized and propagated by the most important parts of the political establishment. There were, according to Gerstle two such political orders in the United States during the past century: the New Deal order that began with [...]

2024-08-29

• Changes in gasoline and automobile prices since the pandemic
  by ? in FRED blog, 2024-08-29 13:00:00 UTC

  Gasoline and gas-powered vehicles are complementary goods: They’re expected to be bought together. When all else is held constant, a change in the price of gasoline should have a predictable impact on the demand for cars and trucks—which, by extension, would change their price. For example, when gasoline prices fall, it’s relatively cheaper to drive gas-powered vehicles. So, we’d expect their demand and price to rise. Today’s post looks into recent consumer price index data to see if that is in fact the story behind the numbers. The FRED graph above shows the year-over-year percent growth rat [...]

2024-08-22

• The end of the great order under the Heaven
  by Branko Milanovic in Global Inequality and More, 2024-08-22 22:18:58 UTC

  The very well-written and easy to read book by Gary Gerstle ( The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order ) makes two key points. First, and continuing from Gerstle’s previous book ( The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order , coauthored with Steve Fraser) it insists on the idea of a political and economic “order”. An “order” is the ruling ideology at a given point in time, synthesized and propagated by the most important parts of the political establishment. There were, according to Gerstle two such political orders in the United States during the past century: the New Deal order that began with [...]

2024-08-08

• Remote work and women’s labor force participation : New insights from a FEDS note
  by ? in FRED blog, 2024-08-08 13:00:00 UTC

  The FRED Blog has discussed the impact that shortages in childcare services had on women’s employment during and immediately after the COVID-19 induced recession . Today we discuss the potential role that either remote or hybrid work might play in boosting the participation of women in the labor force. The FRED graph above shows the labor force participation rate of three groups of women: White women (the solid blue line); Black or African American women (the solid red line); and Hispanic or Latino women (the solid green line). The data are reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and [...]

• America is missing a golden opportunity to boost the job market
  by estewart@insider.com (Emily Stewart) in Business Insider, 2024-08-08 09:57:03 UTC

  Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI Picture this: You're walking down the grocery aisle in 2009. A carton of eggs costs about $1.60, and a pound of ground beef is $2.13. The typical home for sale across the street is about $214,000. Flash forward to today, and the prices for those same goods have shot up to $2.71, $5.47, and $412,000. Prices are up about 45% across the board. But the one thing that has stayed constant? The federal minimum wage , which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for 15 years. You can see the issue: People making the mandated minimum have far less purchasing power than they once [...]

• WAPE 2024
  by michael roberts in Michael Roberts Blog, 2024-08-08 07:49:30 UTC

  Last weekend the 17 th Congress of the World Association of Political Economy (WAPE) took place in Athens, Greece.  WAPE is a Chinese-run academic economics organisation, linking up with Marxist economists globally. “Even though that might seem like bias, the WAPE forums and journals still provide an important outlet to discuss all the developments in the world capitalist economy from a Marxist perspective. Marxist economists from all over the world are welcome to join WAPE and attend WAPE forums.” (WAPE mission statement). I covered the 15 th Congress in Shanghai watching online panels.   [...]

2024-08-07

• On an unknown element of the Eurosystem monetary governance
  by Sergio Cesaratto in Politica&EconomiaBlog, 2024-08-07 15:14:00 UTC

     Published by: https://braveneweurope.com/sergio-cesaratto-sharing-central-banks-costs-and-profits-of-monetary-policy-in-the-euro-area Sergio Cesaratto - Sharing Central Banks’ costs and profits of monetary policy in the euro area (Adapted for Brave New Europe from Lavoce.info ) ; the author thanks Giancarlo Bergamini for help in editing the translation). A debate has developed in Europe (on Vox.eu and elsewhere) on the fiscal costs related to the interest payments that central banks in the eurozone are bestowing on commercial banks, a result of the way monetary policy is currently conduc [...]

• Danni collaterali del rialzo dei tassi
  by Sergio Cesaratto in Politica&EconomiaBlog, 2024-08-07 15:09:00 UTC

     Da https://lavoce.info/archives/102685/danni-collaterali-del-rialzo-dei-tassi/ Si veda anche "Annotazioni sull’implementazione della politica monetaria: ieri, oggi, domani"   https://rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa04/moneta_e_credito/article/view/18590 La condivisione di costi e profitti della politica monetaria nell’euro area Sergio Cesaratto Un mio precedente intervento su La Voce , seguito poi da uno di Hamaui , riprendeva un dibattito già sviluppato in sede europea (su Vox.eu ed altrove) sui costi fiscali relativi agli interessi che le banche centrali dell’area euro stanno erogando alle banch [...]

2024-07-26

• Will AI Kill Off Money?
  by Jean-Pierre Landau in Project Syndicate, 2024-07-26 09:05:25 UTC

  PARIS – We have forgotten the true virtues of money. We commonly view it in purely instrumental terms – as a device that facilitates exchange and stores value over time. Compared to bartering, coins and paper currency are profoundly convenient. But money is more than just an instrument. As Fyodor Dostoevsky famously observed , “money is minted freedom.” It supports our existence as autonomous individuals in a decentralized economy. The situation will be very different, however, if we someday live in a world governed by an artificial intelligence endowed with complete information and infinite [...]

• Excellente initiative grenobloise sur la réplication de données publiées en économie : à généraliser aux autres sciences ?
  by ? in Revues et intégrité, 2024-07-26 04:00:41 UTC

  C’est une des newsletter de TheMetaNews (5 juillet 2024) qui rapporte une expérience géniale lors d’une réunion d’économistes à Grenoble fin juin 2024. Ce que les économistes font est un exemple pour d’autres disciplines scientifiqu [...]

2024-07-09

• Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future – review
  by Dalton,A in LSE Review of Books, 2024-07-09 11:00:57 UTC

  In Breaking the Mould, Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba put forward an alternative path for India’s economy based on service sector growth, human capital investment and a less restrained market. Though she credits the book’s lucid style and the boldness of its vision, Areesha Khan finds that its economic strategy lacks a robust grounding and ultimately fails to convince. Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future . Raghuram Rajan and Rohit Lamba. Penguin Business (India). 2023. As the title suggests, Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India’s Economic Future by Raghuram Rajan and Roh [...]

2024-06-27

• Empirical Estimates of Loss Aversion
  by Jason Shafrin in Healthcare Economist, 2024-06-27 00:12:25 UTC

  Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory posit that individuals have loss aversion. What is loss aversion? It means that individuals experience losses more intensely than gains of the same magnitude; for instance, the psychological impact of losing a certain amount of money is greater than the pleasure derived from gaining that same amount. A key question is how much more intensely to individuals experience gains than losses? To formalize things, prospect theory assumes the following utility function: The most widely cited estimates are for these parameters are from Tversky and Kahn [...]

2024-05-23

• L’avidifiante inégalité économique (épisode 285)
  by ? in Cerveau en argot, 2024-05-23 16:00:43 UTC

  Vivre dans un pays économiquement inégalitaire pourrait altérer le rapport à l’autre et à l’argent. Au sein d’un pays, l’inégalité économique – qui peut se définir comme la répartition inégale des ressources tels que les revenus et la richesse – [...]

2024-05-17

• How Black teachers lost when civil rights won in Brown v. Board
  by ? in Successful Black Parenting, 2024-05-17 15:23:54 UTC

  Discover how the Brown v. Board ruling led to a decline in Black teachers and explore solutions to increase teacher diversity and improve outcomes for Black students. The post How Black teachers lost when civil rights won in Brown v. Board appeared first o [...]

2024-05-16

• Ice cream is a seasonal product, right?
  by ? in FRED blog, 2024-05-16 13:00:00 UTC

  We have published this post in mid-May, which seems like the time people would start indulging in ice cream. It’s not quite “I scream for ice cream” time, but the days are getting sufficiently warm to warrant stocking up cool treats. And ice cream is the quintessential seasonal product that is only in demand when it’s hot out. Right? Just look at the FRED graph for ice cream production: A classic example of seasonality! But wait… These data are very old. How does it look if we use current data? The FRED graph below shows ice cream production since 1972 (in red). Yes, it is still seasonal, but [...]

2024-05-08

• The usefulness of the CMIE household survey data for electricity research in India
  by Anurodh in Ajay Shah's blog, 2024-05-08 08:35:00 UTC

  by Susan Das, Renuka Sane and Ajay Shah. Measurement for electricity research The problems of the electricity system are of particular importance in India given that the existing institutional arrangements work relatively poorly. While this has been a concern for decades given the importance of electricity in economic growth, it has achieved a fresh prioritisation due to the need for a clean energy transition. The problems of electricity sector have become the critical bottleneck for the decarbonisation of the economy (Jaitly and Shah, 2021). De jure government subsidies, and de facto [...]

2024-05-05

• Di nuovo su TARGET2
  by Sergio Cesaratto in Politica&EconomiaBlog, 2024-05-05 17:42:00 UTC

     Pubblicato su BRAVE NEW EUROPE The endless TARGET2 saga Sergio Cesaratto, Eladio Febrero, George Pantelopoulos * TARGET2 imbalances seem to be an endless source of controversy. At the beginning of the last decade, Hans Werner Sinn claimed that T2 imbalances served to fund current account deficits forgetting the responsibility of German mercantilism. Last week Eurointelligence raised the question of presumed onerous interest payments burdening the southern countries with TARGET2 liabilities to the advantage of northern countries. This post shows that this is false, as TARGET2 imbalances d [...]