As the Senate and the House look to reconcile competing stimulus plans, the big debate is whether to emphasize government spending or tax cuts. A new paper by the New York Fed’s Gauti Eggertsson argues that the risk of deflation should tilt the balance to government spending. Our current problem is deficient aggregate demand. The government can raise total spending . . .
Reuters reports that the “cash for clunkers” program, which I criticized in an earlier blog post, has been removed from the stimulus package. I wish I could say that the reason for abandoning the program was that policymakers had come to understand the likely adverse economic consequences of the program. The real explanation, as usual, appears to be political, not . . .
How about a blogger stimulus? (Earlier) Being murdered by a pacemaker hacker is possible, but highly unlikely. (Earlier) The Brian Lehrer Show wants your “uncommon economic indicators.” The streets of Central America proclaim a different football champion than we do. Photo from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
A reader named Joel Margolese of Andover, Mass., while on holiday vacation in Boca Raton, Fla., wrote the following:
Doing the annual pilgrimage to South Florida this holiday season, we’ve all been struck by how
everywhere seems to be more crowded than usual. Parks, beaches, even stores are jammed. We could barely find a parking space at our favorite park, which is usually empty.
An article in The Economist reports that “the lipstick index,” the theory that women buy more lipstick in tough economic times, is probably not valid. A better index might instead be hairstyles. As The Independent reports, Japanese researchers found that women tend to have longer hairstyles when the economy is doing well, and shorter styles during harder times. Later on . . .
NPR reported last month that, for the first time in five years, the U.S. Army had more than met its recruiting goals. This happens every time unemployment rises, and it should be absolutely no surprise. People choose military service after high school partly out of a desire to serve the country; but there is strong evidence that incentives matter. Higher . . .
The latest recession indicator: more people are searching Google for “coupons” than for “Britney Spears.” And it’s not that Britney is getting less popular. By this measure, the recession began in March 2008. Check out the full time series, here. (Hat tip: Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, via my co-author Bo Cowgill.)
Last night Jay Leno joked that only 500,000 people attended Bush‘s second inauguration, while 2 million were at Obama‘s. The reason, so he claimed, is that we now have so many more unemployed people. Good joke, but is it correct? How do unemployed people spend their time? How does unemployment affect time use in the entire economy? What is the . . .
Andrew Lo Andrew W. Lo is the Harris & Harris Group Professor at M.I.T. and director of its Laboratory for Financial Engineering. (Here are some of his papers.) To my mind, he’s one of the most fluent guides to the state of modern finance in that he combines the rigors of a quant with a behavioralist’s appreciation for human intricacy. . . .
Way back when in 2006, here’s what venture-capital legend John Doerr had to say about clean technology: “This field of greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century.” As recently as early 2008, plenty of investors and technology companies were still predicting a clean-tech boom. But now? With a recession that has scrambled nearly everyone’s spending and . . .
The January issue of Vogue, in its back-of-the-book Index section, lists 10 “inspired ideas” for the new year, “all in tune with environment- and recession-minded resolutions.” No. 9 on the list is a sewing kit. That seems pretty practical. “Missing button?” reads the text. “Torn pocket? Take matters into your own hands (and keep tailoring bills in line) with Smythson’s . . .
Are you driving less than you used to? As Dubner blogged last week, Americans logged 11 billion fewer miles on the road in March of this year than they did in March 2007. That contributed to a cut of 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted by the U.S. in the first quarter of 2008. The rise of gasoline . . .
A recent article notes that attendance in Major League Baseball parks is actually above last year, despite, so the story says, the economic downturn (recession?). But despite is incorrect — it should be “because” of the economic downturn. The story notes that cheap seats at the Dodgers Stadium go for $8 to $13. Not bad for three plus hours of . . .
The economy appears to be in recession, and while most industries are shedding jobs, consumer debt councilors, conservation consultants and green energy suppliers have ramped up hiring, the Christian Science Monitor reports. The Monitor also points out that the leading edge of the recession overlaps with the start of the baby boomer retirement wave. This has sparked a government hiring . . .
Justin Wolfers called a recession here not long ago. Ben Bernanke seems about ready to call it himself. Now a reader named Alexis Tatarsky has put the question to all of you on our Freakonomics Prediction Center: On a scale of 1 to 10, with the recession of 2001 being a 4 and the Great Depression an 8, what will . . .
There has been a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not the U.S. economy is currently in a recession. This morning’s data will, I think, lead to a near-unanimous view that the U.S. economy is in a recession. Not only was employment growth in February negative, but the B.L.S. also tells us that the previous two months were worse than . . .
The answer, according to the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, is … “not much.” Here’s what they describe in a new NBER working paper about the causes and consequences of the current subprime crisis: Our examination of the longer historical record finds stunning qualitative and quantitative parallels to 18 earlier post-war banking crises in industrialized countries. Specifically, the run-up . . .
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There’s been plenty of talk in recent weeks that a recession is coming (or that we are already in recession). Indeed, the latest reading from InTrade.com suggests that there is about a 70 percent chance of a recession – defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth – in 2008. It is an interesting story, but today’s pessimism does . . .
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