Kevin D. Hoover, Applied Intermediate Macroeconomics. Cambridge University Press, ©2012

  

Current Topics

Articles and analysis relevant to macroeconomics from a variety of points of view.

 

2/4/14 Free exchange: The price of getting back to work: Inflation may help determine how

           fast labour markets recover from recession

1/11/14 Free exchange: This time is worse: Leading American economists argue that desperate

             times call for desperate measures.

12/23/13 Mary C. Daly, John Fernald, Òscar Jordà, and Fernanda Nechio:  Labor Markets in the Global 

               Financial Crisis

12/9/13 Yifan Cao and Adam Hale Shapiro:  Why Do Measures of Inflation Disagree?
11/25/13 Bharat Trehan and Maura Lynch:  Consumer Inflation Views in Three Countries
11/18/13 Michael D. Bauer and Glenn D. Rudebusch:  Expectations for Monetary Policy Liftoff

10/15/13 Mary C. Daly, Bart Hobijn, and Benjamin Bradshaw:  Gauging the Momentum of

               the Labor Recovery

10/5/13 The Economist "Schools Brief":  Making banks safe: Calling to accounts:

             The final article in our series on the financial crisis examines the best way to make banks

             safer without killing lending

9/30/13 Eric Swanson:  The Zero Lower Bound and Longer-Term Yields

9/28/13 The Economist "Schools Brief":  Stimulus v austerity: Sovereign doubts:

            The fourth in our series of articles on the financial crisis looks at the surge in public

            debt it prompted, and the debate about how quickly governments should cut back

9/21/13 The Economist "Schools Brief":  Monetary policy after the crash: Controlling interest:

             The third of our series of articles on the financial crisis looks at the unconventional

             methods central bankers have adopted to stimulate growth in its wake

9/14/13 The Economist "Schools Brief":  The dangers of debt: Lending weight:

            The second in our series of articles on the financial crisis looks at the role debt and

           deleveraging have played in the turmoil

9/7/13 The Economist "Schools Brief": The origins of the financial crisis: Crash course:

          The effects of the financial crisis are still being felt, five years on.

          This article, the first of a series of five on the lessons of the upheaval, looks at its causes

8/26/13 Rob Valletta and Leila Bengali:  What’s Behind the Increase in Part-Time Work?
8/12/13 Vasco Cúrdia and Andrea Ferrero:  How Stimulatory Are Large-Scale Asset Purchases?
6/6/13 Paul Krugman:  How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled

5/27/13 Osagie Imasogie and Thaddeus J. Koblarz:   Yes, Lady Gaga's Songs Contribute to GDP:

             The new measure of the economy's output reflects the importance of intellectual property.

5/30/13 David Malpass: Fed Policy Is a Drag on Recovery : The stock market is soaring. Yet

             real median income has fallen 5%, unheard of for a recovery.

5/13/13 Leila Bengali, Mary Daly, and Rob Valletta:  Will Labor Force Participation Bounce Back?

5/6/13 Early Elias and Òscar Jordà:  Crises Before and After the Creation of the Fed

4/29/13 Bill McNabb: Uncertainty Is the Enemy of Recovery: At Vanguard, we estimate that

             policy uncertainty has created a $261 billion drag on the U.S. economy.

4/20/13 Free exchange: The 90% question: A seminal analysis of the relationship between

            debt and growth comes under attack

4/14/13 Edward Lazear:  Beware the Monthly Jobs-Report Chatter:  The initial reports are often

            inaccurate and don't say anything useful about where the economy is heading.

4/1/13 Reuven Glick and Sylvain Leduc:  Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Dollar

4/29/13 Bill McNabb: Uncertainty Is the Enemy of Recovery: At Vanguard, we estimate that

             policy uncertainty has created a $261 billion drag on the U.S. economy.

3/23/13 Holman Jenkins:  Sympathy for the Devil Named Angela: Economic reality is not optional.

             But neither is politics.

3/21/13 Free exchange: Where did everyone go?  Demography may explain the weakness of

             America’s recovery

3/12/13 Alan Blinder:  Easing the Angst About Fed Easing: By paying less interest on excess bank

             reserves, the Federal Reserve would reduce its liabilities. Then it could sell an

             equal amount of assets.

3/4/13 Michael Boskin:  Larger Spending Cuts Would Help the Economy: Countries that stabilized their

           budgets have averaged $5-$6 of actual spending cuts per dollar of tax hikes.

3/2/13 Christina Romer:  Economic View: The Business of the Minimum Wage
2/15/13 Free Exchange: Labour markets: Minimum human wages
2/4/13 Long-term Unemployment: What Do We Know?

1/29/13 John Taylor: Fed Policy Is a Drag on the Economy: While borrowers like near-zero interest rates,

             there is little incentive for lenders to extend credit at that rate.

1/13/13 Free exchange: Room with a view:If economists agree on something, the public will almost

             certainly think differently

1/8/13 Edward Lazear: Chinese 'Currency Manipulation' Is Not the Problem: An analysis of trade

          patterns with the U.S. and Europe shows that the yuan's value has not affected the numbers.

12/24/12 Monetary Policy and Interest Rate Uncertainty
12/17/12 Will the Jobless Rate Drop Take a Break?

11/24/12 Free exchange: The argument in the floor: Evidence is mounting that moderate minimum

              wages can do more good than harm

11/13/12 The Federal Reserve's Unconventional Policies
10/15/12 Is China Due for a Slowdown?
10/10/12 Putting Fiscal Policies Under the Microscope
9/27/12 George Soros:  The Tragedy of the European Union and How to Resolve It
9/27/12 China's Lost Decade
9/24/12 The Financial Crisis and Inflation Expectations
9/17/12 Uncertainty, Unemployment, and Inflation

9/17/12 The Magnitude of the Mess We're In: The next Treasury secretary will confront problems

             so daunting that even Alexander Hamilton would have trouble preserving the full faith and

             credit of the United States.

9/11/12 The Hidden Costs of Monetary Easing: Inflation is not the only danger posed by

             the central bank's ballooning balance sheet.

9/9/12 Economic View: Cutting the Deficit, With Compassion

9/8-9/12 Those Jobless Numbers Are Even Worse Than They Look: Still above 8%—and

               closer to 19% in a truer accounting. Here's a plan for improvement.

9/8/12 Free exchange: The mystery of Jackson Hole: Central bankers wonder why success eludes them

9/3/12 There Is No 'Structural' Unemployment Problem: A look at the skills-jobs mismatch finds

           no evidence that changes in the economy explain high joblessness. The problem is slow growth.

8/20/12 Consumer Debt and the Economic Recovery

8/18/12 On the origin of specie: Theories on where money comes from say something about where the

             dollar and euro will go

8/13/12 Asia’s Role in the Post-Crisis Global Economy

7/16/12 The Tax Cliff Is a Growth Killer: No matter what happens from now on, 2013 will be a very

             tough year.

7/14/12 Quantitative Easing:  QE, or not QE?  An Assessment of the Most Controversial Weapon in the

             Central Banker's Armoury

7/2/12 US Fiscal Policy Headwind or Tailwind?
6/30/12 Monetary Policy, Money, and Inflation
6/25/12 Housing Bubbles and Homeownership Returns
6/16/12 Economic Epidemiology:  Predicting Financial Contagion
6/11/12 Structural and Cyclical Economic Factors
5/24/12 How to End This Depression
5/21/12 Fed Asset Buying and Private Borrowing Rates
5/14/12 Liquidity Risk and Credit in the Financial Crisis
5/7/12 Commodity Prices and PCE Inflation
4/30/12 Worker Skills and Job Quality
4/16/12 Credit: A Starring Role in the Downturn
4/9/12 The Slow Recovery: It’s Not Just Housing
4/2/12 Why Has Wage Growth Stayed Strong?
March/April 2012 Many Moving Parts: The Latest Look Inside the U.S. Labor Market
March/April 2012 The Dual Mandate: Has the Fed Changed Its Objective
3/17/12 High-tech Sweden edges closer to becoming cashless society

3/17/12 The American economy: Unmired at last: America’s recovery is neither robust nor dramatic.

             But it is real

3/10/12 Oil and the world economy: The new grease? How to assess the risks of a 2012 oil shock

3/10/12 Bond shelter: America’s ability to issue debt is helped by a resemblance between Treasuries

             and money

2/27/12 U.S. and Euro-Area Monetary Policy by Regions
2/11/12 Keep on trucking: Why the old should not make way for the young

2/11/12 Go for the churn: The number of job-to-job moves by American workers 

              tells a bleak story

2/6/12 Government Spending: An Economic Boost?

2/3/12 An American History Lesson for Europe: Our federal government refused to

           bail out the states in the 1840s, thus preserving their fiscal independence.

1/30/12 Why Is Unemployment Duration So Long?
1/21/12 A Better Tax System (Assembly Instructions Included)

1/21/12 The hangover: America is recovering from the debt bust faster than

             European countries. Why?

1/17/12 The Federal Reserve and the Economic Recovery

1/4/12 Will Republicans Hand the Left a VAT Victory? Mitt Romney won't rule out

            the possibility of imposing a tax that's the fast track to a European welfare

            state

1/3/12 The Rise of Consumption Equality: Getting Rich Requires Serving a Mass

           Market, Which Means the Rest of Us Can Buy What the Rich Buy

1/1/12 I Just Got Here, but I Know Trouble When I See It: From Six Economists,

           Six Ways to Confront 2012

12/31/11 Heterodox economics: Marginal revolutionaries: The crisis and the  

               blogosphere have opened mainstream economics up to new attack

12/21/11 Want Growth? Try Stable Tax Policy:  The Payroll Tax Cut is One of 84

                Tax Provisions Expiring This Year, 10 Times as Many as Expired in

                1999

12/13/11 The The Euro Zone's German Crisis Blame Teutonic Efficiency for What

               Ails Europe. The Other Countries Just Can't Compete

12/5/11 Asset Price Booms and Current Account Deficits

11/26/11 Beware of Falling Masonry: The Crisis in the Euro Area is Turning into a

               Panic and Dragging the Zone into Recession. The Risk that the Currency

               Disintegrates within Weeks is Alarmingly High

11/26/11 Is This Really The End? Unless Germany and the ECB Move Quickly, the

               Single Currency's Collapse is Looming

11/26/11  House of Horrors, Part 2:  The Bursting of the Global Housing Bubble is

                Only Halfway Through

11/21/11 Signals from Unconventional Monetary Policy

11/19/11 Marathon Man: Unskilled Workers are Struggling to Keep Up with

               Technological Change

11/14/11 Future Recession Risks:  Update

11/12/11 Staring Into the Abyss: The Euro Crisis Might Wagke Europe Up. But

               More Likely . . . It Will Lead to Compromise and Decline

11/12/11 Exports to Mars:  Official Statistics Probably Exaggerate Global Current-

               Account Imbalances

11/7/11 What Moves the Interest Rate Term Structure?
10/18/11 Reducing the Federal Deficit: Approaches in Some Other Countries
10/3/11 Unconventional Monetary Policy: Lessons from the Past Three Years

September 2011 The Net Fiscal Expenditure in the US, 2008-9: Less than What

                          You Might Think, and Less than the Fiscal Stimuli of Most OECD

                          Countries

September 2011 What's an $800 billion Stimulus Worth?

9/28/11 Ben Bernanke Deserves a Break:  The Fed chief pulled off a sleeper

            version of QE3 despite opposition at the central bank and Congress

9/27/11 This Time May Not Be That Different: Labor Markets, the Great

             Recession and the (Not So Great) Recovery

9/10/11 The Celestial Economy:   By 2030 China’s Economy Could Loom as

              Large as Britain’s in the 1870s or America’s in the 1970s

Fall 2011 Inflation and Debt
September 2011 Job Losses in the Great Recession

9/17/11  Prices or Jobs?  Could the Federal Reserve Lower Unemployment by

             Revamping Its Goals

8/31/11 Credit Flows to Businesses During the Great Recession
8/6/11    The Simon-Ehrlich Bet Over Natural Resource Shortages Revisited
8/1/11    Does Headline Inflation Converge to Core?
July/August 2011 Measuring Inflation:  The Core is Rotten

7/28/11  Currency comparisons, to go: A beefed-up version of the Big Mac index

              suggests that the Chinese yuan is now close to its fair value against

              the dollar

7/11/11  Gauging the Impact of the Great Recession
6/29/11 Labor Market Rigidity, Unemployment, and the Great Recession
6/20/11  TIPS Liquidity, Breakeven Inflation, and Inflation Expectations
6/13/11  Monetary Policy When One Size Does Not Fit All
6/6/11    Economics Instruction and the Brave New World of Monetary Policy

5/23/11  Household Inflation Expectations and the Price of Oil:  It's Deja Vu All

              Over Again

5/16/11  What is the Value of Bank Output?
4/11/11  The Fed's Interest Rate Risk

4/4/11    Are Large Scale Asset Purchases Fueling the Rise in Commodity Prices?