Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce: “Optimism is falling” in Wisconsin
From the Badger Institute: Will things improve? No: 47% expect the national economy to “remain flat” over the next six months, and 20% — one
The Dollar’s Role as an International Currency
Some recent items: papers by Chinn, Frankel and Ito and Kamin and Sobel; talk by Mark Copelovitch on Tuesday. By Chinn, Frankel, and Ito (2024),
Exchange Rate Pass Through into Import Prices, CPI
Justin Ho of Marketplace discussed the implications of the import/export price release Thursday. My view was that pass through into import prices was low in
Business Cycle Indicators, Mid-February | Econbrowser
Industrial production comes in under consensus. Here’s a picture of the key indicators followed by the NBER BCDC. Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll employment incorporating benchmark
Output Gap Measures | Econbrowser
Are we at full employment? Here are some estimates: Figure 1: Output gap, from CBO (blue), from OECD (tan), from IMF (green), from Fleischman/Roberts-FRB (red),
Inflation: January 2024 | Econbrowser
CPI comes in above consensus, on both headline and core. Instantaneous inflation (per Eeckhout (2023)) has a slight uptick. Figure 1: Year on Year CPI
Inflation Expectations Down | Econbrowser
Forecast errors from end of last year are essentially zero. Figure 1: CPI inflation year-on-year (black), median expected from Survey of Professional Forecasters (blue +),
Asian-Americans Once Again Thank Trump
From Knorre et al. (2024): Source: Knorre et al. (2024). From the paper: First, overall public violent victimization of Asian-Americans fell shortly after the COVID-19
Where Does UkraineRussia Fit As an Independent State, Historically?
A great map, courtesy of the former President of Mongolia: Source: BI. Some fact-checking, here. Source link
Survey of Professional Forecasters – February
From Friday’s SPF release for Q1, for GDP: Figure 1: GDP as reported (bold black), CBO (blue), WSJ-January (brown), SPF-February (red), IMF-January (light green triangles),