News
Market Watch | Fed's Dudley: Economic outlook still uncertain
Federal Reserve officials need three to four more months before they will be able to know if the economy can shrug off the drag from fiscal policy, said New York Fed President William Dudley on Wednesday.
Bloomberg | EU Urges Energy Market as U.S. Shale Gas Widens Price Gap
European Union leaders urged faster integration of the bloc’s power and natural-gas markets to lower energy prices as the U.S. shale-gas revolution widens the EU’s cost gap with its largest trading partner.
Market Watch | Bank of Japan ups economic outlook
The Bank of Japan raised its economic assessment at the end of its two-day meeting on Wednesday, while holding its policy unchanged.
CNBC | Mortgage Applications Tumble as Interest Rates Jump
Applications for home mortgages dropped for a second week in a row last week as a spike in interest rates stymied demand for refinancing, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.
Econ Comments & Analysis
Forbes | It's The Taxes Hikes, Not The Spending Cuts, That Weigh On Growth
Although sequestration’s spending cuts grab headlines, the tax hikes are having greater fiscal effect. Unlike the much-mentioned March 1, sequester, the tax hikes began January 1, and are permanent. The disparate impacts and disproportional reaction have everything to do with Washington’s entitlement culture – that Washington feels entitled to tax and spend.
Fortune | This country needs another financial crisis
Almost a century ago Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's Vice President, got tired of listening to senators blather on about the nation's needs and uttered the words that made him immortal: "What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar." Today, with 24/7 blathering as our national political pastime, let me adapt Marshall's 1917 remark: What this country needs to get its act together is a good five-alarm financial crisis.
CNN Money | Even small business is bigger in Texas
As more entrepreneurs flock to the state, experts are pointing to a combination of growth-friendly conditions that have small businesses growing in, and messing with, Texas.
Heritage Foundation | Social Security Benefits and the Impact of the Chained CPI
The current debate over adopting a new measure of inflation has many beneficiaries worried that their benefits would be cut. To the contrary, their benefits would still rise under the new measure, and benefit increases would more accurately reflect changes in the cost of living.
Blogs
WSJ | Should U.S. Pay Workers to Delay Social Security?
Social Security already rewards workers for delayed retirement by increasing benefits with each passing year (and legislation in 1983 gradually raises the normal retirement age to 67 for people born after 1959). Four researchers looked into the idea of offering workers lump-sum payments to retire later. Their results suggest this approach could push more people to delay retirement without raising costs or cutting benefits.
Library of Economics | The Dirty Laundry of Instrumental Variables
Are instrumental variables (IV) estimates really superior to ordinary least squares (OLS)? Most high-status empirical economists seem to think so. Meta-analyses often treat IV as presumptively superior to OLS. Yet when you ponder IV output, it's often simply bizarre.
