News
Bloomberg | No Signs U.S. Catching Up With Growth Trend, Stiglitz Says
The U.S. economy is showing no signs of catching up with its past growth trend and advanced economies are at risk of “Japanese-style malaise,” Columbia University Professor and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz said.
Market Watch | ISM services index falls to 51.6% in February
U.S. service-sector companies expanded in February at a sharply slower pace and bad weather was only part of the problem, a survey of executives found.
WSJ | China to Set Growth Target as National People's Congress Begins
In the past two decades, the world has come to depend on China's pattern of handily exceeding its own official target for economic growth.
Bloomberg | Americans Shut Out of Home Market Threaten Recovery: Mortgages
Kirk Rohrig is concerned he may soon join the growing ranks of Americans shut out of the housing recovery and the financial benefits that spring from it.
Econ Comments & Analysis
Daily Caller | Paul Ryan’s poverty plan charts a moderate path, not a conservative one
The House Budget Committee chaired by Congressman Raul Ryan released a 204-page report on federal welfare programs Monday. It provides useful discussions of 92 programs that cost taxpayers $799 billion a year.
Bloomberg | A Semi-Defense of the Efficient-Market Hypothesis
The case of Halliburton Co. vs. Erica P. John Fund Inc., scheduled for oral argument tomorrow in the U.S. Supreme Court, may produce one of the most important securities-law rulings in decades. Either the court will curtail the right of investors to sue as a class in securities-fraud cases, or it won't. I hope it's the latter, but here's the rub. The precedents securing that right have been based on the Supreme Court's endorsement of a questionable theory: the efficient-market hypothesis.
Businessweek | Defying Skeptics, Some Business Schools Double Down on Capitalism
Free market purists are thriving on some business school campuses, where a handful of student and institutional initiatives have formed to promote the tenets of capitalism.
NBER | Trade and Uncertainty
We offer a new explanation as to why international trade is so volatile in response to economic shocks. Our approach combines the uncertainty shock idea of Bloom (2009) with a model of international trade, extending the idea to the open economy.
CBO | Testimony on Public-Private Partnerships for Highway Projects
The United States has a network of over 4 million miles of public roads. That system has faced increasing demands over time: The number of vehicle miles traveled (both passenger and commercial) rose from approximately 700 billion in 1960 to just under 3 trillion in 2012
Blogs
Heritage Foundation | Happy 225th Birthday, U.S. Constitution!
One day after a snowstorm shut down D.C., Congress is back in session today. Its hearings might not make much news, but March 4 is actually an astonishing anniversary. It was 225 years ago that the Constitution officially came into effect, when members of Congress were sworn in for the first time in New York City.
Library of Economics | NGDP targeting is not a "fragile" policy
This post tries to tie together some diverse observations about the sticky wage/NGDP shock model. The motivation for this (unfortunately long) post was the observation that many non-economists seem to find the sticky wage/NGDP shock model to be appealing.
