Which of the following nations recorded the strongest economic growth in the second quarter? France, Germany, Italy, Japan, or the United States? This nice chart from today’s Wall Street Journal provides the answer (click for larger version): The U.S. expanded at a tepid 1.3% annual pace in Q2, but that was still better than many other [...]
Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category
A Synchronized Slowdown in Developed Economies
Posted in Economy, International, Macroeconomics, tagged GDP, International, Macroeconomics on August 17, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Another Record Low for Homes Under Construction
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Housing, Macroeconomics on August 16, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Today’s housing data showed that the number of single-family homes under construction hit another record low in July: Ten years ago, America’s home builders were in the midst of constructing 689,000 single-family homes. Five years ago, they were building 913,000 homes. Last year, they were building 278,000. And now that figure is down to a [...]
Better Than Feared, But Still Mediocre
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Data, jobs, Macroeconomics, unemployment on August 5, 2011 | 4 Comments »
America’s job market has been down so long, today’s mediocre report looked like up. The headline figures — payrolls up 117,000, unemployment rate down a tic to 9.1% — were better than most forecasters anticipated. That’s a relief. And many details moved in the right direction as well. Revisions to May and June added another [...]
Economy is Worse Than We Knew; Uncertainty Still Reigns
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, Macroeconomics on July 29, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Tim Kane at the Kauffman Foundation is out with his latest survey of economics bloggers (full disclosure: I am both an adviser to the survey and a participant in it). In light of today’s abysmal GDP report, the results for one question are particularly relevant: The latest revisions shows that GDP growth in recent quarters was much [...]
How Ambitious is Pawlenty’s Growth Goal?
Posted in Economy, Politics, tagged Economy, GDP, Politics on June 10, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Plenty. In his economic speech on Tuesday, presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty set out an ambitious goal for economic growth: Let’s grow the economy by 5%, instead of the anemic 2% currently envisioned. Such a national economic growth target will set our sights on a positive future. And inspire the actions needed to reach it. By [...]
Zanran: Google for Data?
Posted in Data, Economy, Internet, tagged Data, Google, Search, Wolfram Alpha, Zanran on May 13, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Zanran is a new search engine, now in beta testing, that focuses on charts and tables. As its website says: Zanran helps you to find ‘semi-structured’ data on the web. This is the numerical data that people have presented as graphs and tables and charts. For example, the data could be a graph in a [...]
Uncertainty Still Reigns in the Latest Blogger Word Cloud
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economy, Macroeconomics on May 9, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Tim Kane at the Kauffman Foundation is out with his latest survey of economics bloggers (full disclosure: I am both an adviser to the survey and a participant in it). My favorite feature is a word cloud of adjective that respondents offered to an open-ended question about the U.S. economy: Uncertainty still reigns (as it should), but ”recovering”, “improving”, and [...]
A Tepid Quarter for GDP
Posted in Data, Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Data, Economy, GDP on April 28, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Thursday morning brought the first official look at GDP growth in the first quarter. Headline growth was a disappointing, if not surprising, 1.8%. Here’s my usual graph of how various components of the economy contributed to overall growth: Consumers continued to spend at a moderate pace; their spending grew at a 2.7% rate, thus adding [...]
Free Brookings Papers on Economic Activity
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Economics on March 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Earlier today the fine folks at Brookings announced that they have made all past and current issues of Brookings Papers on Economic Activity free. You can find them here. Some specific papers that readers of this blog might enjoy (all from the Spring 2009 volume): Jim Hamilton on the “Causes and Consequences of the Oil [...]
Homes Under Construction – Still Falling
Posted in Economy, Macroeconomics, tagged Housing, Macroeconomics on March 17, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Wednesday’s housing data showed that the number of single-family homes under construction fell again in February: Ten years ago, America’s home builders were in the midst of constructing 672,000 single-family homes. Five years ago, they were building 990,000 homes. Last year, they were building 304,000. And now that figure is down to 252,000.
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