November 11, 2024 – The two areas where Donald Trump worries me the most are US foreign policy and long-run damage to norms of truth, democracy, and respect for the rule of law. But these areas are not top priorities for much of the American public. Rather, voters are consistently reported to be most concerned with the economy. They asked, “Are we better off than we were four years ago” and answered “no.” This is itself remarkable, since four years ago would be November 2020, when covid deaths were running 10,000 per week and unemployment was 6.7 %, versus 4.1 % today.
The Economics Nobel Prize and Settler Mortality
October 25, 2024 — Why have some countries grown rich and others not? The three winners of this year’s Nobel Prize — Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and Jim Robinson — offered a one-word answer: Institutions. Specifically, “inclusive institutions,” which refers to an open society, accountable government, economic freedom, and the rule of law.
To illustrate concretely, the World Bank offers country-by-country indicators of six aspects of institutional quality: control of corruption, voice and accountability, government effectiveness, absence of violence, regulatory quality, and rule of law. At the top of the rankings are Denmark and Finland. At the bottom are Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan. Across a broad set of countries, these indicators are indeed highly correlated statistically with national income per capita.
BEA revision confirms no recession in 2022
BEA revision confirms no recession in 2022
September 27, 2024 — The NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee is the official arbiter of recessions in the US economy, even though most other countries use the rule of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Critics sometimes question this practice, arguing, first, that it unnecessarily delays the determination of the turning points and, second, that it substitutes the subjective judgment of a group of unelected elite professors for the objectivity of the two-quarters rule.