Saturday, June 30, 2018

U.S. Inflation Rate Hit 6-Year High in May

Increase of 2% in a key price gauge shows the growing economy is on healthier footing

By Harriet Torry of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"the Fed believes a little bit of inflation at a consistent and predictable rate is needed to keep the economy growing steadily and at a healthy pace.

The Commerce Department’s price index for personal-consumption expenditures, excluding food and energy costs, rose 2% in May from a year earlier after running below that mark every month since April 2012."

"Economists have blamed factors like weak economic demand, a strong dollar and a slowly recovering labor market for low inflation in recent years. The strong dollar makes imports cheaper, and soft labor markets hold down wages.

Structural factors are also thought to have played a role, like an aging population spending less, cheap imports due to globalization and the “Amazon effect” of consumers spending less on goods online.

But demand is picking up and unemployment falling. Many forecasters estimate the U.S. economy grew at near 4% or even faster in the second quarter, twice the rate of the 2% average for much of the expansion. More demand tends to push prices higher."

"In recent months, businesses have seen their own costs rise, in part because of high energy prices and labor shortages putting some mild upward pressure on wages. Now, some businesses say they are trying to pass those costs on to consumers."

"For the broader economy, hitting the 2% inflation target is “encouraging,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said in an interview. It means the economy is in better balance after slow growth in the wake of the severe 2007-2009 recession. However, “touching 2% isn’t grounds for victory” after the long run of low inflation, Mr. Feroli said. Fed officials “want to see it sustained.”"

See also Analysis: What Will the Fed Do With an Overshoot? Officials now see unemployment dropping to 3.5% by late 2019, a full percentage point below their estimate of where it should be in the long run by Greg Ip of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"we are learning about the real location of the natural rate of unemployment as we go,”" [chairman Powell said]

"Officials’ estimates of the natural rate have dropped in the past two years, but their projection for unemployment by the end of 2019 has dropped even more, and even that may prove pessimistic if the usual relationship between unemployment and economic growth holds"

"The Fed can’t realistically move inflation much this year or next given the lags in monetary policy, but by 2020, it can. It could in theory raise interest rates by enough to slow the economy and cool the labor market so that inflation is 2% instead of 2.1% in 2020."

"For these projections to make sense, Fed officials must either raise their inflation target, assume some serendipitous boost to the economy’s potential growth rate or decline in the natural unemployment rate, abandon their economic models, or run much tighter monetary policy, especially after 2020."

Friday, June 29, 2018

The Level and Trend of Poverty in the United States, 1939-1979

By Christine Ross, Sheldon Danziger and Eugene Smolensky. Published in Demography, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 587-600.

"Abstract

A detailed record of the number and characteristics of persons in poverty is available since 1959. This paper provides measures for 1939 and 1949 that correspond as closely as possible to the official poverty statistics. Poverty, as officially measured, fell from 40.5 percent of all persons in 1949 to 13.1 percent in 1979, declining most among the elderly and least among female-headed households. We estimate the effects on the aggregate poverty rate of changes between 1940 and 1980 in the distribution of the population by selected demographic characteristics of household heads and by the employment status of head and spouse. Some changes, such as the increasing proportion of two-earner families, were poverty reducing, whereas others were poverty increasing."
See also Poverty in the United States by Gwendolyn Mink & Alice M. O'Connor. Click here to see inside the book. If you click on the first picture, the numbers are clearer. (Hat tips to commenters Jason Wall and Todd Kreider at this post by Scott Sumner Do poverty programs reduce poverty? Here is a table from Mink & O'Connor's book:


Thursday, June 28, 2018

Increased Supply Is Holding Down Rent Increases

See Looking for an Apartment? It Is a Great Time to Rent: Rents are flattening in major U.S. cities, landlords offer a free month, Amazon gift certificates among other perks by Laura Kusisto of The WSJ.

Rent increases have slowed down. In competitive markets, if prices rise and profits therefore go up for firms, in the long run, more firms will enter and supply will increase, bringing prices back down. This might be happening now with apartment. It might not have happened quickly because it does take time to build new apartment complexes.

Excerpts from the article:
"Driving this dynamic is a flood of new apartments and weakening demand."

"Rents rose 2.3% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, the smallest annual increase since the third quarter of 2010 . . . due to large amounts of new supply."

"While average rents continued to grow, individual landlords cut rents in some markets. In addition, landlords are offering tenants incentives including as many as three months paying no rent, free parking, credit for ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft, and Amazon gift cards for as much as $2,500"

"Developers responded to escalating rents by building the most new apartments in 30 years, sending a flood of new high-end units to downtown areas across the country. Developers are expected to add 300,000 new units over the next year"

"The national vacancy rate ticked up to 4.8% from 4.3% in the second quarter of 2017."

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

South Texas’ Eagle Ford could have billions of crude barrels left to pump

By Rye Druzin of The San Antonio Express-News. Excerpts:
"The Eagle Ford Shale field could still have billion of barrels of oil to pump, potentially making it the second largest oil field in the U.S.

In a report published Friday, the U.S. Geological Survey said the Eagle Ford — which stretches from the Texas-Mexico border into Louisiana — could contain 8.5 billion barrels of undiscovered and technically recoverable oil.

That would make it second in the U.S. for oil reserves, just ahead of the 7.4 billion barrels estimated to remain undiscovered in the Williston Basin of North Dakota.

West Texas’ Permian Basin, the name for a larger set of basins that includes the Wolfcamp and Midland basins, still reigns No. 1 with 20 billion barrels of undiscovered and technically recoverable oil, according to the U.S.G.S."

"The Eagle Ford may also have 66 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it tied for third in the U.S. with the Niobrara Basin in Colorado and Wyoming for potential natural gas reserves."

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

The Robots Are Coming And It Might Not Be A Case of Structural Unemployment

In my macroeconomics class, we talk about the types of unemployment. Here is one of them:

Structural-unemployment caused by a mismatch between the skills of job seekers and the requirements of available jobs. One example of this is when you are replaced by a machine.

See Short of Workers, Fast-Food Restaurants Turn to Robots: Flippy the burger chef doesn’t complain about the drudgery of grill work and never leaves the kitchen by Julie Jargon and Eric Morath of The WSJ.

The article suggests that businesses are turning to robots due to labor shortages, not necessarily to replace workers. One place has "Flippy, a robot that turns the burgers and cleans the hot, greasy grill." The link has a video. Excerpts:
"The hospitality industry had 844,000 unfilled positions in April, a record high, according to the Labor Department. That accounts for about one out of every eight jobs available in America. Employment in food service and drinking places has increased by 1.6 million since May 2013 to 11.9 million in May 2018.

If businesses were just using machines to replace workers, you would see high unemployment in the industry, said Donald Grimes, a labor economist at the University of Michigan. “But you’re not seeing that at all.”

The 6% unemployment rate for restaurant workers is the lowest on record, according to the Labor Department. It tops the 3.8% overall unemployment rate, yet is extremely low for an industry with notoriously brisk turnover—a full percentage point below where it stood in 2000, the last time overall unemployment was as low as it is today.

The rise of machines in theory should lead restaurants to employ fewer people per establishment. So far that’s not happening, either. Nationwide, employment is up at individual quick-service restaurants, to 18.4 workers per establishment last year, from 17.4 before the recession began in late 2007.

Many restaurants are trying to do more, including staying open around the clock or delivering food. Some chains also need more employees to handle the increased demand that comes from automating tasks such as ordering."

"some Dunkin’ shops use digital refractometers to determine if coffee meets specifications.

Automation improves consistency, shaves time off tasks, and may help ease the incessant turnover that crimps productivity and staffing across the industry."

"A 2013 study by University of Oxford economists Carl Frey and Michael Osborne found that food service occupations, including cooks, hosts and servers, ranked in the top 20% of most automatable jobs among 700 occupations examined. Additional research from The Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development said food preparation faced the highest probability of automation among 88 industries."

"the labor pool is shrinking and wages are picking up, in part because of the shortages and also due to minimum-wage increases in many states."

"Automats, the waiterless establishments of the early 20th century that combined vending machines and a cafeteria, could be considered the first fast-food restaurants, said Magne Mogstad, a labor economist at the University of Chicago. They were shoved aside by fast-food restaurants that depended on humans to function.

“Automation,” he said, “may very well create demand for service with a personal touch.”

Panera Bread has created approximately 25,000 new jobs over the past two years including delivery drivers and new restaurant workers to handle the extra volume coming from digital ordering."

"McDonald’s Corp. is offering table service now too, thanks to self-order kiosks."

Related posts:

Robot Journalists-A Case Of Structural Unemployment?

Structural Unemployment In The News-Computers Can Now Tell Jokes 

WHAT do you get when you cross a fragrance with an actor?

Answer: a smell Gibson.

Robot jockeys in camel races

Are Computer Programs Replacing Journalists?

Automation Can Actually Create More Jobs

Monday, June 25, 2018

Online inflation was about 1 percentage point lower than in the CPI for the same categories from 2014--2017

See Internet Rising, Prices Falling: Measuring Inflation in a World of E-Commerce by Austan D. Goolsbee and Peter J. Klenow. Here is the abstract:
"We use Adobe Analytics data on online transactions for millions of products in many different categories from 2014 to 2017 to shed light on how online inflation compares to overall inflation, and to gauge the magnitude of new product bias online. The Adobe data contain transaction prices and quantities purchased. We estimate that online inflation was about 1 percentage point lower than in the CPI for the same categories from 2014--2017. In addition, the rising variety of products sold online, implies roughly 2 percentage points lower inflation than in a matched model/CPI-style index."

Sunday, June 24, 2018

The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it

Great post by Max Roser. Excerpt:
"To see where we are coming from we must go far back in time. 30 or even 50 years are not enough. When you only consider what the world looked during our life time it is easy to make the mistake of thinking of the world as relatively static – the rich, healthy and educated parts of the world here and the poor, uneducated, sick regions there – and to falsely conclude that it always was like that and that it always will be like that.

Take a longer perspective and it becomes very clear that the world is not static at all. The countries that are rich today were very poor just very recently and were in fact worse off than the poor countries today.

To avoid portraying the world in a static way – the North always much richer than the South – we have to start 200 years ago before the time when living conditions really changed dramatically.
Researchers measure extreme poverty as living with less than 1.90$ per day. These poverty figures take into account non-monetary forms of income – for poor families today and in the past this is important, particularly because of subsistence farming. The poverty measure is also corrected for different price levels in different countries and adjusted for price changes over time (inflation) – poverty is measured in so-called international dollar that accounts for these adjustments.

The first chart shows the estimates for the share of the world population living in extreme poverty. In 1820 only a tiny elite enjoyed higher standards of living, while the vast majority of people lived in conditions that we would call extreme poverty today. Since then the share of extremely poor people fell continuously. More and more world regions industrialised and thereby increased productivity which made it possible to lift more people out of poverty: In 1950 three-quarters of the world were living in extreme poverty; in 1981 it was still 44%. For 2015 – the last year for which we currently have data – research suggests that the share in extreme poverty has fallen below 10%.

That is a huge achievement, for me as a researcher who focuses on growth and inequality maybe the biggest achievement of all in the last two centuries. It is particularly remarkable if we consider that the world population has increased 7-fold over the last two centuries – switch to the ‘Absolute’ view in the visualisation below to see the number of people in and out of poverty. In a world without economic growth, such an increase in the population would have resulted in less and less income for everyone; A 7-fold increase in the world population would have been enough to drive everyone into extreme poverty. Yet, the exact opposite happened. In a time of unprecedented population growth our world managed to give more prosperity to more people and to continuously lift more people out of poverty.

Increasing productivity was important because it made vital goods and services less scarce: more food, better clothing, and less cramped housing. Productivity is the ratio between the output of our work and the input that we put in our work; as productivity increased we benefitted from more output, but also from less input – weekly working hours fell very substantially.

Economic growth was also important because it changed the relationship between people. In the long time in which the world lived in a non-growth world the only way to become better off is if someone else got worse off. Your own good luck is your neighbours bad luck. Economic growth changed that, growth made it possible that you are better off when others become better off. The ingenuity of those that built the technology that increased productivity – the car, the machinery, and communication technology – made some of them very rich and at the same time it increased the productivity and the incomes of others. It is hard to overstate how different life in zero-sum and a positive-sum economy are.

Unfortunately the media is overly obsessed with reporting single events and with things that go wrong and does not nearly pay enough attention to the slow developments that reshape our world. With this empirical data on the reduction of poverty we can make it concrete what a media that would report global development would look like. The headline could be "The number of people in extreme poverty fell by 130,000 since yesterday” and they wouldn’t have this headline once, but every single day since 1990, since, on average, there were 130,000 people fewer in extreme poverty every day."

Saturday, June 16, 2018

Freight trains and economies of scale

See Why Railroads Are Making Freight Trains Longer and Longer by Daniel Machalaba of The WSJ. Economies of scale happen when average total cost falls as a firm increases the scale of its operation (more capital). Total cost rises, but output or quantity rises by an even greater proportion. Excerpts:
"The freight train is now on track to stretch up to 3 miles long, with 200 cars or more. And it’s being powered, in part, by an unusual energy source: the activist investor.

Companies have plenty of reasons to keep adding train cars. Long trains save on fuel and crews, reducing the cost of rail transportation.

Longer trains also decrease the volume of trains through communities and improve productivity, said Raquel Espinoza, spokeswoman for Union Pacific Corp. And fewer trains on the network frees up track space for other traffic.

“Railroads thrive on economies of scale,” said Christopher Barkan, professor and director of the railroad engineering program at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Ill. “Longer trains are the most important advance in achieving economies of scale in the past quarter century.”

A confluence of pressures—from the long-term decline of coal deliveries to competition from trucking to activist investors—are forcing railroads to improve efficiency and cut costs.

In a nod to activist investors, who have pressed for improved operations and the return of capital to shareholders, major railroads now report average train length with quarterly earnings. CSX Corp. , for instance, in April said its average train length rose 5% in the first quarter from a year earlier, a signal to investors and analysts that the railroad is gaining efficiency.

Operating trains that are double the length of standard size trains involves mastering the distribution of weight and pulling force. The longest, heaviest trains may have four locomotives in front, two in the middle and two at the end.

Some critics say the railroads are moving in the wrong direction, given the demand for faster, more frequent deliveries of smaller batches of raw materials and goods. Long trains take longer to assemble and disassemble in freight yards and can lead to delays on main lines."

"Long trains can block multiple crossings, delaying emergency vehicles and other motorists, as they take 5 minutes or more to go from front to back through a crossing."

"95% of trains are shorter than 10,000 feet."

"Some railroads are adding remotely controlled diesel locomotives at the end or in the middle of superlong trains so that locomotives are both pulling and shoving at the same time. Distributing the locomotive power reduces the heavy loads on the couplers that can break a train in two, improves train handling by reducing slack action and makes brake applications quicker and smoother."

Friday, June 15, 2018

Is the gig economy growing or not?

See Was the Gig Economy Overblown? U.S. labor market largely unchanged since 2005, new data show by Eric Morath of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"the fraction of workers employed as independent contractors was 6.9% in May 2017, down from 7.4% in February 2005, the last time the survey was taken. The broadest measure of the share of workers who are contingent—meaning they don’t expect their jobs to last more than an additional year—was 3.8% last year, down from 4.1% in 2005."

"Labor data showed a large increase in such contractors working in transportation—think Lyft drivers—and professional and business services, which would capture many on platforms like Thumbtack. Use of independent contractors fell sharply in construction, retail and finance."

"It only asked about a worker’s “main job,” meaning someone moonlighting on TaskRabbit wouldn’t show up. And workers needed to do the work in the past week to count.

A separate study by the JPMorgan Chase Institute found that in 2015, only 33% of those participating in online platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb, earned the majority of their income through such apps and sites. The institute also found it was common for workers to cycle on and off platforms, often working more gigs when other sources of income slowed."

"temps, vendors and contractors, but most of those workers are employees of a contracting firm—not going it alone, and thus not independent."

"independent contract workers are happy, with 79% saying they preferred their current arraignment to traditional work. That could be because independent contractors, on average, earn more than traditional workers.

However, 55% of workers who expected their employment to end in less than a year said they would prefer traditional jobs."
But also see Don’t Be So Sure the Gig Is Up Contract work has fallen as a share of employment, a BLS study finds: But there are reasons to doubt it by Liya Palagashvili, an economics professor at State University of New York-Purchase . Excerpts: 
"But there are reasons to doubt the BLS survey, which was last conducted in 2005. The new survey found that as a percentage of all workers, those in alternative employment arrangements—including contract, freelance and on-call work—was lower in 2017 (10.1%) than in 2005 (10.7%).

Does this mean that the gig economy is shrinking? Not necessarily—for three reasons. First, the BLS survey measures only workers whose primary job is a contractor or freelancer. Thus, for example, 69% of Uber drivers are not considered in the BLS study because they also have payroll jobs. Studies by Upwork, McKinsey Global Institute and MBO Partners all account for secondary work and report a significantly higher proportion of freelancers and contractors.

Second, the BLS statistic is a ratio of workers in alternative employment arrangements to the total number of people employed. That can be misleading. As the workforce grows, the denominator increases so that the ratio goes down. In fact, total employment grew more than 10% between 2005-17. Alternative employment, as measured by the BLS, grew only slightly less quickly.

Third, the BLS data may have a sampling bias, because the survey is conducted as an in-person or live telephone interview. Unadjusted differences in traits of contractors and gig workers, such as working longer hours, affects whether they are likely to be absent or missed during the survey, and can lead to undercoverage of that type of worker.

A notable study by economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger used the same questions as the BLS survey, but worked with a different sample population (the RAND American Life Panel) and used an internet survey. It found that alternative employment arrangements as a worker’s primary form of employment grew more than 50% between 2005 to 2015, when they collected their data."

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Do FAA drone regulations illustrate the tradeoff between Type I and Type II errors?

I use the book The Economics of Public Issues in my micro classes. Chapter 1 is called "Death by Bureaucrat." It discusses how the Food and Drug Administration can make either a Type I error or a Type II error.

Type I error: The FDA approves a drug before enough testing is done and when people take it, there are harmful side effects.

Type II error: The FDA tests a drug longer than necessary to stay on the safe side. But people might suffer because the drug is not yet available. 80,000 people died waiting for Septra to be approved.

The FDA would rather make a Type II error because the public can blame the FDA if a Type I error occurs.

Something similar might be going on withe the FAA. See Science panel says the FAA is too tough on drones by David Koenig of the Associated Press. Excerpts:
"Science advisers to the federal government say safety regulators are hindering the spread of commercial drones by being too cautious about the risks posed by the flying machines.

The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine said in a report Monday that federal safety regulators need to balance the overall benefits of drones instead of treating them the same way that they oversee airliners.

Academy experts said in a strongly worded report that the Federal Aviation Administration tilts against proposals for commercial uses of unmanned aircraft without considering their potential to reduce other risks and save lives.

For example, they said, when drones are used to inspect cell-phone towers, it reduces the risk of making workers climb up the towers.

The study on the FAA’s work on integrating drones into the nation’s airspace was requested by Congress last year."

"The high-level science board said that the FAA was making “overly conservative risk assessments” about drones by applying the same near-zero tolerance for risk that it uses with other aircraft.

“In many cases, the focus has been on ‘What might go wrong?’ instead of a holistic risk picture” that considers overall risk and benefit, the advisers wrote."

"“The committee concluded that ‘fear of making a mistake’ drives a risk culture at the FAA that is too often overly conservative, particularly with regard to (drone) technologies, which do not pose a direct threat to human life in the same way as technologies used in manned aircraft,” the board experts wrote.

They said that FAA staffers may believe they could endanger their careers by allowing any new risk."

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Book Recommendation: Economics for the Common Good by Jean Tirole

Amazon link. If you have already taken one economics class, and especially if you are interested in majoring in economics, this book gives a great overview of how economists do their work and the issues they face. Also a great introduction into how government policy affects the economy. Here is the Amazon description:
"From Nobel Prize–winning economist Jean Tirole, a bold new agenda for the role of economics in society

When Jean Tirole won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, he suddenly found himself being stopped in the street by complete strangers and asked to comment on issues of the day, no matter how distant from his own areas of research. His transformation from academic economist to public intellectual prompted him to reflect further on the role economists and their discipline play in society. The result is Economics for the Common Good, a passionate manifesto for a world in which economics, far from being a "dismal science," is a positive force for the common good.

Economists are rewarded for writing technical papers in scholarly journals, not joining in public debates. But Tirole says we urgently need economists to engage with the many challenges facing society, helping to identify our key objectives and the tools needed to meet them.

To show how economics can help us realize the common good, Tirole shares his insights on a broad array of questions affecting our everyday lives and the future of our society, including global warming, unemployment, the post-2008 global financial order, the euro crisis, the digital revolution, innovation, and the proper balance between the free market and regulation.

Providing a rich account of how economics can benefit everyone, Economics for the Common Good sets a new agenda for the role of economics in society."

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Fed officials disagree on how much inflation the current low unemployment rate might cause

The Fed will announce tomorrow (Wed.) if they are going to raise interest rates. If demand increases too much, inflation gets too high. Higher interest rates might prevent such demand increases (see graphs at some of the links I have below). It may be a question of where aggregate or total demand is. If it is still in the relatively flat part of supply, then we don't need to raise rates. But if it is already close to where supply gets steep, any more increases in demand will cause large price increases.

First, see U.S. Inflation Accelerates to Six-Year High, Eroding Wages by Katia Dmitrieva of Bloomberg.

Then see The Fed’s Biggest Dilemma: Is the Booming Job Market a Problem? Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has to figure out whether inflation is around the corner. The wrong choice could cripple the economy by Nick Timiraos of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"Only twice in the past half-century has unemployment fallen to its current rate of 3.8%—for a few years in the late 1960s and for one month in 2000.

The ’60s episode spurred years of soaring inflation that would take a decade for policy makers to corral. The latter coincided with a technology bubble that, when it burst, caused the 2001 recession.

The Fed is likely to announce Wednesday it is raising its benchmark short-term interest rate to a range between 1.75% and 2%, the latest in a series of increases aimed at avoiding such outcomes by keeping the economy on an even keel."

"He [Fed chair Powell] and other Fed officials have been studying the low unemployment episode of the 1960s for clues, poring over simulations to understand what might happen if unemployment keeps falling and debating whether traditional models for joblessness and inflation still work. The Fed has long operated under the framework that if joblessness falls too low, rising labor costs dominate and lead to higher inflation."

"Officials seek 2% annual inflation because they view that as consistent with an economy with healthy demand for goods and services.

The employment debate is taking on more urgency because joblessness is expected to keep falling due to a burst of economic stimulus from recent tax cuts and government spending increases.

If hiring and workforce participation trends since January continue, unemployment would reach as low as 3.3% by December, way below Fed officials’ estimates of the level that is sustainable over the long run.

Among the questions preoccupying Mr. Powell: Could a tighter labor market bring in people not already in the job market and raise workforce participation rates? If that happens, the economy will be in a position to draw on those unused resources and keep growing without overheating. That would allow the Fed to raise rates more slowly than it otherwise would.

If there aren’t people outside of the labor market ready to enter, the Fed could raise rates more aggressively. Higher inflation requires tighter credit to keep price pressures in check."

[former chair] "Janet Yellen . . . was convinced that low unemployment rates eventually will lead to higher inflation"

"Key to the Fed’s considerations is an economic concept developed in the late 1960s by Milton Friedman known as the natural rate of unemployment. Some economists believe this level balances the supply and demand for labor, and that below it, inflation accelerates"

"Their estimate tumbled from 5.1% three years ago to 4.7% last year to 4.5% in March."

"Officials now seem less sure that low interest rates will keep boosting workforce participation"

 "Mr. Powell has said the natural rate of unemployment could be anywhere from 3.5% to 5%."

"the Phillips curve has been flat for the past 20 years, meaning big swings in unemployment haven’t significantly affected U.S. inflation."

"A few Fed officials have grown skeptical of the central bank’s devotion to the Phillips curve"

"They hesitate to rely on a model that would have called for more aggressive interest-rate rises in 2015 and 2016, because the jobless rate implied inflation would soon heat up. In fact, millions of Americans found jobs and inflation remained low."

"A second group of officials rejects this thinking. They say unemployment is well below a sustainable level. They worry it is just a matter of time before imbalances emerge—either excess inflation or financial bubbles—and if they wait until then, they will have to raise rates aggressively, causing a recession."

"Looking at city-level data, economists found inflation picked up more quickly once the jobless rate fell below 3.75%. One of the researchers, UBS’s Mr. Detmeister, said the paper argues for maintaining the Fed’s current approach of raising interest rates with the goal of anticipating where the economy will be 12-to-24 months ahead."

"Many Fed officials . . . say globalization, technology and demographic changes mean a low-unemployment economy may not face the same price pressures as it did in the 1960s."

"Today’s economy has more college-educated workers than in the past, which depresses the natural rate of unemployment because they have lower unemployment rates than others."

"In the 1960s and 1970s, if inflation went up one year, consumers expected it to rise by at least as much the following year. Officials believe such expectations can be self-fulfilling as workers demand pay increases and businesses raise prices in anticipation.

But in the early 1980s, the Fed ratcheted interest rates up into the double-digits, slowing inflation dramatically by pushing the economy into a severe recession. It demonstrated the central bank’s commitment to keep prices in check, and the approach has held since then.

Fed research published in 2016 used the 1960s experience to measure the point where inflation pressures begin to harm the economy, including by leading expectations of higher prices to become self-reinforcing as they did in the 1970s. The research, which was presented to Mr. Powell, concluded this happens when inflation rises by 3% on a sustained basis, using the Fed’s preferred gauge and excluding volatile food and energy categories. Using this gauge, inflation is currently rising 1.8%.
Given the anchoring of inflation expectations, Mr. Kashkari said it is no surprise that inflation is unresponsive to low unemployment today. “The more credibility we have with the market and with employees and employers, the less responsive they are going to be to minor changes in the economy,” he said."
Related posts:

Is There A Neutral Interest Rate? If So, How Much Is it?

Is The Phillips Curve Dead In Japan? Maybe not

Is The Phillips Curve Not Holding Up Well Because The Service And Goods Sectors Are Behaving Differently?

Has the Fed Flattened the Phillips Curve?

Nobody knows what the natural rate of unemployment is today

More on the natural rate of unemployment

How Central Banks Differ In Their Methods Of Calculating Inflation.

Fed Officials Disagree On Threat Of Inflation (from 2009)

Fed Chair Janet Yellen: "there remains considerable slack in the economy" (from 2014)  

Professor Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon had a post at his blog on the disagreement over what the optimal inflation rate is called Do We Need to Rethink Macroeconomic Policy? Some economists think maybe 4% would be okay. But this article gives you a good idea of the issues and controversies surrounding the unemployment-inflation tradeoff.  Excerpt:
"Just to be clear, the relative price of good A to good B is PA/PB. If there is inflation and one of the two prices is stickier than the other, then the two prices will change at different rates in response to inflation. This pushes relative prices away from their fundamental values, and this in turn distorts resource flows (which leads to losses and unemployment as resources are subsequently reallocated). The higher the inflation rate, the faster these prices become distorted and the higher the subsequent costs. This is not the only cost of inflation, but on this basis alone it's likely that at some point the costs of inflation will exceed the benefits. The hard question is where the breakpoint is (partly because we don't have good estimates of either the costs or the benefits, so it's possible to support most any position by picking and choosing among the empirical studies). I'd be very uncomfortable with a rate over 4%, 4% itself seems a bit high, but 3% isn't so hard to accept."

Monday, June 11, 2018

It seems like airlines are not passing along all of the increased fuel costs to consumers

See Airlines Raise Ticket Prices as Fuel Costs Surge: Oil is again the largest expense for most airlines prompting higher domestic fares, surcharges on international flights by Doug Cameron and Alison Sider of The WSJ.

An increase in costs is like a new tax. It shifts the supply curve up. But the price goes up by less than the amount of the tax or the increase in costs. There is a link below to a post from a few years ago that explains this with supply and demand curves.

Excerpts from the article:
"Jet-fuel prices have surged more than 50% over the past year, pushing carriers to raise fares and Delta Air Lines to cut its profit expectations.

Delta, the nation’s No. 2 carrier, said Wednesday it could take six to 12 months to recoup the extra fuel costs via pricier tickets."

"“We feel good about our ability to pass through the increase in fuel price,” United Continental Holdings Inc. President Scott Kirby said at an investor event last month. He said strong summer demand is bolstering industry pricing power—with carriers pushing through a succession of small increases of between $2 and $5 per flight on domestic routes—and that will help United recoup about 75% of the higher fuel prices."
Notice he mentions "strong demand." If demand increases, then price will go up. But we have to assume demand is not changing to understand the effect. And also notice he says they will recoup only 75% of the higher fuel prices, not 100%. So they have not been able to pass all of the increase along.

See If You Lower The Excise Tax On A Good By $1.00, Does A Firm Save $1.00 On Each Unit Sold?

Sunday, June 10, 2018

When Economists Turn Hedonistic

More sensitive viewers might want to look away. Sometimes economists get kinky, too (when they talk about oligopoly, but that's another story).

The Canard About Falling Incomes: Don’t believe the government’s consumer-price index, which is obsolete by Andy Kessler of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"As consumer items got more feature-rich and complex, the BLS simply couldn’t note the absolute price of, say, a microwave oven. So the bureau came up with the indulgently named hedonic quality adjustment, defined as “decomposing an item into its constituent characteristics, obtaining estimates of the value of the utility derived from each characteristic, and using those value estimates to adjust prices when the quality of a good changes.”

It’s a better measurement but still inaccurate. Here’s a thought experiment: Think about your car’s automatic emergency braking, sometimes known as precrash or collision avoidance. It has been an increasingly popular option in recent years. By 2022, it will be standard on most cars. Some silicon sensors and a few pieces of code—today it costs maybe $50 to produce. But what’s it worth?

Let’s do a little hedonic decomposing of our own. Before these sensors, you would have had to hire a person to ride shotgun and constantly watch for potential collisions and slam on the brakes for you. In 2016 the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety estimated the average driver spends almost 300 hours a year in the car, logging more than 10,000 miles. Paying someone even $10 an hour to stare into traffic means that over five years, collision avoidance is worth nearly $15,000. Double if you want someone to look out the back window, too.

Does this show up anywhere in the consumer-price index? Of course not. One of the most lifesaving features has dropped in cost by three orders of magnitude in less than a decade. To the BLS, it’s practically nonexistent."

"By the time the BLS puts something new in the CPI basket, it’s already cheap, so it misses the massive human-replacement price decline."

"But the CPI absolutely doesn’t take today’s technology-infused lifestyle and work backward to show how much more expensive it would have been in 1973."
In related news "it took the average worker 10 minutes to earn enough money to afford a Happy Meal in 1979. Today it takes that worker just 6 minutes of work to afford one." See Happy Meals Are Now Even Happier by By Alexander C. R. Hammond and Gale Pooley of HumanProgress.

Saturday, June 09, 2018

Use of opioid drugs ‘appears to be connected’ to labor market conditions

See Why U.S. Prime-Age Workforce Participation Is Lagging Behind Other Nations by Sarah Chaney of The WSJ.

This is related to yesterday's post ("American Job Openings Now Outnumber the Jobless") which mentioned "the share of Americans who are working or seeking work has generally declined for almost two decades."

Chaney's article suggests that opioid use has played a part. Excerpts:
"The share of U.S. prime-age workers holding or seeking jobs has picked up in recent years but remains well below the rates of other developed economies, a phenomenon suspected to be linked to the opioid crisis.

The so-called labor-force participation rate of such workers, ages 25 to 54, fell sharply after the financial crisis to a recent low of 80.7% in the third quarter of 2015, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released Wednesday.

The figure has increased since then to 81.7% in the fourth quarter of last year.

The OECD’s 35 countries—which include the U.S., most of the European Union members, Canada and FranceJapan—had a combined rate of 85.5% in the last three months of 2017."

"The use of opioid drugs “appears to be connected” to labor market conditions, the report said.
Opioid prescription rates are generally higher where overall labor-force participation rates are lower, it notes.

These areas also tend to be places where disability rates are high, it says, pointing to a possible connection between drug use and disability.

The prescription of opioids per capita is “significantly higher” in the U.S. than in other OECD nations, the report notes."

"“In addition, when addiction leads to criminality, the consequences of a felony record can drastically reduce employment possibilities.”"

"Princeton University economist Alan Krueger found that a national increase in opioid painkiller prescriptions between 1999 and 2015 may have accounted for about 20% of the decline in workforce participation among men ages 25 to 54, and roughly 25% of the drop in prime-age female workforce participation."

Friday, June 08, 2018

American Job Openings Now Outnumber the Jobless

U.S. job openings rose to 6.7 million at the end of April, compared with the 6.3 million Americans who were unemployed

By Eric Morath of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"For the first time since such record-keeping began in 2000, the number of available positions exceeded the number of job seekers"

"U.S. job openings rose to a seasonally adjusted 6.7 million at the end of April, a record high, and more than the 6.3 million Americans who were unemployed"

"Meanwhile, the share of Americans who are working or seeking work has generally declined for almost two decades. That gives employers fewer potential workers to draw from, but also suggests there remain hundreds of thousands of Americans who could be drawn back into the labor force.

And they may be waiting for better wages. Hourly pay for nonsupervisors rose 2.8% in May from a year earlier, the best annual gain since mid-2009. But the last time unemployment was as low, wages for those workers rose 3.9% from a year earlier.
The largest number of April openings, 1.3 million, were in the broad business-services sector, which includes everything from accountants and software developers to temporary staffers and clerical workers.
There were also ample job openings in some of the lowest-paying fields. There were 844,000 accommodation and food-service jobs open in April and 735,000 unfilled retail positions."

"[an expert]  is asking clients if they are being realistic in their demands for workers with clean criminal histories and higher levels of education."

"a tighter labor market presents several challenges to businesses. If they can’t find workers to meet the demand for their products, they can’t help the economy grow."

"Firms may need to pay more to attract workers, and some already are. That raises costs and would cut profit margins if higher prices can’t be passed on to customers."

"There are, however, still an elevated number of Americans who are stuck in part-time jobs and would prefer full-time work. And others are employed but not in the jobs they want."
Justin Lahart, also of the WSJ, had an article the same day on this topic. See
One Surprising Reason Why Companies Struggle to Fill Jobs: The churn rate in the jobs market is less than you’d think with unemployment at multi-decade lows, and one reason is an aging workforce. Excerpts:
"people aren’t changing jobs as much as you’d expect."

"One measure of churn—the sum of hires and separations as a share of overall employment—stood at 7.4% in April, around where it has been for the past year. That is far better than the 5.9% it plumbed in 2009, but still below the 8% it reached in 2006 when the unemployment rate was 4.6%."

"The U.S. workforce is aging, and older workers are less likely to job hop. Housing costs are high, particularly in some of the urban areas where job openings are most plentiful. And  many workers may still have lingering fears"

"the quits rate, or quits as a share of total employment is at its highest level since 2001. But fewer people are leaving their jobs for other reasons, pushing the churn rate lower. For companies, the low churn rate has been both good and bad. The good part is that it makes it easier to retain the employees"

"The bad part, which mostly affects companies looking to expand their workforce, is that it can be hard to hire people without offering them strong incentives to do so."

Wednesday, June 06, 2018

Some Bad News for Good News — Optimistic Forecasts Create Recessions

Positive forecasts lead the public and private sector to ‘celebrate’ by borrowing more, says IMF paper

By Georgi Kantchev of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"over-optimistic economic growth forecasts—including the IMF’s own—could help cause recessions and fiscal problems. The IMF argues that positive forecasts lead the public and private sector to “celebrate” by borrowing more, which encourages the sort of debt accumulation that builds frailties in the economic system, harming growth.

“Over-optimism brings economic damage in later years,” the authors write. “An overestimation of the future rate of economic growth could provide a short-run boost to the economy, but it also increases the subsequent probability of a recession and other economic difficulties,” they say."

"forecasts for next year’s gross domestic product growth have been 0.58 percentage points higher than the actual number. Research shows that such an upward bias is also present in forecasts made by private sector economists"

"The IMF has also missed most recessions in its forecasts, predicting only 24% of recessions one year ahead of the event."

Tuesday, June 05, 2018

What's the Difference Between Bills, Notes and Bonds?

By Nickolas Lioudis of Investopedia.
"Treasury bills (T-Bills), notes and bonds are marketable securities that the U.S. government sells in order to pay off maturing debt and to raise the cash needed to run the federal government. When you buy one of these securities, you are lending your money to the government of the U.S.

Understanding T-bills

T-bills are short-term obligations issued with a term of one year or less, and because they are sold at a discount from face value, they do not pay interest before maturity. The interest is the difference between the purchase price and the price paid either at maturity (face value) or the price of the bill if sold prior to maturity.

For example, an investor who purchases a T-bill at a discount price of $97 will receive the $100 face value at maturity. The $3 difference represents the interest return on the security.

Treasury Notes and Bonds

Treasury notes and bonds, on the other hand, are securities that have stated interest rates that are paid semi-annually until maturity. What makes notes and bonds different are the terms to maturity. Notes are issued in one-, three-, five-, seven- and 10-year terms. Conversely, bonds are long-term investments with terms of more than 10 years.

To learn more about T-bills and other money market instruments, read An Introduction to Treasury Securities, The Basics of the T-Bill, and our Money Market Tutorial. For further reading on bonds, see our Bonds Basics Tutorial.

Monday, June 04, 2018

Vanilla Is In The News Again

See Vanilla is worth more than silver by Tyler Cowen. I had a post on this last year (link below). 
The price of vanilla has hit a record high of $600 (£445) per kilogram for the second time since 2017 when a cyclone damaged many of the plantations in Madagascar, where three quarters of the world’s vanilla is grown. Silver by comparison currently costs $538/kg.
Demand for vanilla has kept the prices high, leading some ice cream manufacturers to cut back and even halt production of the flavour, sparking fears of shortages over the summer.
Here is the full story, and note this:
Replacement printer ink cartridges can cost between $8 and $27, depending on the type of printer you have. A single black ink jet cartridge from one major manufacturer can cost $23 for just 4ml of ink – enough to print around 200 pages.
Manufacturers argue they need to charge this to cover the loss they are selling the printer hardware at, together with the research and development they do on ink technology. But cut open an ink cartridge and you will see that most of the space inside is taken up with sponge, designed to help preserve and deliver the ink.
And when you are paying what works out to be around $1,733/kg of ink, you might be better off printing with pure silver instead."
See also Vanilla is so valuable now that it needs to be guarded. There are actually "Vanilla bandits."

Sunday, June 03, 2018

Is There A Neutral Interest Rate? If So, How Much Is it?

See Fed Minutes Signal Rate Increase in June: May meeting minutes say ‘it would likely soon be appropriate’ for another rate rise by Nick Timiraos of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"The Fed held its benchmark federal-funds rate steady at the May meeting in a range between 1.5% and 1.75%, but it looked ahead to future increases that might leave policy at a neutral level that neither spurs nor slows growth."

"The Fed’s postmeeting statement at the May meeting caught some attention because officials added a second reference to their “symmetric” 2% inflation target, meaning they won’t necessarily accelerate interest rate increases once inflation runs at or slightly above 2%."

Some officials at the May meeting said a temporary period in which inflation rises modestly above 2% “would be consistent with the committee’s symmetric inflation objective and could be helpful in anchoring longer-run inflation expectations at a level consistent with that objective.”

At the time of the May meeting, the unemployment rate had held steady since October at 4.1%. A report released after the meeting showed the rate fell to 3.9% in April.

Most officials still believe in a framework that sees an inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation (the is is the Phillips Curve). If the unemployment rate drops faster, officials likely will be more attuned to the potential for acceleration in inflation.

The minutes show officials are still unsure over the degree to which lower unemployment will fuel faster wage increases or firmer price pressures"

"San Francisco Fed President John Williams said last week he still estimates the current neutral fed-funds rate to be 2.5%. Officials’ March projections show a median expectation that the fed-funds rate would settle over the long-run at around 2.9%—an approximation of neutral.

Estimates of the neutral rate matter because a consensus appears to be forming among Fed officials that they should stay on their current “gradual” path of raising rates by a quarter percentage point at roughly every other meeting until they reach neutral. The bigger debate is likely to be over what to do after they get there."

AD and SRAS help explain what is going on. As AD increases or shifts to the right, prices rise. But the increases get bigger. Q or GDP increases, which lowers unemployment, but less each time. That tells the same story as the Phillips curve. But, what if supply shifts to the right? (which I don't show). If SRAS shifts more to the right than AD, then the rise in prices might be slight (and inflation could be less than what it was in the past) while the increases in Q can be large and the unemployment rate falls. That is the opposite of the Phillips Curve. So the Phillips Curve has to assume a fixed SRAS. Maybe a neutral interest rate keeps AD right at QF, the level of GDP that gives us the lowest rate of unemployment with inflation no higher than a set target. This is full-employment.




Related posts:

Is The Phillips Curve Dead In Japan? Maybe not

Is The Phillips Curve Not Holding Up Well Beacuse The Service And Goods Sectors Are Behaving Differently?

Has the Fed Flattened the Phillips Curve?

Nobody knows what the natural rate of unemployment is today

More on the natural rate of unemployment

How Central Banks Differ In Their Methods Of Calculating Inflation.

Fed Officials Disagree On Threat Of Inflation (from 2009)

Fed Chair Janet Yellen: "there remains considerable slack in the economy" (from 2014)