The Center for Financial Economics advances knowledge of the economic forces driving the financial system through research and teaching. Our work explores the fundamental economics of our current system and the dynamic tensions that will spur change.
Job growth in the United States was distinctly uneven for decades before the Pandemic hit, a fact that was emphasized this week when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a list of when each county in the United States reached its highest employment, based on data from 1975 to 2020. It showed that only 27% […]
Herbert Stein, former Chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors for R.M. Nixon, reminded his colleagues that “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop”. History is littered with speculators who went broke, betting against clearly unsustainable trends but forgetting that forever is a long time. Which brings us to the Chinese Real […]
Over the last 12 months, inflation has increased 5.4 percent in the US. Stoked by a leap for energy prices and a hefty 4.3 percent rise for core inflation. Throughout most of U.S. post-war history core goods price increases, on average rose at a much slower pace than services prices. Not so over the past […]
The Pandemic recession lasted two months, the National Bureau of Economic Research decided this week—more than a year after the supposed end of the recession in April 2020. That is the shortest recession ever, according to the NBER, which has a list of 34 recessions going back to 1857. But this recession made up for […]
The Congressional Budget Office has issued some dire forecasts about the U.S. economy, which is causing alarm in some quarters. But do those forecasts make sense? As Andrew Van Dam wrote in the Washington Post: “CBO now projects growth will slow to 1.1 percent in 2023 and an average of 1.2 percent in 2024 and 2025 — […]
Americans are more enthusiastic about the job market than they have been at any time in the past half century. And yet the official unemployment rate is well above what it was during comparable times in the past. The Conference Board, as part of its Consumer Confidence study, each month asks people what they think […]
