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 […]
Author: CFEGuru
Some Simple Term Structure Arithmetic
Robert J. Barbera and Jonathan H. Wright We’ve written two pieces recently on Treasury yields amid the COVID recovery. Wednesday’s release of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee’s Survey of Economic Projections is an opportunity to review where ten yields are, and where they may be headed. The median FOMC participant projects a funds rate […]
Beware of Seasonal Adjustment
By Kevin Heerdt and Jonathan H. Wright Economic data released by the government and other entities are being distorted by normally acceptable statistical methods. The extreme economic data that are coming out raise important issues of seasonal adjustment. Of course, there is no questioning the fact that the economic data are bad in an unprecedented […]
China’s 2018 Economic Slowdown: Much Worse than the Official Tally
By Robert Barbera and Yingyao Hu Our nighttime illumination estimate for 2018 Chinese growth, 4.2%, is roughly one third weaker than the Chinese official claim of a 6.5% climb for real GDP. In December of last year we introduced a new measure for China’s real income gains. The unique aspect of our effort reflects our […]
China’s Slowdown: More There than Meets the Eye
By Bob Barbera and Yingyao Hu. If there isn’t light in the 21st century world – or at least not as much light as economic statistics would suggest there should be – then something may be amiss. In China, that appears to be the case. And that suggests that there has been a sharp deterioration […]
CFE blog gets some notice
This blog has recently been listed on the Intelligent Economist’s list of the Top 100 economics blogs.
Women and careers in economics and finance
Friday, May 4th, 2018, the CFE together with the Economics Department launched the inaugural meeting of the “Women and Careers in Economics and Finance” lunch series. Our first speaker in the series was Meghan McGee, Partner at the Baltimore-based private-equity firm Camden Partners. Meghan first delved into the details of what exactly a private equity […]
Faust to give the Félix Neubergh Lecture
On Oct. 12, Prof. Jon Faust will be giving the Félix Nuebergh Lecture in Gothenberg, Sweden. The topic will be “The Role of Macroeconomic Policy Analysis in the Great Inflation, Great Moderation and Great Recession.” Preview: Macroeconomists now see the period since around 1960 as a succession of Greats: the Great Inflation, Great Moderation, and […]
Genetics and Investment Returns
Fortune magazine is featuring exciting new genetic research by Johns Hopkins researchers. This might not seem so surprising, but we’re pretty sure it’s a first that the genetic research comes from the Economics Department and concerns investment behavior. Assistant Professor Nick Papageorge (by general consensus the coolest person on our faculty) along with two of […]
JHU Student Solomon Polansky Publishes on Currency Pegs
Solomon Polansky, ’19, is a mechanical engineering major and varsity fencer. This past summer, instead of just poking around (as fencers are wont to do), Solomon had an internship at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. While at the Fed, he and Douglas Clement co-authored an interesting piece on currency pegs and why they don’t […]
Capital controls for Russia?
“The main lesson from international experience is that controls on capital outflows can work—but only if they are associated with a credible policy plan addressing the underlying cause of the confidence crisis.” Olivier Jeanne, of the Center and Peterson Institute, has an interesting op-ed in the Dec. 23 Financial Times arguing that capital controls may […]
Stock market drop raises lost decade fears, JHU Experts Comment
The stock-market gyrations of the past week have been driven in part by worries that a stumbling Eurozone could drag down the global economy. Unemployment stands at 11.5 percent for the bloc. The troubled Spanish and Greek economies are growing again, but face jobless rates of well over 20 percent. Meanwhile, growth is stalling in […]