The University of Michigan reports that consumer confidence in September slipped a little from August. Their Index of Consumer Sentiment registered 95.3 in the latest month, down from 96.8 in the prior one. Both of those readings are in line with confidence estimates going back to early 2014 when consumer sentiment supposedly surged. University of Michigan Consumer Confidence, Jan 1997 - 2017(see more posts on...
Read More »
How do we measure what has been lost over the last ten years? There is no single way to calculate it, let alone a correct solution. There are so many sides to an economy that choosing one risks overstating that facet at the expense of another. It’s somewhat of an impossible task already given the staggering dimensions. If someone had told you in 2006 that the Federal Reserve as well as all its central bank cohorts...
Read More »
In the 1970s economists started to incorporate rational expectations into their models and not long after the seminal Kydand & Prescott (1977) article named Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plan was published. Their work has been driving the mainstream macroeconomic debate ever since. The question raised in this debate is how policy-makers can credible commit to promises made today when future events may cause short-term pain if restricted by stringent rules...
Read More »
Swiss Economicblogs.org
