The Daily Economy
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Presidential Elections: There’s a Theorem For That
One classic insight is Arrow’s impossibility theorem, originally published in a 1950 paper by Nobel Prize winning economist Kenneth Arrow. It shows that there is no way to ensure any voting system, will always simultaneously satisfy a list of seemingly desirable conditions. More generally, it makes the same point about the impossibility of aggregating individual…
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The Presidential Election and Economics
With the election in mind, here’s a roundup of some of the recent work we’ve done on the subject of presidents, politics and the economy
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Manufacturing Employment Shows Some Resiliency
Manufacturing has been one of the challenging areas of the economy this year, but this morning we received data that shows a more positive outlook.
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Rising Wages a Positive Sign Heading into Holidays
The preliminary estimate for personal income for the third quarter shows a 3.9 percent increase, the same pace as in the second quarter, according to new data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis this morning. These are solid though not spectacular gains.
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Educating Students for a Changing World
AIER continues to innovate in the sphere of economic education. This semester we are helping students gain practical economic research skills as they take applied economic research courses at two universities: the University of Sioux Falls in South Dakota, and the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
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Mixed Signals from Today’s Durable Goods Report
Today’s report from the Department of Commerce on new orders and shipments of durable goods sent mixed signals on the state of the economy and outlook for third quarter GDP.
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New Home Sales Tick Upward in September
Sales of new single-family homes rose 3.1 percent in September to a pace of 593,000 homes, from a downward revised 575,000 pace in August (see chart). Though new home sales have been trending higher since hitting a post-recession low of 270,000 in February 2011, the overall level of activity remains tepid by historical standards. Over…
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Today’s Chart: Consumer Confidence and Job Quits
Consumers have been confident about the state of the labor market in recent months. The Conference Board, a private research organization, reported on Tuesday that more consumers feel that jobs are plentiful, as opposed to hard to get. In October, 24.3 percent of consumers responded that jobs are plentiful, in contrast to 22.1 percent of…
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Student Entrepreneurs Show the Power of Ideas
One advantage for our economy of small businesses is that they form their own ecosystem where the best ideas can evolve and rise to the top. When allowed to robustly compete for investors and customers, many small entrepreneurs will fail. But those few that truly succeed will have products and services that meet consumer needs,…
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Social Security COLA Forecast Quoted in WSJ
Our forecast for the 2017 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment has received widespread media attention, including this piece in The Wall Street Journal, which quotes our senior research fellow, Max Gulker. We forecasted with 90 percent confidence that when the increase is announced on Oct. 18, it will be between 0.2 percent and 0.5 percent, the…
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Ask the Economist: Hours Worked and Wage Growth
Kevin C. Donnelly asks: “Where does the data suggest the average American is in terms of work hours a week and wage growth less inflation, and what does that mean for long-run trends?” Thanks for the question. For hours worked, there has been a long-term declining trend in the average workweek for production and nonsupervisory…
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Why It’s Hard to Rate Teacher Training Programs
As discussed in our recent research brief, there is a continuing debate in public policy about the use of value-added measures to evaluate teachers. While the Department of Education has in many cases agreed to reduce the weight assigned to value-added measures in evaluating teachers and schools, they remain by government mandate part of the…
