The Angry Bear

Does Cochrane Really Understand the Latest on Minimum Wages? John Cochrane thinks we liberals who think higher minimum wages can do some good by offsetting monopsony power fail to grasp labor economics. He is citing some work by Jeffrey Clemens, Lisa B. Kahn, and Jonathan Meer. Alas his blog post screwed up the link to this interesting paper: Compensation consists of a combination of cash and non-cash attributes, and depends on worker productivity. We...

France’s Fiscal Dilemma Solved I was struck by this morning’s headline in the New York Times: No doubt this was intended as irony, but that itself is ironic, since the “unrealistic” attitude it sums up is actually a good starting point for policy.  France has one of the world’s better welfare states, and it should be preserved and enhanced.  French taxes are very high—almost half of national income—and should be cut.  Carbon needs to be priced far more...

Just this morning I read this article by The Guardian; Doctor Who Was Paid by Purdue to Push Opioids to Testify Against Drugmaker “In a newly released statement to an Ohio court hearing a combined lawsuit of more than 1,600 cases, Doctor Portenoy accuses drugmakers of underplaying the dangers of opioids and of pushing them on patients who did not need them. The doctor said the industry overstated the benefits of narcotics painkillers and ‘understated the...

Based on my wage equation, last January I warned to expect a sharp acceleration in wage growth in 2018.  Now that wage growth has risen       from 2.4% in 2017 to 3.4% in 2018, the same economic variables imply that wage growth may be flattening out.  If wage growth remains near    current levels it will be one less factor pressurizing the Fed to tighten. One of the key variables driving wages higher a year ago was inflation expectations.  Because there ...

In writing about the increase in Opioid abuse since 1980 and looking around for additional information for Robert Waldmann, I ran across this information as developed by the US Senate Joint Economic Committee. The committee is majority led by Republicans with Democrats being a part. The committee had added additional yearly data pre-1980, when the Jick and Porter letter had been written to the NEJM on the rarity of addiction from the use of Opioids, to...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for April 1 – 5 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.  Interest rates ticked up this week, which brought the readings on some interest rate indicators back down. As usual, clicking over and reading helps reward me with a little $$$ for my efforts.

On my personal blog, I mentioned that Tom Nichols is absolutely unwilling to discuss the run up to the US/UK?Australian invasion of Iraq. He is careless about facts and expresses contempt for even considering the official conclusions drawn by Hans Blix. He will not face evidence and has total contempt for expertise. He asked me to stop replying to him and I did, but I have proof that he is wrong. The man can’t handle facts and he refuses to listen...

by Joseph Joyce    (lifted from Capital Ebbs and Flows) Partners, Not Debtors: The External Liabilities of Emerging Market Economies My paper,  “Partners, Not Debtors: The External Liabilities of Emerging Market Economies,” has been published in the January 2019 issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. Here is the abstract: This paper investigates the change in the composition of the liabilities of emerging market countries from...

March jobs report: good nowcast, concerning forecast HEADLINES: +196,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 3.8% U6 underemployment rate unchanged at  7.3% Leading employment indicators of a slowdown or recession   I am highlighting these because many leading indicators overall strongly suggest that an employment slowdown is coming. The following more leading numbers in the report tell us about where the economy is likely to be a few months...