2014

Gavyn Davies has a column up over at the Financial Times, which I think is a masterpiece at integrating a number of threads from different economic schools of thought into a composite picture of the global economy that makes sense. His view…

The big news this morning is the US employment report. The headline numbers were all good, though the add to non-farm payrolls came in below expectations. While this was a good report, the wage-related data were disappointing. Some thoughts…

US elections Just to follow up on yesterday’s two posts, exit polling data from Tuesday confirm what I was saying about disenchantment with the U.S. economy despite the positive headlines. 58% of those casting ballots said they were…

Although I think China is clearly much more integrated as an optimal currency zone than Europe is today, it is probably less integrated than the US (I will use the US and Europe as the two extreme cases between which China falls). China of…

In my last post on what the US midterm elections mean, I wrote that the election was a referendum on the President’s leadership and that he had failed that referendum. It is not the President’s policies per se that have caused voter…

The Absolute Return Letter, November 2014 “The single most robust and striking fact about cross-national growth is regression to the mean.” -Lawrence Summers and Lant Pritchett Low growth is printed on the wall When financial markets…

The US mid-term elections have just ended as a major victory for the Republican Party. And while I don’t do politics, being in DC affords me a front row seat to what’s going on. Below is my take on what happened, why and what it means for…

A couple of weeks ago I told you about two properties in London that I was familiar with as background for my post on house price inflation in the UK. What was clear from those two examples and dozens of others I found is that rental yields…

House price fluctuations take centre stage in recent macroeconomic debates, but little is known about their long-run evolution. This column presents new house price indices for 14 advanced economies since 1870. Real house prices display a…

This is going to be a relatively short note focused on what is going on in Japan because of the news that Japan has ramped up its program of quantitative easing to new heights. Coming on the heels of the US Federal Reserve’s announcement…