Weekend Reading August 29th 2014
Comment of the Day

August 29 2014

Commentary by Eoin Treacy

Weekend Reading August 29th 2014

Thanks to a subscriber for this list of mostly academic reports which we can reasonably assume makes up the reading of key decision makers. 

Many politicians have a difficult time understanding human nature and "cause and effect". Spain's experience shows lessons we will no doubt ignore.  

Delaying the normal and early retirement ages in Spain: behavioural and welfare consequences for employed and unemployed workers

Fed: “Assessing the change in labor market conditions

The U.S. labor market is large and multifaceted. Often-cited indicators, such as the unemployment rate or payroll employment, measure a particular dimension of labor market activity, and it is not uncommon for different indicators to send conflicting signals about labor market conditions…. This Note describes a dynamic factor model of labor market indicators that we have developed recently, which we call the labor market conditions index (LMCI).
 
Fed: The declining US reliance on foreign investors

The United States has been borrowing from the rest of the world since the mid-1980s. From 2000 to 2008, this borrowing averaged over $600 billion per year, which translates into U.S. spending exceeding income by almost 5.0 percent of GDP. Borrowing fell during the recent recession, as would be expected, and then rebounded with the recovery. Since 2011, however, borrowing has trended down and fell to 2.4 percent of GDP in 2013, the smallest amount as a share of GDP since 1997. A reduced dependency on foreign funds can be viewed as a favorable development to the extent that it reflects an improvement in the fiscal balance to a more easily sustainable level. However, it also reflects the lackluster recovery in residential investment, which is one reason the economy has yet to get back to its full operating potential.
 
Fed: QE: When and How Should the Fed Exit?

In a standard economic model, if monetary injections can increase aggregate output and employment, then the reversed action will likely undo such effects. Would this imply that the U.S. economy will dive into a recession once the Fed starts its large-scale asset sales (under the assumption that QE has successfully pulled the economy out of the Great Recession)? This paper shows that three aspects of the Federal Reserve’s exit strategy matter for achieving (or maintaining) maximum gains in aggregate output and employment under QE (if any): (i) the timing of exit, (ii) the pace of exit, and (iii) the private sector’s expectations of when and how the Fed will exit.
 
Secular Stagnation: Facts, Causes and Cures

Fed: Turnover in Fedwire funds has dropped considerably since the crisis, but it’s okay

The Fedwire® Funds Service is a large-value payment system, operated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, that facilitates more than $3 trillion a day in payments. Turnover in Fedwire Funds, the value of payments made for every dollar of liquidity provided, has dropped nearly 75 percent since the crisis. Should we be concerned? In this post, we explain why turnover has dropped so much and argue that it is, in fact, a good thing.
 
Fed: The Ins and arounds in the US housing market

In the United States, 15 percent of households change residence in a given year. This result is based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on gross flows within and between
the two segments of the housing market—renter-occupied properties and owner-occupied properties. The gross flows between these two segments are four times larger than the net flows. From a secular perspective, housing turnover exhibits a hump-shaped pattern between 1970 and 2000, which this paper attributes to changes in the age composition of the U.S. population. At higher frequencies, housing turnover is procyclical and tends to lead the business cycle and real house prices.   

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