Last year’s review titled “2021 Year in Review: Cleaning up what Trump did”. This year, with the return of rational decision-making, it’s time to undo the stupidity.
January: Some doubt whether there is a monopoly in the labor market.
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/01/employer-power-in-labor-markets-measured
February: The return of “Drill, Baby, Drill” works on gas — just as specious as its original incarnation.
Marching: Why do people who don’t understand the textbook analysis of tariffs debate tariffs?
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/03/on-tariffs-and-large-country-assumptions
April: One thing is certain, the damage done to the global economy by Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine will end in May!
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/04/fantasies-of-the-past
possible: “Drill, baby, drill!” Reverted.
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/05/drill-baby-drill-2022-edition
June: It is OK to use statistically insignificant parameter estimates for policy analysis – just bury this in the appendix! Another wild story about a purported research center— Badger Institute.
July: What happens if you use the rule of thumb of two consecutive quarters to define a U.S. recession…
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/07/erasing-the-2001-recession
August: is something Sue Would it be much better if the Fed leadership was all white and male, as some are claiming?
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/08/when-devoid-of-policy-proposals-attack-diversity
September: Is BEA (or FRED) hiding data on real corporate profits?
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/09/rumors-of-the-vast-data-conspiracy-continue
October: Is LNG the same as NG?
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/10/lng-contribution-to-goods-exports-balance-of-payments-basis
November: Just because asset prices are back to pre-shock levels doesn’t mean the shock has no effect.
December: Don’t be indifferent to basic math.
One point that has been debated over and over this year – what is the official definition of a U.S. recession?One argument is the reduction in vehicle miles traveled [1] [2] the other is that it is home atmosphere.or Unemployment Insurance Claims. or its family employment rather than established.Interestingly, all of these views are made by the same person (I thank them for their comments, as they provided material for my Economics Statistics course). This is the last picture of my 2022H1 recession thesis, using the latest available output data and keeping in mind that all these series will be revised again and again.
figure 1: GDP (bold black), GDO (tan), GDP+ (green), GDPNow in Q4 (red squares), Goldman Sachs (12/23) (teal triangles), all in billions Ch.2012$ , SAAR. GDP+ level calculated by iterating Q4 2019 GDP (when GDP and GDO match). Lavender shading represents the peak and trough of a hypothetical recession in the first half of 2022. Source: BEA (3rd Edition Q4), Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (12/22), Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (12/23), Goldman Sachs (12/23), and the authors’ calculations.
So, Happy New Years everyone. Have smarter economics/statistics/policy discussions by 2023.
