Category Archives: Slow Recovery
Will the Real “Secular Stagnation Thesis” Please Stand Up
Last Thursday I published an oped in the Wall Street Journal criticizing the new “secular stagnation” view as put forth by Larry Summers in a talk at an IMF conference in November. The topic was also the focus of debate at … Continue reading
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Two Amazing Charts
Research by Christopher Erceg and Andrew Levin is providing solid evidence that the decline in the labor force participation rate since 2007 has been due to cyclical factors–the recession and slow recovery–rather than to demographic factors. In other words, the … Continue reading
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Krugman’s Slack
In a piece yesterday, Paul Krugman disagrees with my assessment that there was more overheating than slack in the economy in the years leading up to the 2007-09 recession and financial crisis. That assessment was one part of a broader … Continue reading
Posted in Financial Crisis, Slow Recovery
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The Problem is Policy Not a Secular Decline in the Real Interest Rate
Larry Summers’ recent talk on what ails the US economy at the November 8 IMF conference is getting a lot of attention. I first heard Larry present his argument at the October 1 Brookings-Hoover conference organized by Martin Baily and me, and … Continue reading
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The Uncertainty Debate: Now a Hot Research Topic
The impact of uncertainty—in particular policy uncertainty—is a hot topic of debate in the press and the blogosphere. So the Dallas Fed decided to hold a conference last week to explore the issue. Nick Bloom of Stanford, Tom Fomby of … Continue reading
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With Better Policy, the Recovery Could Have Been V-Shaped
Some are still arguing that the prolonged slow recovery from the deep recession of 2007-09 was to be expected. Fast rebounds, or V-shaped recoveries, are a thing of the past, they argue, citing the recovery from the 2001 recession as … Continue reading
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My Take on the Middle-Out View
Here is my Wall Street Journal column. If you’re interested in the of path of incomes year by year, the chart below shows real income growth for the 90% and 10% income groups. The data come from Emanuel Saez’s web … Continue reading
Posted in Regulatory Policy, Slow Recovery
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Detecting the Source of Our Recent Poor Economic Performance
I have been arguing that highly discretionary (versus rules-based) macro policy provides the best explanation for generally poor macroeconomic performance, such as recent years, in comparison with periods of good performance, such as the 1980s and 1990s. This was the … Continue reading
Posted in Financial Crisis, Monetary Policy, Slow Recovery
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What to Call This Very Slow Recovery?
Economists love the word “Great” for significant economic events—such as The Great Depression—probably using it too much. I’m as guilty as anyone. I used the terms Great Inflation and Great Disinflation for the late 1960s and 1970s inflation and its … Continue reading
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Crawling Along
It wasn’t any fun updating my charts this morning with the new data released this week. None of the charts looked better and some looked worse. The EKG chart showing real GDP growth quarter-by-quarter over the decades remains as tragic … Continue reading
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Economics One 