A Discussion of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty‑First Century: Does More Capital Increase Inequality?
My aim in the second post of this series on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is to talk about the economist’s research accomplishment in reconstructing capital-output ratios for developed countries from the Industrial Revolution to the present and using them to explain why wealth inequality will rise in developed countries.
A Discussion of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty‑First Century: By How Much Is r Greater than g?
Maxim Pinkovskiy describes the arguments that Thomas Piketty makes to conclude that wealth inequality will rise and that global capital taxation is needed to stop it, and offers a critical discussion of the arguments.
Just Released: U.S. Economy in a Snapshot
The Research Group at the New York Fed would like to announce the publication of US Economy in a Snapshot[RR1] .
The Myth of First‑Quarter Residual Seasonality
The current policy debate is influenced by the possibility that the first-quarter GDP data were affected by “residual seasonality.”
Is Cheaper Oil Good News or Bad News for U.S. Economy?
Oil prices have declined substantially since the summer of 2014.
Why Are Interest Rates So Low?
Marco Del Negro, Marc Giannoni, Matthew Cocci, Sara Shahanaghi, and Micah Smith Second post in the series In a recent series of blog posts, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Ben Bernanke, has asked the question: “Why are interest rates so low?” (See part 1, part 2, and part 3.) He refers, of […]
The FRBNY DSGE Model Forecast–April 2015
Marco Del Negro, Marc Giannoni, Matthew Cocci, Sara Shahanaghi, and Micah Smith First in a two-part series There are various types of economic forecasts, such as judgmental forecasts or model-based forecasts. In this post, we provide an update of the economic forecasts implied by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s (FRBNY) dynamic stochastic general […]
Just Released: The New York Fed Staff Forecast, May 2015
Today, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) is hosting the spring meeting of its Economic Advisory Panel (EAP). As has become custom at this meeting, FRBNY staff are presenting their forecast for U.S. growth, inflation, and unemployment through the end of 2016. Following the presentation, members of the EAP, which consists of leading economists in academia and the private sector, are asked to discuss the staff forecast. Such feedback helps the staff evaluate the assumptions and reasoning underlying the forecast and the key risks to it. Subjecting the staff forecast to periodic evaluation is also important because it informs the staff’s discussions with New York Fed President William Dudley about economic conditions. In that same spirit, we are sharing a short summary of the staff forecast in this post. For more detail, please see the material from the EAP meeting on our website.
U.S. Potential Economic Growth: Is It Improving with Age?
Samuel Kapon and Joseph Tracy The contribution of labor input to the potential GDP growth rate for the United States has changed over time. We decompose this contribution into two components: the size of the adult population and the average demographically adjusted employment rate. We find that these two components in the late 1960s and […]
Credit Supply and the Housing Boom
There is no consensus among economists as to what drove the rise of U.S. house prices and household debt in the period leading up to the recent financial crisis. In this post, we argue that the fundamental factor behind that boom was an increase in the supply of mortgage credit, which was brought about by securitization and shadow banking, along with a surge in capital inflows from abroad. This argument is based on the interpretation of four macroeconomic developments between 2000 and 2006 provided by a general equilibrium model of housing and credit.
RSS Feed
Follow Liberty Street Economics