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It is remarkable but true that per capita US economic growth has hewed close to a trendline of 2% per year for the last 150 years. Here’s a recent figure showing this pattern from Charles Jones in his paper “The Outlook for Long-Term Economic Growth,” as prepared for the annual symposium at Jackson Hole hosted … Continue reading The Remarkable Steadiness of US Economic Growth
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The World Development Report is one of the flagship annual reports for the World Bank: for 2023, the theme is “Migrants, Refugees, and Societies.” The report defies a simple summary, but here are a few key points. The World Bank defines “migrants” as those who are living outside the country of their nationality: thus, someone … Continue reading Some Economics of Global Migration: WDR ’23
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The “electrification” agenda is the idea that the move away from fossil fuels and carbon emissions can happen via electricity: that is, generate carbon-free electricity and then use it to replace fossil fuels. But in-between the massive increase in electricity generation that would be needed and the uses of that electricity in homes, cars, and … Continue reading The Utilities That Will Need to Carry out Electrification: Governance Issues
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Traditionally, the basic US data on issues like employment/unemployment and family income are derived from government surveys: that is, either people are called on the phone or sent forms, or both, and their responses are tallied. There are obviously problems with this approach: for example, if you are receiving government benefits, but also have a … Continue reading As Survey Responses Drop, Where Can the Economic Data Come From?
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It’s a standard story at this point: work-from-home seems to be establishing itself as commonplace in many companies–at least in the “hybrid” form where many or most workers come into the office 3-4 days each week, but work from home the remaining time. For many workers, part of the benefit is avoiding a commute to … Continue reading Earning the Commute: Effects of the Pandemic on Real Estate
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David A. Price carries out an “Interview” with Melissa Kearney, subtitled “On the American fertility decline, the role of social norms, and the link between single-parent households and economic gaps” (Econ Focus: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Third Quarter 2023, pp. 16-20). Here are a few comments that caught my eye: What is “two-parent privilege”? … Continue reading Interview with Melissa Kearney: Two-Parent Privilege
The post Interview with Melissa Kearney: Two-Parent Privilege first appeared on Conversable Economist.

“Remittances” refers to when someone migrates to another country, works and earns money, and then sends some of that money back to people in their country of origin. In effect, some countries both exports goods and services, and receive payment from buyers in other countries, but also export worker, and receive payment from other countries. … Continue reading Remittances: They Just Keep Rising
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In the United States, we naturally celebrate the Labor Day holiday with a holiday from work. While this may be counterintuitive for others, economists have long see the price of labor and leisure as intimately intertwined. Although prices are often stated in terms of money, which is a useful convenience, the true price of anything … Continue reading When the Time Price of Leisure Rises: The Linder Theorem
The post When the Time Price of Leisure Rises: The Linder Theorem first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Considerable evidence has been suggesting for some time now that children suffered learning loss from the K-12 during the pandemic. From a research perspective, it’s trickier to demonstrate exactly why children suffered such losses. School closures are an obvious possibility, and probably also part of the answer. But the other disruptions of the pandemic to … Continue reading Learning Losses During the Pandemic: Reviewing the Evidence
The post Learning Losses During the Pandemic: Reviewing the Evidence first appeared on Conversable Economist.

It’s well-known (although it’s not clear anyone wants to do anything about it) that US budget deficits and government debt took a big jump during the Great Recession from 2007-9, then another big jump during the pandemic recession, and are projected to rise steadily in the middle-term as an aging US population leads to higher … Continue reading For the US and Global Economy, What Pathways to Reduce Government Debt?
The post For the US and Global Economy, What Pathways to Reduce Government Debt? first appeared on Conversable Economist.

I have written from time to time over the years about concerns that the number of start-up firms in the US economy has been stagnant (for example, here, here and here). This is a matter of general concern, because start-up firms are often the ones providing a jolt of new goods and services, new jobs, … Continue reading Is the US Economy Seeing an Upsurge of New Firms?
The post Is the US Economy Seeing an Upsurge of New Firms? first appeared on Conversable Economist.

I sometimes say that one difference between those who have been trained as economists and normal human beings is that economist don’t believe in real people, but instead believe in statistical people. My point is that normal humans tend to reason from examples of particular people: perhaps a person who lost their job, or a … Continue reading Real People, Statistical People, and the Probability Grid
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Mitchell List and Kurt Schuler serve as interlocutors in “An Interview with James D. Gwartney on His Life and Work in Economics” (August 2023 (Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health and the Study of Business Enterprise, SAE #238, August 2023). The interview offers an in-depth overview of his pathway to and within economics. … Continue reading Interview with James Gwartney: Personal Choices and Public Choice
The post Interview with James Gwartney: Personal Choices and Public Choice first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Back around 2000, oh so long ago, e-commerce was 0.8% of total retail sales. Now, it’s about 15%. One result is that the shopping space in bricks-and-mortar regional shopping malls has declined sharply. In the next decade or so, could the new work-from-home patterns lead to a similar decline for commercial office space? Tom Doolittle … Continue reading E-commerce and Regional Malls, Work-from-Home and Commercial Office Space
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The “socialist calculation debate” happened in the 1920s and 1930s. The economics profession was developing a vision of the economy as made up of prices and quantities for goods and services, based on supply and demand. Socialist economists (for example, Oskar Lange) sought to build on this framework. Their argument was along the following lines: … Continue reading Will AI Make a Planned Economy Feasible? The Socialist Calculation Debate Revisited
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