Harvard economist; former Chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers. Posts timely analysis on inflation, wages, interest rates, and macro policy.
A fun(?) 🧵 on how nerdy government accounting rules had a big impact on Q4 GDP. And how they reflect how wasteful the 43-day government shutdown was. TL;DR: Small reduction in nominal federal spending in Q4. But a big decline in what we got for our dollars. So real down a lot.
After this week's employment & inflation data it is starting to look like the elusive soft landing may finally happen. Would be the first indisputable US post-WW II soft landing. We've had false hopes before dashed by the underlying economic dynamics &...

Core CPI inflation rose during the month of January. But it fell and was relatively muted over longer periods of time--although still some concern the numbers a bit lower due to shutdown-related quirks. Annual rates: 1 month: 3.3% 6 months: 2.5% 12 months: 2.5%

CBO is mostly dismissive of the effects of AI on productivity growth (overly so IMHO). They expect *slowing* potential labor force productivity as the modest AI boost to TFP is swamped by the reduction in capital services. I would take the over...

On the surface a strong jobs report (130K jobs & unemployment falls to 4.3%). And just about every detail makes that stronger: participation up, involuntary part-time down, hours up, wages up. The mystery of strong GDP and weak jobs is being resolved...

The ECI data out this morning is consistent with the thesis that underlying inflation is around 2.5%. And labor market looseness suggests that is more likely to go down than up. Wages ex volatile incentive pay have been steadily growing at...