Tag: recession

Economists and manifestos

I’ve had a few conversations over the past few weeks about how extremely long the academic publishing cycle is, particularly for economists. Combined with the lack of cohesive response to the financial crisis and 2010’s crisis of conscience at the AEA meetings regarding disclosure of funding sources, economists aren’t looking so good at the moment.

To address at least one of these concerns, a group of economists has put together a Manifesto for Economic Sense, which essentially calls on the fiscal and monetary policy-making bodies of the United States and Europe to kick things into high gear in order to end  “massive suffering” being inflicted. A rather impressive list of economists has signed it and though I wouldn’t call it beautiful prose (we’re economists after all), I’m a fan.

In short: The economy is suffering from lack of demand–companies aren’t borrowing or hiring, people don’t have jobs and thus aren’t buying things, which becomes more and more problematic (one person’s spending is another person’s income). Monetary policy is exhausted and fiscal policy is politically motivated and crappy, so let’s agree to focus on facts and push for credible, reasonable economic policy that will promote job growth, confidence and resilience. Sounds good to me.

h/t @JustinWolfers (Again, I don’t do everything he tells me to do!)

A weak (or at least relatively weaker) recovery for women

As the job numbers for 2012 keep coming out, economists and pundits are heralding a recovery. Employment is increasing, the unemployment rate is falling, and monthly revisions to those numbers give even greater cause for optimism.

Economist Betsey Stevenson was quick to note about last month’s numbers that job leavers were overtaking layoffs. Even regular people (who don’t watch these numbers like a hawk and compete to be the first to tweet them) are becoming more optimistic. It takes guts to leave a job you don’t like; it’s a lot easier to do if you think there is another one down the line.

But just like the recession hit groups unevenly, so too is the recovery having differential effects. Notably, women aren’t going back to work as quickly as men. The Pew Research Center came out with a report today on minority groups. The whole thing is worth a read, but notably:

Men experienced greater setbacks in the recession, losing twice as many jobs as women from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009. In the recovery, however, men have gained four times as many jobs as women. The weakness of the recovery for women is underscored by the fact that they represent the only group among those examined in this report for whom employment growth lagged behind population growth from 2009 to 2011.

So, naturally, the question becomes why? Are women slower to return to work because there are fewer jobs available to them? Are they choosing to stay unemployed to remain at home with their families? Are they more picky about what jobs they should take having achieved some modicum of success before the recession?

I think it would be interesting to compare numbers for women in general and numbers for men with only a high school education–the group which is generally cited as having fared worst in the recession.

Update: Casey Mulligan of UChicago goes into the marriage aspect of the recession part of this phenomenon a bit more deeply over on the NYT Economix blog.

What’s the matter with Kansas?, redux

I saw mutterings that a repeal of domestic violence laws might actually take place in Kansas a few weeks ago, but I had a hard time believing that it might actually come to pass. It did, and now the mainstream news is covering it. I’m not a lawyer, but I have to believe this violates equal protection clause of the Constitution. It’s unbelievable to me that anyone would use the economy to justify picking and choosing which crimes to prosecute. Beyond that, though, I’m astounded that even if you are able to justify your actions so callously–as those in charge in Topeka are doing–you cannot see that it’s incredibly short-sighted to repeal domestic violence laws. You create such perverse incentives–increase in battering, reduction in reporting, decrease in intervention by police, family members, neighbors. Haven’t we established that domestic violence is extremely costly? To individuals, to society, to workplaces, to the insurance system, to children. Endangering women and children is not the way to make a point.