The Unassuming Economist

The latest IMF’s Commodity Review was presented at the MENA Industrial Gas Conference 2013. On my presentation, Rob Cockerill tweeted:

• “The message here is firstly that the advanced economies in the west, particularly the US and Europe, have to be very nimble in their policy making. Secondly, if countries who have benefited from China’s growth in the past fail to diversify, they will be vulnerable.”

• “Thirdly, don’t get carried away by the shale gale – the numbers do not translate into huge income gains in the US and therefore won’t have huge impact elsewhere. It might have huge impact for companies, but not countries.”

• “US incomes go up, by just a little over 1% after 12-13 years, there is very little additional employment generated from this, and domestic demand goes up by about 1.5% – we’re not talking about big changes in the US. Which means, we are not talking about big changes in the rest of the world either.”
• “We revise our forecast every three months, and what you can see here is that we have revised down our global forecast slightly, and we have also revised this down for 2014.”
• “This is due to some revisions within our outlook of developing and emerging economies. If you break down within the emerging markets, we’ve really marked down Russia, India and China, a little bit. The BRICs are areas where we are seeing softness, more than we did three months ago.”

Labour mobility is one of the keys to a successful currency union – be it within or across nations. This column discusses new evidence showing that the shock-absorbing role of migration has increased in Europe and declined in the US. During the Great Recession, European migration remained high – although not high enough given the vast differences across the Eurozone. Overall, Europe has strengthened this essential adjustment mechanism. Read the full column here. 

Davide Furceri presented our joint work (with Daniel Leigh and Larry Ball) on the impacts of fiscal consolidation–sometimes referred to in the blogosphere as ‘austerity’–at a G-20 seminar in Buenos Aires. See the presentation and prepared text of the talk.

The IMF, Dallas Fed, and the JMCB are holding a conference on “Housing, Stability and the Macroeconomy: International Perspectives”. The program is available here. Stijn Claessens’s presentation gives an excellent overview of the state of the housing markets and policy issues.

At Rice University today, continuing my mission to keep Okun’s Law alive. Art Okun must be smiling down on me. See the presentation here.