Over the last few weeks there were multiple calls to the radio show regarding the Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate moves and where they are going. There is a general questioning of why the Fed is moving to raise rates now.
Continue reading The Fed and Normalization
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University issued their 2018 rankings of states by fiscal condition. You can find the North Dakota discussion here. As a point of reference North Dakota was ranked in the top 5 each of the previous three years. The current ranking puts the state squarely in the average category.
Continue reading State Fiscal Rankings-ND #19
I really really want to read the USMCA trade deal. I realize I am one of the few that does, but the fact is that North Dakota is a state that looked to lose a great deal from the trade war since this state had the highest per capita trade surplus with China, Mexico, and Canada. But I cannot find a full version of the agreement in a single PDF, only each individual section. This makes text searching for my key terms almost impossible. But then I sit back and realize that the document is not yet available in Spanish and I say, maybe my convenience is not the biggest deal. There is a whole country that is part of the deal that cannot get the document in their native language right now, just in English, from the US Trade Representative’s website. I mean Article 34 Section 8 says, “The English, French, and Spanish texts of this Agreement are equally authentic.” It says nothing about their existence I suppose.
Continue reading USMCA and ND
It has been a busy week for sure with Homecoming and the Potato Bowl parade here at the University of North Dakota. The Department of Economics & Finance also hosted two presentations by Robert Hall of Stanford, one of a research paper for the faculty and graduate students, and one to the University community at large. Along with that I wrapped up a proposal for a paper presentation at the Population Association of American meetings in 2019 on the oil boom in North Dakota and county level fertility rates. So really busy.
Continue reading Busy Week & Switching to Gutenberg
Numerous callers over the past few weeks mentioned that age increases are not really keeping pace with inflation. This is something mentioned significantly at the national level too. As a result I used the CPI to adjust the wage data from the post last (found here) week about wage comparisons to get a sense of the curve shapes after the adjustment. I put them all in terms of 200Q4 level. The adjustment is the same for the different regions so there is not added value in the comparison of the different regions really, it is more the comparison of the nominal and real values.