Tag: North Dakota

North Dakota Retail Share in 2015

Economics, North Dakota, Uncategorized

Continuing the look at economic differences across the state of North Dakota, today we turn to look at retail. One of the more aggravating things when you try to look at data at the county level are the redactions of information due to privacy concerns. I am not so much complaining about privacy rules are just venting that it makes the analysis less than complete because we do not know the situation for all counties. Here is what North Dakota looked like in 2015:

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Probabilistic Thinking & Local Economic Development

Economics, North Dakota, Uncategorized
One of the things I try to encourage in all students and develop in all my classes is an appreciation for probability. The inclusion of this is obvious in a statistics class, but it is something vital for understanding the world around us, particularly when it comes to economic and business policy. For those that listened to my show with JT at the end of September much of this may seem repetitious, but it is important enough that it bears repeating.

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Initial Unemployment Claims, ND

Economics, North Dakota, Uncategorized

The discussion surrounding the oil boom and broader performance in the North Dakota economy tends to focus on variables such as employment, unemployment, and labor force. Nothing wrong with that really; these three measures provide important insights into labor markets and, at least indirectly, broader economic performance. There is a different measure, available with a much higher frequency and likely more useful to the broader discussions of economic performance: unemployment insurance claims.

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North Dakota Metro Area Growth

Economics, GDP, North Dakota, Uncategorized

It is a fun time to be an economist with an interest in data, and it has nothing to do with election policies because, as we all know, those have nothing to do with data anyway (zing!). The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its GDP by Metro Area report this week (available here). The first question many would have is: why do we care about a report that covers 2015, that is in the past?

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Poverty in North Dakota

Economics, North Dakota, Population, Uncategorized

The Census Bureau releases updated data (2015 data) on poverty tomorrow so it seems prudent to review the data for North Dakota now. Poverty is an important topic, and intimately connected to the debate over income and wealth inequality that are all the rage right now. The situation in North Dakota is somewhat interesting, and how we talk about poverty is important. This discussion refers to table S1701 reporting the 5-year ACS estimates.

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Manufacturing in the Dakotas

Economics, North Dakota, Uncategorized

There are numerous debates about the relative importance of industries in the Dakotas, as there should be. The constant re-examination of the relative position of industries means people are paying attention. In the last several years the main focus of the debate was the relative supremacy of agriculture versus oil. That debate is on the back burner for now, somewhat, with most commodities in something of a down cycle.

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Good forecasting is not about getting it right the first time

Forecasting, North Dakota, Uncategorized

I was a guest on the Jay Thomas Show on WDAY radio out of Fargo today. The guest host was Rob Port from the SayAnythingBlog, Forum Communications Op-Ed pages, TV appearances, and probably a bunch of stuff I am forgetting. He might be getting close to the title of “King of All North Dakota Media” at this point. The topic was forecasting. Yes I know. Friday afternoon in the summer and we were talking forecasting. I do not apologize for it, since I am pretty much always thinking about statistical models.

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