Econ70

Almost forty years ago, on 10/9/81, the interest rate on a 30-yr mortgage peaked at an amazing 18.63%. Today that rate is just 3.04%, a decline of 83.7%! Conversely, today, the price for a thousand board feet of lumber on…

In Israel, where per capita Covid-19 injection rates are highest, 62% of the adult population have received at least one vaccination (we’re at 50.4%), daily cases/million residents have fallen from a peak of 952 in mid-January (we peaked at 770…

Last week we learned March retail sales jumped 9.8% M-o-M, their best showing since 5/20 and second best showing ever. In addition, consumer confidence hit its highest level since the pandemic began, while first-time claims for unemployment hit their lowest…

The Friday File: At 4 feet 3 inches in length and weighing in at 49 lbs, Darius, a Flemish Giant Rabbit, has held the Guinness World Record’s largest rabbit title since April 6, 2010. Unfortunately, this leporine recently vanished from…

Unsurprisingly, researchers find that raising unemployment benefits by $600/week last spring reduced job applications. But despite the higher wages that workers might have demanded, and the reduced job search conducted, job vacancies did not rise! This suggests the generous unemployment…

In a clever study, researchers compared municipal bond yields in counties with three or fewer local newspapers before and after a newspaper closure, to counties with three or fewer newspapers that didn’t experience a paper closure. They found that three…

Since 1992, there have been four instances when Y-o-Y headline inflation, as measured by the CPI, rose by nearly 4% or more; in 2000, from late 2005 to mid-2006, from Jan-September 2008, when inflation reached 5.5%, and in September 2011.…

While higher corporate taxes are unlikely to boost corporate investment, they reduce it less than you think. Absent a corporate income tax, firms borrow to invest in plant and equipment if the return on investment exceeded the interest rate. By…

The Friday File: The price of ketchup packets has risen 13% since 1/20, as their market share has exploded at the expense of tabletop bottles. Catsup is the most consumed table sauce in the US with about 300,000 tons sold…

The economy continues to roar back to life. The Institute for Supply Management’s services index rose to a record high of 63.7 in March, and in the process blew away the previous high of 60.9 of 10/18. This is great…