LeeCoppock.com
Econ News You Can Use
Category: Economic Growth
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In September, Eurostat waved a magic wand and increased the GDP in the European Union by 3.53 percent overnight. That is a full year's worth of very solid growth. But it didn't make Europeans any wealthier because it was actually just due to a new definition of the way GDP is counted. Eurostat (the economic…
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Real GDP grew 3.5% in the third quarter, according to the advance estimate released by the BEA. A big piece of the growth came from net exports (exports minus imports). Exports rose by 7.8% and imports fell by 2.4%. Since net exports makes up a very small piece of total GDP, this contributed 1.3%…
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The BEA now estimates that real GDP grew by 4.6% in the second quarter. This revision means that the most recent quarter saw the fastest real GDP growth since 2006. That's a long time. Before we get too excited, let's remember that this comes on the heels of negative growth in the first quarter. The…
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The third (and final) GDP estimate for the third quarter revised growth up yet again, this time to 4.1%. This figure indicates that growth was stronger in the third quarter than at any time since the end of 2011. The graph below shows quarterly growth rates since 2003. Notice that 4.1% is larger than all…
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The latest jobs report shows the unemployment rate dropped to 7.0% in November, the lowest level in five years. In addition, the economy added 203,000 more jobs. The last time the unemployment rate was this low was in the worst period of the Great Recession. During the fourth quarter of 2008, the unemployment rate climbed…
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Real GDP grew at 2.8% in the third quarter of 2013, according to the advance estimate released today by the BEA. This growth rate is very close to the long-run average growth rate for U.S. real GDP, which is 3%. The graphic below plots quarterly GDP growth rates since 2003. If this number holds up, it…
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Today's Detroit News has a nice article on both the development and impact of the assembly line in car production. Henry Ford brought assembly line technology to the car industry in 1913. Before the assembly line, cars were luxury items, affordable only for the very wealthy. Ford's innovation reduced costs dramatically and allowed for cheaper car prices,…
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One of my pet peeves is the myopic view that our most recent recession (the Great Recession) is comparable to the contractions of the 1930s (the Great Depression). Photographs from the Depression era are very helpful in dispelling this misconception. Today's Mail Online published a series of poignant Walker Evans photos from the 1930s, which illustrate…
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Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) revised upward its estimates for future U.S. federal debt levels. As the graph below shows, the CBO projects the federal debt held by the public to reach 100% of GDP in 2038. How bad is this news? Just last year, the CBO predicted that this debt measure would actually…
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The Daily Telegraph offers one of the most vivid illustrations of how institutions affect economic growth. It does this by showing photos of Shanghai in 1987 and in 2013. The contrast is stunning. Start with the 2013 view of Shanghai, the financial center, or "New York City", of China. Now, compare it to the view…
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