Not Quite Last
Tapped points out the relatively small share of North Carolina households with access to a broadband Internet connection.
Policy Points
Around The Dial – May 23, 2011
Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
- TaxVox lays out what is known about small business taxes.
- Calculated Risk looks at mortgage delinquencies by state.
- Bo Cutter explains who wins and loses in “a debt ceiling showdown.”
- Simon Johnson isn’t impressed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
- Macroblog thinks about tax reform.
- Economist’s View points out what drives the deficit.
Who Gets The Jobs
Mike Konczal thinks about who gets hired in America today.
It’s a very tough market out there for the large number of long-term unemployed. But the idea that they are ultimately unemployable doesn’t jump out at me from this data. If monetary or fiscal policy generated more jobs, this new unemployment-to-employment by duration data tells us that a historically disproportional number of jobs would go to the long-term unemployed, and that there is plenty of slack among all duration segments for more jobs.
…
I’m still playing with this data and making up my mind on some of these conclusions, so I’m very interested in what you all think. But this is making me think that we don’t need job retraining, mobility support, or other magic tricks to help the long-term unemployed before we exhaust the simple mechanism of creating more jobs through a mix of monetary and fiscal policy.
Explaining Dollar Policy
Writing in The New York Times, Christina Romer explains why a weak dollar can be good.
But in a depressed economy, it isn’t so clear that a strong dollar is desirable. A weaker dollar means that our goods are cheaper relative to foreign goods. That stimulates our exports and reduces our imports. Higher net exports raise domestic production and employment. Foreign goods are more expensive, but more Americans are working. Given the desperate need for jobs, on net we are almost surely better off with a weaker dollar for a while.
Around The Dial – 5/20/11
Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
- Simon Johnson handicaps the race for the IMF.
- Beat the Press points out the harm economists do in the developing world.
- The New York Times reports on poor job prospects for college grads.
- Robert Skidelsky sees “lumpy labor.”
- Citizen Cohn looks at the recovery in the Midwest and finds it lacking.
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