Jobless Recovery Interview

My interview with Joy Cardin is here.

Transplants

UW Hospital has improved kidney transplant outcomes enough to get referrals from OptumHealth again. Story here.

Search

Question: What can search predict?

Answer: We [Goel et al.] conclude that in the absence of other data sources, or where small improvements in predictive performance are material, search queries may provide a useful guide to the near future.

Vital Signs

Economic vital signs for Milwaukee.

Smart Readers

So I do have readers, and not all my comments are spam. Milton provides an excellent comment to my previous post on Pizza Hut gift cards. As Milton notes, paying extra is not at all irrational in this case because shipping is included in the ebay auction whereas it is not if you buy directly from Pizza Hut online. You could drive to a Pizza Hut but depending on where you are and how much you value your time that transaction cost is easily larger than the 2.50 extra the gift card costs. Of course to an economist this is still inefficient. After all you could just give the gift of 25.00 in cash. That way there is no loss in the transfer.  But then you might call me a scrooge. I wouldn't be the first economist to embrace that label.

Questions and Answers

I have long wondered why if China's exchange rate policy (ie. their peg) is so far away from the "true" market exchange rate, then how has that monetary expansion not lead to a rapid pick up in Chinese inflation? James Hamilton offers an explanation. Its there, just hidden in relative prices:

So why hasn't domestic inflation in China undone the stimulus from the exchange rate? I've been forming the opinion that U.S. inflationary dynamics may be more governed by relative price changes than was historically the case, and raise the possibility that China could be ground zero for this phenomenon. Specifically, I'm wondering if the pent-up inflationary pressure takes the form of inducing consumers and businesses in China to try to acquire any hard assets they can, with the result that rather than overall inflation we see remarkable increases in the relative prices of such items. I've commented before on this interesting account from last September:

Irrational?

Here: