Incredibly Simple Economics

There are more than 300 Ph.D. Economists working on staff for the Federal Reserve. The central bank tells us that they “represent an exceptionally diverse range of interests and specific areas of expertise”. Perhaps, but they are all Ph.D. Economists, aren’t they? These highly educated people cover a broad range of topics, for sure, and all from the same starting point and perspective.

Believe it or not, the Fed has an entire research section devoted to Prices and Wages. It’s difficult to process given for four years we’ve heard from FOMC officials about the link between prices and wages starting from the unemployment rate. And we are still waiting for that forecast link to show itself.

That’s the problem when Ph.D.’s are advising Ph.D.’s about conclusions they’ve already drawn ahead of time. Economists may be diverse in their interests but their ideology prevents any sort of honest inquiry of discovery. Echo chamber.

The Section’s Chief is Dr. Kristin Hubrich, with Matteo Luciani her Chief Economist. Dr. Luciani’s current research topic, according to the Federal Reserve, isn’t the relationship between business profitability and wage growth, thus inflation in or out of a Phillips Curve setting, rather it is Non-Stationary Dynamic Factor Models. But of course, it is.

They feel the need to build better models because some of those we have now aren’t sufficient. I don’t mean the Fed’s models which have missed every big economic swing since they were first introduced, rather Dr. Luciani takes issue with other statistical constructions like GDP and GDI.

According to a paper he co-authored with Matteo Barigozzi of the London School of Economics for the Federal Reserve Board earlier this year, over the past few years GDP and GDI together may have been understating growth. If the two Matteo’s are right, there was little or no downturn in 2015-16, no labor market slowdown thereafter, and the unemployment rate isn’t just a fanciful picture of an incomplete denominator.