Finance Basic To Advance Level Knowledge

We are replaying our special Christmas podcast. The guest are Anna Goeddeke and Laura Birg, two economists from Germany. Together they coauthored an article in Economic Inquiry titled “ Christmas Economics—a Sleigh Ride ” that surveys the literature on the economics of Christmas. We covered a number of interesting topics like the seasonal business cycle, the deadweight loss of Christmas, and charitable giving during the holidays.  Below is an excerpt from an earlier post when the episode first ran that touches on on the business cycle issues surrounding Christmas: The seasonal business cycle discussion was particularly fascinating for me. There is a literature that starts with Barksy and Miron (1989) (ungated version) that shows most of the variation in aggregate economic measures like GDP comes from seasonal fluctuations. Yet most macroeconomists, myself included, typically start our analysis with seasonally-adjusted data. Here is a Barky and Miron summarizing their fin...

From a new working paper by Janna E. Johnson, Morris M. Kleiner: Occupational licensure, one of the most significant labor market regulations in the United States, may restrict the interstate movement of workers. We analyze the interstate migration of 22 licensed occupations. Using an empirical strategy that controls for unobservable characteristics that drive long-distance moves, we find that the between-state migration rate for individuals in occupations with state-specific licensing exam requirements is 36 percent lower relative to members of other occupations. Members of licensed occupations with national licensing exams show no evidence of limited interstate migration. Not only does this development have implications for workers, it also has macroeconomic implications. For the decline in interstate labor mobility, caused in part by occupational licensing, is making the U.S. economy less of an optimal currency area. From an earlier post : So why does the decline in labor mo...

I recently had Bill Barnett on my podcast to discuss his work on Divisia monetary aggregates. Below the fold is a tweetstorm by Josh Hendrickson on why we should care about this work. [ View the story "Why You Should Care about Divisia Monetary Aggregates: Josh Hendrickson Edition" on Storify ]

Doug Irwin's new book on the history of U.S. trade policy, Clashing Over Commerce , is now available for purchase . You may recall that I interviewed him about the book in this recent podcast . The podcast is embedded below. My colleague Dan Griswold has a nice review of the book over at National Review.  I learned a lot from the book and my conversation with Doug. I highly recommend it.