Results for “Janet Yellen” 30 found
Interrupting Janet Yellen
How prevalent is gender bias among U.S. politicians? We analyze the transcripts of every congressional hearing attended by the chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2001 to 2020 to provide a carefully identified effect of sexism, using Janet Yellen as a bundled treatment. We find that legislators who interacted with both Yellen and at least one other male Fed chair over this period interrupt Yellen more, and interact with her using more aggressive tones. Furthermore, we show that the increase in hostility experienced by Yellen relative to her immediate predecessor and successor are absent among those legislators with daughters. Our results point to the important role of societal biases bleeding into seemingly unrelated policy domains, underscoring the vulnerability of democratic accountability and oversight mechanisms to existing gender norms and societal biases.
That is from a new paper by James Bisbee, Nicolò Fraccaroli, and Andreas Kern. The recurring strength of the daughter effect remains under-discussed in the social sciences!
All via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Famous economists write a letter to Janet Yellen
Here is the letter, they argue for a price cap on Russian oil and gas:
As envisaged by the G7, the price cap would set a maximum price that Russian oil could be traded in conjunction with G7 services. This price, set in dollars, would be substantially below the world price, yet above the marginal cost of production in Russia. To use US, UK, EU, and allied financial services (such as insurance, credit, and payments), market participants will need to attest that all qualifying purchases are at or below this threshold.
Given the importance of participating countries for global finance and for shipping, compliance with this cap will create pressure for a lower price on Russian oil moved by tanker. While we do not expect all trades will be performed under the price cap, its existence should materially increase the bargaining power of private and public sector entities that buy Russian oil.
The price cap maintains economic incentives for Russia to produce current volumes. In April 2020, when the price of the Brent benchmark was close to $20, Russia continued to supply oil to world markets, because that price was above the cost of production in many or most existing Russian oil fields. Russian has little or no available onshore storage, and since shutting down and restarting oil fields is expensive and risky, it was more profitable for Russia to continue producing in the presence of low prices. The price of Brent now is around $96 per barrel, but Russia receives significantly less due to the “Urals discount”. This discount is caused by the perceived stigma of buying Russian products for some customers; they decline to bid for Russian oil, which reduces effective demand and lowers the price that the remaining customers need to pay.
The oil price cap proposal would effectively institutionalize the Urals discount and consequently further lower the dollar value of the Russian government’s primary revenue stream.
Do read the whole thing, the list of signers is on the bottom.
An AI does a CWT between me and “Janet Yellen”
TYLER COWEN: I want to ask you a series of questions about what’s overrated and underrated. It can be in your area of expertise, it could be in life in general, up to you. JANET YELLEN: Sure. TYLER COWEN: Let me start with an easy one. Bitcoin, overrated or underrated? JANET YELLEN: Oh, that’s a tough one. I’m going to say overrated. TYLER COWEN: Why? JANET YELLEN: Well, it doesn’t produce anything. It doesn’t earn any income for anybody. It’s just essentially speculative, people thinking it will be worth more in the future because other people think it will be worth more in the future. And so it’s kind of a bubble. TYLER COWEN: If we think about the Federal Reserve and its role in society, is it overrated, underrated, or properly rated? JANET YELLEN: I think it’s properly rated. We have a very important role in setting monetary policy, which can affect economic activity and employment and inflation. So, I think the public understands that we play an important role. TYLER COWEN: How about the role of the United States in the world economy? Overrated, underrated, or properly rated? JANET YELLEN: Oh, that’s a tough one. I would say we are probably rated about right. We are the largest economy in the world. We are a very important player in the global economy. TYLER COWEN: How about the role of academic economists in society? Overrated, underrated, or properly rated? JANET YELLEN: Oh, that’s a tough one, too. I would say we are probably a bit overrated. We have a lot of smart people and we do good work, but we don’t always get it right. TYLER COWEN: Last one. In terms of your own career, looking back, is there anything you would have done differently? JANET YELLEN: Oh, that’s a tough question. I don’t know. I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had a great career. I’ve loved what I’ve done. I can’t think of anything I would have done differently.
Here is the program (authentication required, you can’t use it), and the work here on feeding the prompts was done by Michael Tolhurst. And here is me with Oscar the Grouch.
Women in Economics: Janet Yellen
Here’s a great new video on Janet Yellen from our team at MRU. In addition to Yellen, the video features Ben Bernanke and Christina Romer, who is tremendous. Other videos in the series are on Anna Schwartz and Elinor Ostrom with more on the way. The video is excellent but my favorite MRU video with Yellen has her in superhero mode.
Instructors, feel free to use these videos in any of your classes. Of course, you can also find these videos integrated with our textbook.
By the way, here is Adams and Yellen’s classic paper on bundling (ungated) and you can find an introduction to bundling in this video.
The Amazing Janet Yellen
The latest video in our Principles of Macroeconomics class at MRUniversity introduces monetary policy and the amazing Janet Yellen. I do hope that she isn’t fired as we shall then have to change some heads.
Bravo to Janet Yellen
Speaking on Capitol Hill Thursday, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen warned lawmakers that as they consider such spending, they should keep an eye on the national debt. Yellen also said that while the economy needed a big boost with fiscal stimulus after the financial crisis, that’s not the case now.
“The economy is operating relatively close to full employment at this point,” she said, “so in contrast to where the economy was after the financial crisis when a large demand boost was needed to lower unemployment, we’re no longer in that state.”
Yellen cautioned lawmakers that if they spend a lot on infrastructure and run up the debt, and then down the road the economy gets into trouble, “there is not a lot of fiscal space should a shock to the economy occur, an adverse shock, that should require fiscal stimulus.”
In other words, lawmakers should consider keeping their powder dry so they have more options whenever the next economic downturn comes along.
Here is the full story. Here is my earlier post on which macroeconomic theories will rise and fall in status because of Donald Trump. She and the Fed were less wise but a mere month ago.
Larry Summers vs. Janet Yellen
Read Paul Krugman, Scott Sumner, Ezra Klein, and others on this. My thinking is simple. Public choice considerations constrain a looser monetary policy with either candidate. Otherwise, it is easier for me to imagine Summers having credibility with a Republican administration, and having a real voice, relative to Yellen. He simply has more right-wing street cred, keeping in mind that Yellen is a former Professor from Berkeley who has never really taken heat from the left, unlike Summers. I think that overall the voice of the Fed within government is a clear positive. The chance of a Republican administration, come the next election, is probably at least forty percent. Thus I would prefer Summers.
How Were So Many Economists So Wrong About the Recession?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, I thought it was time to call out all the Orwellian rewriting of intellectual history going on, so here goes:
As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week: “So many economists were saying there’s no way for inflation to get back to normal without it entailing a period of high unemployment, [or] a recession. And a year ago, I think many economists were saying a recession was inevitable. I’ve never felt there was a solid intellectual basis for making such a prediction.”
Many of those economists may have been relying on the work of … Janet Yellen. Her own (highly regarded) macro research focuses on nominal price and wage stickiness and output-inflation trade-offs, predicting that if there is a significant fall in aggregate demand, employment should also fall, giving rise to a recession. She is also co-author (with many distinguished colleagues) of a well-known paper arguing that there is an output/inflation trade-off even at high rates of inflation.
Economist Christina Romer (often with co-authors) has provided some of the most persuasive evidence that negative monetary policy shocks induce recessions in output and employment. Her work has been especially influential — worthy of a Nobel Prize, in my opinion — because it does not rely on a complicated mathematical model of the economy, and it had been accepted on a bipartisan basis. Paul Krugman has been predicting for most of this year that the recent disinflation would not cause a recession, and he deserves credit for getting this right. Yet he is less keen to tell us that for many years he trumpeted the predictive virtues of old-style Keynesian macroeconomics, using models that predict disinflation will lead to a loss in output and employment.
Krugman has lately further explained his position — complete with unironic headline — suggesting that the untangling of broken supply chains had helped lower the rate of inflation. That point, too, is correct. He didn’t mention that there also has been a massive negative shock to aggregate demand: High rates of M2 growth became slightly negative rates of M2 growth. Fiscal policy peaked and then retreated. The Fed raised interest rates from near-zero levels to the range of 5%, and fairly rapidly. It also sent every possible signal that it was going to be tight with monetary conditions.
…There is a reason that so many economists had been predicting a recession — and it is not because they are out of touch, or repeating talking points from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. They predicted a recession because that is what experts such as Yellen, Krugman, Romer and many others had been teaching for decades. I do not myself presume to have any immunity from the general confusion here, as all along I thought there was a reasonable chance of a recession.
Larry Summers was wrong about the recession, but at least he has been consistent in his application of model-based reasoning, and now somehow he is the whipping boy for having done this. Let’s hope that some historical memory holds and this one does not get swept under the rug…
What I’ve been reading
Ahmet T. Kuru, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison is one of the best books on why Islam fell behind Western Europe. I don’t think it solves the puzzle, but has plenty of good arguments in the “rent-seeking” direction.
Newly published is Daniel B. Klein, Smithian Morals, Amazon link here, some of the essays are with co-authors. Free, open access version is here.
Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein, Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company, is an interesting defense of corporate hierarchy, based on economic reasoning and also a dash of Hayek.
Jamieson Webster, Disorganisation & Sex. Lacanian, yet readable. Recommend to those who think they might care, but it will not convince the unconverted.
There is the interesting Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism, by Shadi Bartsch. Here is my very good CWT with her, in which we discuss the topics of the book a bit.
Pretty good is Jon K. Lauck, The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900.
There is Owen Ullmann, Empathy Economics: Janet Yellen’s Remarkable Rise to Power and Her Drive to Spread Prosperity to All.
And a new libertarian memoir, Murray Sabrin, From Immigrant to Public Intellectual: An American Story.
Dalibor Rohac, Governing the EU in an Age of Division is a classical liberal take on its topic.
How young did the person start?
By the time he was in the sixth grade, Larry [Summers] had created a system to calculate the probability that a baseball team would make it to the playoffs in October based on its performance through the Fourth of July. In 1965 the Philadelphia Bulletin described Summers as the most qualified eleven-year-old oddsmaker in baseball.
That is from the new and very good Jon Hilsenrath book on Janet Yellen.
Price caps on Russian oil and gas
A number of you have written in to ask what I think of the recent economists’ letter to Janet Yellen, proposing such price caps. I don’t disagree with any of their economics, but I am less convinced this is a good idea. This strikes me as a paramount example of what I call “foreign policy first.” There is some chance that Russia initiates a nuclear attack, or takes some other set of drastic steps. Does this price cap raise or lower that chance? I genuinely do not know. And thus for that reason I am agnostic about the policy. The nuclear expected value calculations would seem to outweigh the other aspects of the proposal, and those calculations are beyond my ability to assess with much accuracy.
Often, when I have nothing to say, it is because I do not know exactly what to say.
Under-signaling
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the Biden administration would be prepared to use all its sanctions tools against China if Beijing moved aggressively toward Taiwan.
“I believe we’ve shown we can” impose significant pain on aggressive countries, as evidenced by sanctions against Russia, Yellen told lawmakers Wednesday as she testified before the House Financial Services Committee. “I think you should not doubt our ability and resolve to do the same in other situations.”
Here is the full Bloomberg story. If I were Xi Jinping, I would be heartened and encouraged by that ultimately rather lukewarm threat.
Cash transfers are better than price controls
Really, and yes there is a trade-off at the relevant margin. That is the theme of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
Or consider Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She supports the proposed hike, as she noted in her confirmation hearing last week, yet in 2014 she endorsed the view that a minimum wage hike would lead to significant job loss. Maybe now she knows better, but if the 2014 Janet Yellen could have been so fooled, then perhaps this debate is not so settled.
Why then push so hard for a policy with such murky outcomes? It would raise the wages of many workers, destroy the jobs of some low-skilled workers, and perhaps lower the hours and thus pay of many other workers.
The burden of the minimum wage is unclear as well. Perhaps it leads to higher retail prices, although many proponents suggest it comes largely out of business profits. This too is unclear, and again raises questions about the wisdom of pushing so hard for such a non-transparent set of reallocations and transfers.
In contrast, consider the plan for cash grants to families with children. Under one proposed plan, these grants would be between $3,000 and $3,600 a year, depending on the age of the child.
The benefits here are obvious and transparent, namely that families are better off when they have more money. Perhaps some families would use that money in self-destructive ways, but this basic view — that more money increases the chance for better outcomes — is not really contested.
And please — most policies are not self-financing! So you should do more of the better policy, rather than pushing for both.
Saturday assorted links
1. Rap song about Janet Yellen.
2. Never too much talent? Should you be bullish on the Nets?
3. Toward a more libertarian pandemic?
5. B.1.1.7 not in decline. And that variant is exploding in Denmark.
6. Vaccines to take Israel back from the Ibex, photo gallery, recommended. And some verticality in a video version. Consider it “the Ibex salt-water paradox.”
7. Peter Huber tribute, he has passed away.
Assorted non-Covid links
1. Bad trade and the loss of variety.
2. Can money buy happiness revisited: the new take is to hire a happiness agent.
3. Do people have a bias for low-deductible insurance? (yes, partly for peace of mind reasons)
4. Weird Phillips curve behavior has to do with costs, not degree of tightness in the labor market.
5. New results on Harvard discrimination against Asian-Americans. “Asian Americans are substantially stronger than whites on the observables associated with admissions…the richness of the data yields a model that predicts admissions extremely well. Our preferred model shows that AsianAmericans would be admitted at a rate 19% higher absent this penalty.”
6. New Devon Zuegel podcast with Alain and Marie-Agnes Bertaud.