Weekend reading

This is a weekly post we publish every Friday with links to articles we think anyone interested in equitable growth should read. We won’t be the first to share these articles, but we hope by taking a look back at the whole week we can put them in context.

Household formation

Cardiff Garcia asks whether household formation growth, and therefore the prospects for strong growth, will pick up in 2015. [ft alphaville]

From Russia, with falling rubles

The last week hasn’t been kind to the Russian economy. Matt O’Brien argues that the bad news won’t end any time soon. [wonkblog]

How did this crisis arise? Paul Krugman points to the large private-sector debts that Russia ran up despite being a net creditor. [nytimes]

Employment and wages

Neil Irwin on research that shows how countries with large social insurance states have the highest employment rates. [the upshot]

Danielle Kurtzleben has charts showing the stark gender divide in low-wage work across the United States. [vox]

Productivity growth

Dietz Vollrath writes about the difficulty of calculating productivity growth in the service sector. [growth economics]