Value Added – A blog

Our blog is the place where our staff and guest bloggers present clear, fact-based posts that make the connections between economic inequality and growth for the broad policy community and journalists based on the latest academic research.

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June 11, 2018
By Nick Bunker,

Why macroeconomics should further embrace distributional economics

Ten years ago, some of the failings of macroeconomics models were made quite bare as the Great Recession ripped through the global economy. Economists were—and continue to be—criticized because their models seemed to lack any sort of connection to reality. Yet in one critical area, those charges don’t stick these days. Macroeconomists are increasingly not missing out on one of the biggest trends in the U.S. economy: high levels of income and wealth inequality.

AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey
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June 8, 2018
By Nick Bunker,

Weekend reading: “not as contingent as you thought” edition

This is a weekly post we publish on Fridays with links to articles that touch on economic inequality and growth. The first section is a round-up of what Equitable Growth published this week and the second is the work we’re highlighting from elsewhere. We won’t be the first to share these articles, but we hope […]

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June 7, 2018
By Brad DeLong,

Brad DeLong: Worthy reads on equitable growth, June 1-7, 2018

Worthy reads on Equitable Growth: That monetary policy is best which avoids creating needless unemployment while still maintaining confidence in the value of the unit of account. Yet surprisingly little thought has been devoted to figuring out which monetary policy jumps the highest with respect to this objective. Nick Bunker’s “Getting on the level with […]

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June 6, 2018
By Nick Bunker,

Getting on the level with the Fed’s targeting of prices

For a bit more than a year now, the Federal Open Market Committee—the policy committee of the Federal Reserve—has made it clear that its inflation target for the U.S. economy is “symmetric.” The central bank wants annual inflation to be at a 2 percent rate, but sometimes it misses that goal. The symmetric target means […]

AP Photo/Elise Amendola
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June 5, 2018
By Nick Bunker,

JOLTS Day Graphs: April 2018 Report Edition

Every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on hiring, firing, and other labor market flows from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, better known as JOLTS. Today, the BLS released the latest data for April 2018. This report doesn’t get as much attention as the monthly Employment Situation Report, but it […]

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June 5, 2018
By Kate Bahn,

New data on contingent workers in the United States

On Thursday, June 7, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release data from its freshly collected Contingent Worker Supplement. It’s important for policymakers and economists alike to know what to look for ahead of Thursday’s data release. The BLS had collected this data from 1995 until 2005, when it stopped fielding the survey as […]

AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar
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June 1, 2018
By

Weekend reading: “barriers to economic equality” edition

This is a weekly post we publish on Fridays with links to articles that touch on economic inequality and growth. The first section is a round-up of what Equitable Growth published this week and the second is the work we’re highlighting from elsewhere. We won’t be the first to share these articles, but we hope […]

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June 1, 2018
By Equitable Growth,

Equitable Growth’s Jobs Day Graphs: May 2018 Report Edition

Earlier this morning, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on the U.S. labor market during the month of May. Below are five graphs compiled by Equitable Growth staff highlighting important trends in the data. While the unemployment rate declined in May, the share of prime-age workers with a job was unchanged at […]

AP Photo/Lynne Sladky
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May 31, 2018
By Equitable Growth,

Examining the links between rising wage inequality and the decline of unions

The correlation between unions and economic inequality is well-documented, but has the decline of unions led to increasing inequality, or can this be explained by skill-biased technical change? As Equitable Growth Economist Kate Bahn writes in a new column for Slate, new research published via the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that “while education […]

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May 31, 2018
By Brad DeLong,

Brad DeLong: Worthy reads on equitable growth, May 25-31, 2018

Worthy reads on Equitable Growth: Nick Bunker gathers scattered threads and sets out the issues on wage growth and unemployment in “Puzzling over U.S. wage growth.” As I say in a Value Added blog post, exactly the kind of debate we should be hosting and encouraging is by Jesse Rothstein: “Inequality of Educational Opportunity? Schools […]

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