Viewpoints

State labor market data results in September were somewhat less uniform than in prior months. 30 states had statistically significant drops in their unemployment rates from August to September, with New Jersey's 4.4 percentage-point [...]

The employment data and tax receipts don't compute. In September, the US Treasury reported that gross federal income tax receipts fell 19% versus year-ago levels. That represents the sharpest year-on-year decline since May, or when [...]

Lockdown, social distancing, an R rate north of one, contact tracing and herd immunity. Most folks who read these words a few months ago would have little idea about what was being discussed. Fast forward to today and those same words [...]

I'm from the late Senator Dirksen school of fiscal prudence, i.e., "[a] billion [dollars] here and a billion [dollars] there and pretty soon you're talking real money". The way I figure it, the taxpayers of America, perhaps more [...]

The spotlight on inflation has never been higher as the Federal Reserve made it the primary focus of monetary policy. That means price statistics must be relevant to the needs of policymakers as accurate price measures are necessary [...]

It's always tough to generalise about emerging market (EM) economies. Even knowing if they are emerging economies can be tricky as they are classified in different ways by different organisations. China's role and relative dominance [...]

Unsurprisingly, all states (as well as DC) saw double-digit rates of decline in real GDP decline in the second quarter. The range was wide, varying from DC's -20.4 percent to Hawaii and Nevada's -42.2. In general, the declines were [...]

The decline in Hong Kong retail sales volume eased to -13.4% y/y in August compared to the 23.8% y/y drop in the previous month, declining for the nineteenth consecutive month. Although retail trade still suffered from double digit [...]