Recalculation vs. the data

There’s no question that Arnold Kling’s recalculation view is more intellectually appealing than the messy arguments about wage stickiness used by us “GDP factory” proponents:

Regular readers know that I am trying to nudge them toward a different paradigm in macroeconomics. I want to get away from thinking of economic activity as spending, and instead move toward thinking of it as patterns of sustainable specialization and trade. Even if there is only a small chance that this alternative paradigm is useful, I think it is a worthwhile exercise.

One reason for wanting to change the paradigm is that I believe that trying to describe economic activity using an aggregate production function is a mistake. When I use the derisive expression GDP factory, I am referring to the aggregate production function.

Yes, macroeconomics should be all about specialization and trade.  Except business cycle theory, which needs a special ad hoc sticky wage/price model.  Why?  Because the evidence simply doesn’t fit any other approach.  Here’s Kling on the construction bust:

I want to suggest that the output that is “lost” is output that people do not want. In 2008 and 2009, Americans do not want 2 million houses to be built. So I do not think that it is right to speak of a shortfall in output. Instead, we should say that the people who were building houses have not found a pattern of trade in which they can produce something that people want.

Yes, housing output was low in 2009 and unemployment was high.  But is there a causal relationship?  I say no.  Housing starts peaked in January 2006, and then fell steadily for years:

January 2006 — housing starts = 2.303 million, unemployment = 4.7%

April 2008 — housing starts = 1.008 million, unemployment = 4.9%

October 2009 — housing starts = 527,000, unemployment = 10.1%

So housing starts fall by 1.3 million over 27 months, and unemployment hardly changes.  Looks like those construction workers found other jobs, which is what is supposed to happen if the Fed keeps NGDP growing at a slow but steady rate.  Then NGDP plummeted, and housing fell another 480,000.  Is this because people didn’t “want” those houses?  No.  They didn’t want 2.2 million new houses a year; that really was a societal screw-up (with many possible villains.)  Kling’s completely right about that.  But they probably do want about a million new houses a year as our population grows by 3 million per year and families average about 3.  The reason housing fell far below normal is because the severe fall in NGDP created a deep recession.  Unemployed factory and service workers aren’t going to buy new houses.

Most importantly, the huge run-up in unemployment did not occur when the big fall in housing construction occurred, but much later, when output in manufacturing and services also plummeted.

Here is Kling on the Great Depression:

I think that technological change can drive the marginal product of many workers close to zero (When I mention ZMP, I always feel I owe Tyler Cowen a footnote.) I suspect that this happened in agriculture in the U.S. in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, dumping a lot of manual laborers into unemployment.

I don’t agree with this.  There had been a very long term secular decline in farm jobs going back for decades before the Depression.  Those workers gradually moved to the cities and were absorbed by growing manufacturing and service industries.  So what changed between the booming late 1920s when unemployment was about 3%, and the early 1930s when it rose to 25%?  The answer is manufacturing collapsed, as industrial production fell by roughly 50%.  It was factory workers losing jobs that explains the Great Contraction, not farm workers.  Yes, farm workers continued losing jobs, but there was no longer any place in the cities for them to find jobs.  Why not?  Because NGDP fell in half between mid 1929 and early 1933.

Here’s Kling on oil prices:

Could “pumping up demand” help in such a situation? Perhaps. But if the recalculation story is right, the higher demand could end up not doing much for employment. Instead, it might only do a lot to raise oil prices.

Of course more demand could raise nominal oil prices by boosting inflation.  But with CPI inflation running around 1% it’s more likely that Kling is referring to an increase in real, or relative, oil prices.  Could monetary stimulus boost real oil prices?  Absolutely.  But if and only if it raised expected levels of output and employment.  In other words, if and only if it was expected to work.

In my next post I’ll address Tyler Cowen’s ZMP workers argument.


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47 Responses to “Recalculation vs. the data”

  1. Gravatar of marcus nunes marcus nunes
    14. January 2011 at 10:52

    Scott:Nick Rowe entertains the idea that the RGDP/Employment ratio (productivity) is defying “Okun´s law” due to the fact that construction workers do not have firm-specific human capital and therefore are not hoarded.
    I think his story doesn´t hold for some of the reasons you mentioned above. For example, by the time the RGDP/Employm ratio strats to climb (end 2008), employment in construction had already dropped by more than 50% of the total drop that has ocurred. And also, total employment really begins to fall only after June 08.

  2. Gravatar of Ryan M Ryan M
    14. January 2011 at 11:19

    One objection I know that Austrians make to wage stickiness is that the data used to justify it contain the assumption that stickiness is important. Statistics regarding the capital structure, for example, are certainly imaginable, but no one has been able to collect them at a scale comparable to the mainstream statistics. In contrast, look at all the common macro data: CPI, NGDP… they are all laden with central assumptions of Neo-Keynesian analysis, namely that price level and that aggregate demand are what is important.

    Creating a set of statistics that would be consistent with the recalculation story is much less straightforward, but Kling has expressed skepticism of sophisticated statistics (I think). But that makes sense; aggregates don’t make as much sense with recalculation. You can’t know what to count ahead of time when what the entrepreneurs are trying to figure that out for themselves! Of course that assumes the recalculation is correct, but it does so in *no* way that is different than pointing at CPI or NGDP.

    I think recalculation would also have easy answers for that housing data you gave. Managers didn’t want to needlessly lay off workers due to a 12 month blip, but started doing so en masse when it became clear no one wanted more housing. (Personally, I would agree that the Fed made things worse by allowing the equivalent of a secondary deflation to occur in late 2008, but that isn’t central to recalculation).

    Please forgive me if I misstated any of Kling’s positions…

  3. Gravatar of James Oswald (azmyth) James Oswald (azmyth)
    14. January 2011 at 11:24

    The two theories do not seem contradictory to me at all, except where they emphasize what is important. Stabilizing expected NGDP through monetary policy does not inflict an unsustainable pattern on the economy. However, fiscal policy does. It seems to me that Kling’s argument is strongest when arguing against fiscal policy.

    The other factor to consider is the transmission mechanism. If the banking sector is in shambles, perhaps the Fed should look to direct income transfers or negotiating lower taxes and using seignorage to make up the difference instead of conventional monetary policy. Without IOR, such unconventional steps would not be necessary.

  4. Gravatar of Jason Jason
    14. January 2011 at 12:33

    Piling on to your comment on Kling on ZMP, he says: “I suspect that [worker reduction to ZMP] has happened in recent years because of the Internet. The Internet has created many new white-collar occupations, but by the same token even more white-collar workers have seen their marginal product fall to zero.”

    But data shows our current recession has struck blue collar workers more. The internet has allowed efficiencies in the supply chain (transportation, warehouse), but the way you take advantage of that technology is to sell more stuff (like the rebound effect in energy efficiency).

  5. Gravatar of scott sumner scott sumner
    14. January 2011 at 15:58

    Marcus, Good point. I hadn’t really thought about that angle, but it makes sense.

    Ryan, I’ve never understood the argument against aggregates. Macro is the study of aggregates. If you don’t like aggregates then you can’t do macro, as you can’t talk about issues like inflation, recession etc. All you can do is talk about specific issues in specific markets, such as the oil market.

    A recession is defined as a fall in aggregate output, hence it is a logical impossibility to talk about recession theories that don’t model aggregates.

    I don’t think the big home building firms keep on low skilled Mexican labor when there are no roofs that need shingles. That seems crazy. But then I am often wrong in my assumptions about the real world.

    James, If the banking system is in a shambles the first thing the Fed should do is take its boot off the banking system’s throat. They do that by creating on-target NGDP expectations.

    Yes, I agree with Kling on fiscal policy (but for different reasons), but not monetary policy.

    Jason, Good point. I have no objection to “piling on” as long as I’m not being piled on. 🙂

  6. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    14. January 2011 at 22:19

    Who called the bubble?

    Atlanta Fed Pres. Jack Guynn at the June, 2005 FOMC meeting:

    T]there is the housing situation, which we talked about for a long time yesterday afternoon. As I’ve been reporting for several meetings, some of our markets, especially those in coastal areas of South Florida and the Florida panhandle, are experiencing a level of building activity and price increases that are clearly, in my view, unsustainable. Nearly every major Florida city now has experienced increases in the double-digit range, and some, like Miami, Palm Beach, Sarasota, and West Palm, have been reporting increases in housing prices on a year-over-year basis of between 25 and 30 percent. While our discussion yesterday did not seem to indicate a consensus on a national housing bubble, based on past experience I’m reasonably comfortable characterizing the housing feeding frenzy in some of our markets as being a bubble or a near bubble.

  7. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    14. January 2011 at 22:33

    Geez.

    Look at the numbers of job loses in housing finance, in real estate, in home furnishing, in landscaping, in interior decorating, etc. in Orange County, CA in the years after 2006 — you ivory tower guys seem to have no understanding of the real world.

    And then the negtive wealth effect as housing assets plunged — small busibesses by the dozen failed locally as luxury spending was curtailed.

    Really Scott.

    And tell me, how long is house construction from start to sale?

    Have any idea — and how long is lag in housing decline to decline and recalculation in transport, forestry, materils, white goods?

    Do you have any sense of the real eonomy at all?

    Colander’s surveys of econ grad students showed they had essentially none.

    No doubt true of most tenured econ professors as well, I’d wager.

  8. Gravatar of TheMoneyIllusion » Does my view of the recession fit the data? TheMoneyIllusion » Does my view of the recession fit the data?
    15. January 2011 at 08:12

    […] Kling has responded to my recent critique of reallocation theories.  He begins by pointing out (correctly) that my housing start data is […]

  9. Gravatar of Tom Grey Tom Grey
    15. January 2011 at 10:22

    On job losses after the peak drop of housing ended in 2006, it’s important to remember that official statistics do a terrible job of tracking illegal aliens. I’m convinced that they were laid off/ not hired for new projects, first. All the unemployment stats are polluted with missing or (inconsistently?) estimated data on illegals.

    Similarly, as the illegals go home, the demand for low cost rentals in growing areas goes down, fast, and lots of other cash businesses start taking hits — meaning a little or a lot less profit, as their illegal customers go away; spiral down.

    I flatly do not believe the April 2008, 4.9% unemployment is accurate for real employment, including illegals.

    On “zero marginal product” workers, my mental model includes a team of workers at some comfy sustainable 60-80% performance (100% full “peak”, including 110% “effort”, overtime, etc. 100% may not be long-term sustainable). Then, if one or two workers leave, the remaining pick up the slack. Same output from team, thru more effort (& fear of firing!), but with fewer workers.

    Does that make them ZMP? I’d like to say no, but I think yes. What if it’s an office (gov’t??? E. Europe commie?) where the 20 workers are coasting at 20% effort?

  10. Gravatar of Bill C Bill C
    15. January 2011 at 11:22

    “So housing starts fall by 1.3 million over 27 months, and unemployment hardly changes. Looks like those construction workers found other jobs,”

    I agree with your broader point, but there’s something slightly amiss here – while the decline in housing starts and residential investment preceded the recession, the decline in construction payrolls didn’t come until later (mostly 2008-09), which suggests the construction sector may have been “hoarding” labor in 2006-07.

  11. Gravatar of Tom Grey Tom Grey
    15. January 2011 at 11:23

    The reason housing fell far below normal is because the severe fall in NGDP created a deep recession.
    No. If we really want only 1 million a year, and there’s a couple of years of 2 million a year … we’ll have quite a few years of 0.5 million a year until the multi-year over-supply is reduced to the amount demanded.

    If illegal aliens are leaving, that demand will be even less.

  12. Gravatar of Ryan M Ryan M
    15. January 2011 at 12:38

    I was not making a point against aggregates, when aggregates are understood to be inflation and employment. But it’s absurd to suggest that you can’t understand employment without aggregate demand, as pretty sophisticated analysis can be found going back to Hume and beyond. My point was that the bundle of statistics that were created and developed during the Neo-Keynesian era assume that only a certain set of mechanisms are the important ones. The reason why we always get back to price stickiness is that Monetarism, New Keynesianism, and New Classical Economics all work with data that was collected under the assumption that price stickiness is what is important.

    So unless you define macro to mean something that must consider aggregate demand and aggregate supply to be the objects of study, the validity and importance of such aggregates is an empirical question. And if you do in fact define macro in such a way, there is no reason to believe what you call “macro” contains the important determinants of unemployment and inflation.

  13. Gravatar of scott sumner scott sumner
    15. January 2011 at 14:37

    Greg, I have a new post up that shows Guynn’s successful prediction was just dumb luck.

    Houses just take a few months to build. Even Kling admits that doesn’t explain it.

    Tom, Yes, some illegals went home in 2006 and 2007, but not enough to dramatically change my data.

    You said;

    “On “zero marginal product” workers, my mental model includes a team of workers at some comfy sustainable 60-80% performance (100% full “peak”, including 110% “effort”, overtime, etc. 100% may not be long-term sustainable). Then, if one or two workers leave, the remaining pick up the slack. Same output from team, thru more effort (& fear of firing!), but with fewer workers.
    Does that make them ZMP? I’d like to say no, but I think yes. What if it’s an office (gov’t??? E. Europe commie?) where the 20 workers are coasting at 20% effort?”

    This makes no sense, as if it were true companies would be better off hiring fewer workers. So why don’t they? Or why did they start after mid-2008?

    Bill C, Construction payrolls aren’t really the right number, as that includes commercial property, which did not decline until late 2008.

    Tom, I have blogged back in 2009 about how the crackdown on illegal immigration helped trigger the housing crash. I’m glad you agree, everyone else seems to think I’m nuts.

    I don’t know the precise demand for housing. My point was that if NGDP were 10% higher right now the demand for housing would also be much higher. Part of the decline was due to overbuilding, and part was due to a severe demand shock.

    Ryan, I agree you don’t have to us AS/AD. But you can’t beat something with nothing. The reason most economists use AS/AD is because no one has found a better model.

  14. Gravatar of Ryan M Ryan M
    15. January 2011 at 14:46

    I would counter that we use the AS/AD because it’s the most mathematically tractable, while other models are difficult or impossible to model easily.

    And since everyone has so much invested in the foundational statistics developed over a half century ago (not to mention DSGE models today), we don’t see elite economists willing to consider alternative paradigms which may not immediately point to places besides wage stickiness (Kling’s model being one such example). It’s classic path dependence.

  15. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    16. January 2011 at 09:33

    You ignore my argument.

    Living at one of the ground zeros of the housing boom and bust I’ve seen the lagged rollling toll on unemployment — my neighbors worked in real estate, home interior, finance, luxury home furnishing, the blind business, landscaping, etc.

    All of the are down steam in time from theunemployment of a construction worker.

    I stand by my ivory tower / no understanding of a real economy charge.

    Colander established that this was true of most every econ graduate student, and there is little evidence from tenured economist that they live any any different mental world from the grad students.

  16. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    16. January 2011 at 11:35

    Yeah, Greg’s right on this…

    Which raises an interesting note: HOW would you get tenured economics professors to recognize the dream world?

    But in that vein:

    Scott, I put forward a VERY SIMPLE solution here, I’d really appreciate you to read it:

    http://biggovernment.com/mwarstler/2011/01/04/guaranteed-income-the-christian-solution-to-our-economy/

    See to me, it’s always a very simple change – a reduction to basic principles that immediately shows WTF is wrong with the current FUBAR.

    Scott, please really: WHY isn’t the solution to this entire discussion to simply, overnight, make sure no one is unemployed?

  17. Gravatar of scott sumner scott sumner
    16. January 2011 at 18:50

    Ryan, I don’t think so. I have read many Kling posts, and still think AS/AD fits the facts much better. I don’t think he has a good model of monetary economics, which can explain movements in NGDP. I like his views on banking, regulation, politics, etc, far better.

    Greg, States like Massachusetts and Texas which did not have a housing bust, also saw unemployment soar. Not as high as Nevada, but very high. Your real world perspective can’t explain that.

    I’m not saying there is zero unemployment caused by the housing slump, clearly there is some.

    Morgan, You said;

    “Yeah, Greg’s right on this…

    Which raises an interesting note: HOW would you get tenured economics professors to recognize the dream world?”

    And then you said!?!?!?!

    “Scott, please really: WHY isn’t the solution to this entire discussion to simply, overnight, make sure no one is unemployed?”

    Yeah, we academics are in a dream world.

  18. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    16. January 2011 at 22:41

    What I’m saying is that you are not thinking like an economist.

    You are thinking non-economically, you aren’t thinking in terms of interconnected phenomena, you aren’t think microeconomically (which is related but not the same — a math construct isn’t the real world).

    I photographed one section of 20 miles of mothballed lumber hauling rail cars here:

    http://blog.mises.org/13572/seeing-is-believing-20-miles-of-empty-and-mothballed-lumber-hauling-rail-cars/

    This is but one of several fleets of mothballed lumber hauling cars in America.

    Think about what this represents for employment in all sorts of industries in all parts of the country.

    You aren’t thinking like an economists — so you aren’t thinking about how massive changes in the structure of the economy effect all parts of the economy.

    You aren’t thinking like an economists.

    So don’t think about the structural consequences of a crash in housing construction — and a crash in home values — and a resulting crash in solvency among players big and small, from mainstream to Wall Street.

    Your “data” are like a few inches of the tape coming out of an old IBM main frame — telling us almost nothing about the complex machinery inside, and the processing changes taking place within it.

  19. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    16. January 2011 at 22:43

    And note well.

    My observation is simply Hayek’s, stated in such places as his Nobel lecture.

  20. Gravatar of Target Acquired Target Acquired
    17. January 2011 at 04:02

    […] is for the econo-geeks in the crowd. On Thursday my Mises Daily article will turn the tide on this Sumner-DeLong double-team on poor Arnold Kling (who threw in the towel much too prematurely). I am giving […]

  21. Gravatar of Raghuram Rajan verdreht die Zahlen « Kantoos Economics Raghuram Rajan verdreht die Zahlen « Kantoos Economics
    17. January 2011 at 07:08

    […] Scott Sumner hat schlicht ein paar Daten zu Neubauten (housing starts) und Arbeitslosigkeit zusammengetragen, zu denen die strukturelle Erklärung schlicht nicht passt: Yes, housing output was low in 2009 and unemployment was high.  But is there a causal relationship?  I say no.  Housing starts peaked in January 2006, and then fell steadily for years: […]

  22. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    17. January 2011 at 11:15

    I’ve moved into two brand new homes, purchased prior to completion.

    One thing I know is that construction does NOT stop at move-in.

    You have to install blinds, do landscaping, get all the botched items in the house fixed — leaking roofs, botched drywall, leaking pipes, etc., install cabinets in empty recesses, re-due contractor grade counter-tops, etc.

    A ton of money was spent in Ladera Ranch in this “second phase” of home construction — which spread out over 1 or 2 years for most everyone I know.

    Again, knowledge of the real world matters — the is the empirical world outside of the tine stream of “data” of interest to computer number crunchers called “economists”.

    Economists have no interest in this real world — which tells us a lot about the “science”. A very different situation from biology, where actual field research is valued and rewarded.

  23. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    17. January 2011 at 19:59

    Greg, First you defend Hayek by telling me he knew knowing of the real world, didn’t even know NGDP was falling in half. They you tell me I should learn more about the real world. Then you tell me to emulate Hayek.

  24. Gravatar of Morgan Warstler Morgan Warstler
    17. January 2011 at 20:23

    Scott, PLEASE tell me why my guaranteed income (an improvement over Milton’s negative tax rates) doesn’t solve overnight:

    http://biggovernment.com/mwarstler/2011/01/04/guaranteed-income-the-christian-solution-to-our-economy/

    Seriously WHY? Why am I dreaming?

  25. Gravatar of scott sumner scott sumner
    18. January 2011 at 15:35

    Morgan, I’ve favored sliding wage subsidies for 35 years. Is it suddenly “your” program?

  26. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    19. January 2011 at 09:50

    Scott, thinking economically, I believe in a division of labor. I also believe in a well-rounded training for economists. These things are not contradictory, and they are complementary.

    I consider the economic profession to be seriously defective, because it is so little like the science of biology — academic economists don’t do field research.

    Almost every zoologist or botanist is required to do some field research. This gives them some feel for the real world.

    Hayek’s first academic paper reported field research Hayek did on the effects of rent control in Vienna. It was Hayek’s first encounter with the real work of the price system, and it changed his understanding of the phenomena — and helped to change his approach to economics, reflected in Hayek’s famous papers.

    If economists did field research as graduate students, and the journals were full of field research, they’d have a better understand and sense of the interconnectedness of economic phenomena — a great corrective especially for macroeconomics who acquire something like a negative capacity for understanding the connectedness of microeconomic economic phenomena (as contrasted from the interconnectedness of math equations on a blackboard).

    And of course, below you are merely conflating two different understandings of the “real world” — a sense of the real world of market processes and interconnected economic activities vs. estimated aggregated data for economies as a whole, in parts of the world here Hayek didn’t live, hardly thought about as a policy issue, where the data wasn’t very good and wasn’t up to date, and where the meaning of data even today is disputed (see e.g. Krugman on Friedman’s data).

    “Greg, First you defend Hayek by telling me he knew knowing of the real world, didn’t even know NGDP was falling in half. They you tell me I should learn more about the real world. Then you tell me to emulate Hayek.”

  27. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    19. January 2011 at 09:58

    Is there a single economic graduate student in America who has done as much economic field research as mere magazine reporter for just one little article?

    http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/07/real_estate/ladera_ranch_foreclosure.moneymag/index.htm

  28. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    19. January 2011 at 10:09

    Robert Murphy provides statistical and other support for my argument here:

    http://mises.org/daily/4989

  29. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    19. January 2011 at 11:55

    A home builder gives details at the Murphy article, including this observation:

    “What is killing the local economies is the indirect employment that is loss. All the service industries and suppliers that were built around construction worker spending is huge since most construction workers spend every dime of their pay, every week.”

  30. Gravatar of Greg Ransom Greg Ransom
    20. January 2011 at 09:56

    Can I say it?

    This home builder has a better handle on the economic say of thinking and the interconnectedness of economics phenomena that most macroeconomists?

    And let’s put it up front.

    The “modeling” fetish of the macroeconomists can’t handle and actually excludes the most basic facts of the real world which are built into the home builder ever everyday understanding of the economic process / economic world.

  31. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    20. January 2011 at 14:39

    Greg, I just have one simple question for you. We know housing starts went from 2.3 million in January 2006 to 1 million in April 2008. That’s a collapse. We know unemployment went up from 4.7% to 4.9% over those 27 months. Why didn’t it go up more? Not one thing you have mentioned in all your recent comments has any bearing on that question.

    Are you saying all those laid off constuction workers got jobs landscaping and interior design? I find that very implausble. Landscapers were already very busy in 2006.

  32. Gravatar of TheMoneyIllusion » It made good sense for America to build lots of homes around 2002-06 TheMoneyIllusion » It made good sense for America to build lots of homes around 2002-06
    20. January 2011 at 20:07

    […] on a newly-built house are way too small to explain the great financial crisis of 2008.  And I already showed the housing slump doesn’t explain the recession, as it occurred way too […]

  33. Gravatar of Maurizio Maurizio
    20. January 2011 at 23:05

    We know housing starts went from 2.3 million in January 2006 to 1 million in April 2008. That’s a collapse. We know unemployment went up from 4.7% to 4.9% over those 27 months. Why didn’t it go up more?

    Because employment in housing didn’t collapse. Just housing _starts_ did. See Murphy’s article already linked by Greg: http://mises.org/daily/4989.

  34. Gravatar of TheMoneyIllusion » Bob Murphy wrongly assumes I won’t peek TheMoneyIllusion » Bob Murphy wrongly assumes I won’t peek
    21. January 2011 at 13:33

    […] recently made this argument: Yes, housing output was low in 2009 and unemployment was high.  But is there a causal […]

  35. Gravatar of Instead of a Peek, Scott Sumner Should Have Taken a Ponder Instead of a Peek, Scott Sumner Should Have Taken a Ponder
    21. January 2011 at 20:53

    […] here goes. Remember the context, Scott thought he had dealt a crushing blow to the Austrian/Recalculation explanation of the recession, when he noted that housing starts fell […]

  36. Gravatar of scott sumner scott sumner
    22. January 2011 at 07:16

    Maurizio, See my reply to Murphy, you are wrong, he has no data on housing employment.

  37. Gravatar of TheMoneyIllusion » Employment in residential and nonresidential construction during the crash TheMoneyIllusion » Employment in residential and nonresidential construction during the crash
    24. January 2011 at 07:32

    […] been a lot of response to my argument that the loss of residential construction jobs did not play a major role in the recession, rather […]

  38. Gravatar of Is the American economy recalculating? – Economics – Is the American economy recalculating? - Economics -
    24. January 2011 at 10:52

    […] as a pause to "recalculate", like your GPS system does when you make a wrong turn. But as Scott Sumner and David Beckworth argue, the timing doesn't particularly work out. Construction employment […]

  39. Gravatar of Is the American economy recalculating? [The Economist] | DreamInn Is the American economy recalculating? [The Economist] | DreamInn
    24. January 2011 at 11:20

    […] a pause to “recalculate”, like your GPS system does when you make a wrong turn. But as Scott Sumner and David Beckworth argue, the timing doesn’t particularly work out. Construction employment […]

  40. Gravatar of ¿Puede la teoría austriaca explicar el empleo en la construcción? – Mises Daily en español ¿Puede la teoría austriaca explicar el empleo en la construcción? - Mises Daily en español
    12. September 2011 at 07:44

    […] demolía el relato de Kling, derrotando a los austriacos como daño colateral. Aquí está Sumner criticando a […]

  41. Gravatar of Sumner vs. Kling: Don’t Get Hit By Those Goalposts Sumner vs. Kling: Don’t Get Hit By Those Goalposts
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    […] a blogged debate between Kling and Sumner Austrian economist, Robert Murphy came to Kling’s […]

  43. Gravatar of ‘Austrians’ Vs. ‘Market Monetarists’ On The Housing Bubble | peoples trust toronto ‘Austrians’ Vs. ‘Market Monetarists’ On The Housing Bubble | peoples trust toronto
    5. October 2018 at 09:58

    […] Sumner thinks there was a “construction slump” from 2006-07, and yet “resources did shift to other sectors,” because in January 2006, housing starts were 2.3 million while unemployment was 4.7%. But by April 2008, housing starts had plummeted to 1.0 million, yet unemployment was only 4.9%. This is why, to repeat, Sumner thinks the Austrian “reallocation story” makes no sense. In Sumner’s view, apparently the economy was able to jettison a huge portion of workers out of construction into other sectors, so long as the Fed kept nominal GDP chugging along, but once the Fed inexplicably tightened monetary policy, that’s when unemployment spiked. […]

  44. Gravatar of ‘Austrians’ Vs. ‘Market Monetarists’ On The Housing Bubble – The Deplorable Patriots ‘Austrians’ Vs. ‘Market Monetarists’ On The Housing Bubble – The Deplorable Patriots
    5. October 2018 at 10:06

    […] Sumner thinks there was a “construction slump” from 2006-07, and yet “resources did shift to other sectors,” because in January 2006, housing starts were 2.3 million while unemployment was 4.7%. But by April 2008, housing starts had plummeted to 1.0 million, yet unemployment was only 4.9%. This is why, to repeat, Sumner thinks the Austrian “reallocation story” makes no sense. In Sumner’s view, apparently the economy was able to jettison a huge portion of workers out of construction into other sectors, so long as the Fed kept nominal GDP chugging along, but once the Fed inexplicably tightened monetary policy, that’s when unemployment spiked. […]

  45. Gravatar of 'Austrians' Vs. 'Market Monetarists' On The Housing Bubble | ValuBit 'Austrians' Vs. 'Market Monetarists' On The Housing Bubble | ValuBit
    5. October 2018 at 10:30

    […] Sumner thinks there was a “construction slump” from 2006-07, and yet “resources did shift to other sectors,” because in January 2006, housing starts were 2.3 million while unemployment was 4.7%. But by April 2008, housing starts had plummeted to 1.0 million, yet unemployment was only 4.9%. This is why, to repeat, Sumner thinks the Austrian “reallocation story” makes no sense. In Sumner’s view, apparently the economy was able to jettison a huge portion of workers out of construction into other sectors, so long as the Fed kept nominal GDP chugging along, but once the Fed inexplicably tightened monetary policy, that’s when unemployment spiked. […]

  46. Gravatar of ‘Austrians’ Vs. ‘Market Monetarists’ On The Housing Bubble – Wall Street Karma ‘Austrians’ Vs. ‘Market Monetarists’ On The Housing Bubble – Wall Street Karma
    5. October 2018 at 11:00

    […] Sumner thinks there was a “construction slump” from 2006-07, and yet “resources did shift to other sectors,” because in January 2006, housing starts were 2.3 million while unemployment was 4.7%. But by April 2008, housing starts had plummeted to 1.0 million, yet unemployment was only 4.9%. This is why, to repeat, Sumner thinks the Austrian “reallocation story” makes no sense. In Sumner’s view, apparently the economy was able to jettison a huge portion of workers out of construction into other sectors, so long as the Fed kept nominal GDP chugging along, but once the Fed inexplicably tightened monetary policy, that’s when unemployment spiked. […]

  47. Gravatar of Austrians vs. Market Monetarists on the Housing Bubble – Western Free Press Austrians vs. Market Monetarists on the Housing Bubble - Western Free Press
    5. October 2018 at 14:10

    […] Sumner thinks there was a “construction slump” from 2006-07, and yet “resources did shift to other sectors,” because in January 2006, housing starts were 2.3 million while unemployment was 4.7%. But by April 2008, housing starts had plummeted to 1.0 million, yet unemployment was only 4.9%. This is why, to repeat, Sumner thinks the Austrian “reallocation story” makes no sense. In Sumner’s view, apparently the economy was able to jettison a huge portion of workers out of construction into other sectors, so long as the Fed kept nominal GDP chugging along, but once the Fed inexplicably tightened monetary policy, that’s when unemployment spiked. […]

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