That’s the dilemna posed by the latest paper from Laurence Kotlikoff Hans Fehr and Sabine Jokisch: Will China Eat Our Lunch or Take Us to Dinner. Simulating the transition paths of economies in the U.S., EU, Japan, and China the paper develops a dynamic, life-cycle, general equilibrium model to study their interdependent demographic, [...]

Bloomberg this morning has a review of the pros and cons of Marty Feldstein as Alan Greenspan’s successor. One thing they don’t touch on is what the implications might be of having someone at the head of the US Federal Reserve who is pretty much convinced the Euro can’t work.
“Marty has something of [...]

UK property prices have been hovering dangerously around the zero price growth mark for the last couple of months. Year on year growth is of course dropping substantially and we are now just below the 3% annual mark. Definitely one to keep watching.
UK house price inflation fell in August according to the Office of the [...]

I think this is no longer news, but the OECD held a press conference yesterday to inform us that we are all living longer, but we still aren’t working longer, and that somehow these two facts don’t fit with our existing pension arrangements. Well perhaps it isn’t exactly news, but it still needs to sink-in [...]

The filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last Saturday by Delphi, the No. 1 U.S. car-parts supplier, is making waves, both in the stockmarkets and in the news columns. Stephen Roach had a whole GEF post devoted to the issue yesterday. This morning it is the turn of the FT, which has a (subscription [...]

German exports, long the mainstay of the national economy, rose for a third month in four in August according to data released today from the Federal Statistical Office. The year on year increase of 13.4% is partly a reflection of the way the recent drop in the value of the euro has helped boost [...]

Thanks mainly to indirect encouragement from commenter Teme, I am continuing to plough the Finland furrow. Today I found this very interesting piece of research:
ARE SLUMPS REALLY DRY SEASONS?
This paper explores the connection between alcohol mortality, drinking behaviour and macroeconomic fluctuations in Finland by using both aggregate and micro-level data during the past few decades. [...]

The sharp eyed will have noticed that I have copiously refrained from commenting on the unexpectedly high reading obtained in yesterday’s German Ifo Institute Business Climate index. The index registered a slight unexpected increase, but as Ifo President Hans-Werner Sinn notes: “An evaluation of responses submitted before and after the federal election showed a tendency [...]

Just a couple of background papers on Finland. Firstly this working paper from Jaakko Kiander “The Evolution of the Finnish Model in the 1990s: From Depression to High Tech Boom“, and a paper from Francesco Daveri and Mika Maliranta: Aging, Technology and Productivity (which you can find in this working papers list).
You can find [...]

Italy has, of course, it’s own version of the twin deficit: on the one hand a political system which maintains serious democratic and credibility deficits (viz the mutual ppresence of Tremonti and Fazio in Washington this weekend) and the equally important financial deficit which has generally received less attention in the press. (We can [...]