Day 2

On the second day of class, we took a timeout to discuss the recent macroeconomic performance of the U.S. economy.  The unemployment and inflation graphs from C&T’s macro chapters work well — although I supplemented them with the latest numbers from the BLS — but it’s too bad that Table 5.1, which compares GDP and GDP-per-capita across the world’s 15 largest economies, refers to 2003.  The Penn World Tables are the best source to use, but it’s unfortunate that we have to wait so long to get consistent numbers across countries, especially since GDP is growing so rapidly in India and China that six-year-old data seems kind of obsolete. C’est la vie.