Tag Archives: floyd norris

11.10.2012 | Can Stock Markets Predict Elections?

No one seems to be talking about what really might have led to the Obama win.

The stock market.

The basic reasoning is that people connect their “social mood” to the incumbent and social mood directly relates to how the stock market is performing. Some think the mood precedes the market and others say the opposite. Whichever the sequence, though, there seems to be a correlation between rising stock markets and incumbent reelection. For President Obama, during his first term, the Dow had a compound annual gain of 8.8% as of October 24.

Sources and Resources: Just before the election, Floyd Norris wrote about the Dow and elections and presented the following chart. You also might want to read this econlife post about the correlation between Tweets and stock markets. (Researchers were surprised that they could use Tweets to predict market changes rather than the opposite.) Finally, I did see the term “social mood” in this paper but was not familiar with its academic source.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Dow Industrial Average, election indicators, election predictions, floyd norris, Jimmy Carter, Mitt Romney, social mood, stock market predictions, Tweets, Twitter
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01.31.2010 | J.D. Salinger and the Estate Tax

Reading J.D. Salinger’s obituary, I thought about the estate tax and then beyond to a Mark Helprin interview last June.
Have you wondered, with the 2010 suspension of the estate tax (called by some the “Throw Momma From the Train Act”), what J.D. Salinger’s heirs will avoid paying? Then, though, as Floyd Norris discusses in his blog, how would his heirs and the government value the unpublished manuscripts he left if Congress creates a retroactive tax?
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/salinger-and-the-estate-tax/
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HealthCare/lack-estate-tax-2010-now-cheaper-die/story?id=9412614

Writer Mark Helprin discussed the topic last summer when he suggested that copyrights should be extended. He says it is unreasonable that heirs should receive tangible property but cannot have similar rights to literary property.
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/06/helprin_on_copy.html

The Economic Life:
Taxation can be perceived as wealth redistribution. The question we as a society face is how much we want to redistribute wealth from those who have more to those with less.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: copyright, Econtalk, estate tax, floyd norris, J.D. Salinger, Mark Helprin
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12.20.2009 | A New Kind of Misery Index?

11.84 is the current level of our “misery index” if we use what Arthur Okun (economic advisor to Lyndon Johnson) created. November unemployment + inflation rates = 11.84.
However, according to Floyd Norris, a new index might be more appropriate. Suggested by Pierre Chilleteau, it combines a nation’s budget deficit as a percent of GDP with its unemployment rate.

The Economic Lesson

A misery index reflects an economic dilemma. Each has a different opportunity cost for less unemployment. Each requires a tradeoff. For Okun, if we solve unemployment, we get more inflation (or the opposite). For Chilleteau, a Keynesian solution to unemployment means an even higher budget deficit or less spending means (Keynes again) more unemployment.

Posted by: adminEcon
Tags: arthur okun, budget deficit, floyd norris, inflation, misery index, opportunity cost, unemployment
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