hubbardobrieneconomics

How the Effects of the Covid-19 Recession Differed Across Business Sectors and Income Groups

The recession that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic affected most sectors of the U.S. economy, but some sectors of the economy fared better than others. As a broad generalization, we can say that online retailers, such as Amazon; delivery firms, such as FedEx and DoorDash; many manufacturers, including GM, Tesla, and other automobile firms; and firms, such as Zoom, that facilitate online meetings and lessons, have done well. Again, generalizing broadly, firms that supply a service, particularly if doing so requires in-person contact, have done poorly. Examples are restaurants, movie theaters, hotels, hair salons, and gyms.

The following figure uses data from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) website (fred.stlouisfed.org) on employment in several business sectors—note that the sectors shown in the figure do not account for all employment in the U.S. economy. For ease of comparison, total employment in each sector in February 2020 has been set equal to 100.

Employment in each sector dropped sharply between February and April as the pandemic began to spread throughout the United States, leading governors and mayors to order many businesses and schools closed. Even in areas where most businesses remained open, many people became reluctant to shop in stores, eat in restaurants, or exercise in gyms. From April to November, there were substantial employment gains in each sector, with employment in all goods-producing industries and employment in manufacturing (a subcategory of goods-producing industries) in November being just 5 percent less than in February. Employment in professional and business services (firms in this sector include legal, accounting, engineering, legal, consulting, and business software firms), rose to about the same level, but employment in all service industries was still 7 percent below its February level and employment in restaurants and bars was 17 percent below its February level.

Raj Chetty of Harvard University and colleagues have created the Opportunity Insights website that brings together data on a number of economic indicators that reflect employment, income, spending, and production in geographic areas down to the county or, for some cities, the ZIP code level. The Opportunity Insights website can be found HERE.

In a paper using these data, Chetty and colleagues find that during the pandemic “spending fell primarily because high-income households started spending much less.… Spending reductions were concentrated in services that require in-person physical interaction, such as hotels and restaurants …. These findings suggest that high-income households reduced spending primarily because of health concerns rather than a reduction in income or wealth, perhaps because they were able to self-isolate more easily than lower-income individuals (e.g., by substituting to remote work).”

As a result, “Small business revenues in the highest-income and highest-rent ZIP codes (e.g., the Upper East Side of Manhattan) fell by more than 65% between March and mid-April, compared with 30% in the least affluent ZIP codes. These reductions in revenue resulted in a much higher rate of small business closure in affluent areas within a given county than in less affluent areas.” As the revenues of small businesses declined, the businesses laid off workers and sometimes reduced the wages of workers they continued to employ. The employees of these small businesses, were typically lower- wage workers. The authors conclude from the data that: “Employment for high- wage workers also rebounded much more quickly: employment levels for workers in the top wage quartile [the top 20 percent of wages] were almost back to pre-COVID levels by the end of May, but remained 20% below baseline for low-wage workers even as of October 2020.”

The paper, which goes into much greater detail than the brief summary just given, can be found HERE.

Census Bureau Releases Results from the American Community Survey

Each year the U.S. Census Bureau conducts the American Community Survey (ACS) by surveying 3.5 million households on a wide range of questions including their income, their employment, their ethnicity, their marital status, how large their house or apartment is, and how many cars they own. The ACS is the most reliable source of data on these issues and is widely used by economists, business managers, and government policy makers. The data for 2019 and for the five-year period 2015-2019 were released on December 10. You can learn more about the survey and explore the data on the ACS website.

The ACS provides data on increases in income over time by different ethnic groups. This news article discusses the result that between 2005 and 2019, the incomes of Asian American grew the fastest, followed by the incomes of Hispanics, the incomes of non-Hispanic whites, and the incomes of African Americans.

Solved Problem: The Macroeconomic Effects of a Stronger Euro

Supports: Economics: Chapter 28 – Macroeconomics in an Open Economy (Section 28.2); Macroeconomics: Chapter 12, Section 12.2; and Essentials: Chapter 19 – Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Exchange Rates (Section 19.6)

Solved Problem: The Macroeconomic Effects of a Stronger Euro

In December 2020, an article in the Wall Street Journal discussed the effects of changes in the value of the euro in exchange for the U.S. dollar. The article noted that: “A stronger euro makes exports from the region less competitive overseas” and that a stronger euro would also “damp inflation” in countries using the euro as their currency.

a. What does the article mean by a “stronger euro”? Why would a stronger euro make European exports less competitive?

b. What does the article mean by “damp inflation”? Why would a stronger euro damp inflation in countries using the euro?

Source: Caitlin Ostroff, “Euro Rally Weighs on Inflation, Sapping Appetite for Stocks,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2020.

Solving the Problem

Step 1: Review the chapter material. This problem is about the effect of changes in the exchange rate on a country’s (or region’s) imports and exports, so you may want to review Chapter 28, Section 28.2 “How Movements in Exchange Rates Affect Imports and Exports.”

Step 2: Answer part a. by explaining what a “stronger euro” means and why a stronger euro would make European exports less competitive. A stronger euro is one that exchanges for more dollars or, which amounts to the same thing, requires fewer euros to exchange for a dollar. (You may want to review the Apply the Concept “Is a Strong Currency Good for a Country?”) A stronger euro results in U.S. consumers having to pay more dollars to buy goods and services imported from Europe. In other words, the prices of European exports to the United States will rise making the exports less competitive with U.S.-produced goods or with other countries exports to the United States. If the euro is also becoming stronger against currencies such as the British pound, Japanese yen, and Chinese yuan, then European exports will also be less competitive in those countries.

Step 3: Answer part b. by explaining what “damp inflation” means and why a stronger euro would damp inflation in countries using the euro. To “damp inflation” is to reduce inflation. So the article is stating that a stronger euro will result in lower inflation in Europe. To understand why, remember that while a stronger euro will raise the dollar price of European exports to the United States, it will reduce the euro price of European imports from the United States (and from other countries if the euro is also becoming stronger against currencies such as the British pound, Japanese yen, and Chinese yuan). Inflation in a country is measured using the prices of goods and services that consumers purchase, whether those goods and services are produced domestically or are imported.

Christopher Waller Confirmed by Senate as Federal Reserve Governor

Christopher Waller

On Thursday, December 3, Christopher Waller, executive vice president and research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, was confirmed by the Senate as a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. The Board of Governors has seven members and, under the Federal Reserve Act, is responsible for the monetary policy of the United States and for overseeing the operation of the Federal Reserve System.

Board members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to 14-year nonrenewable terms. The terms are staggered so that one expires every other January 31. Members frequently leave the Board before their terms expire to return to their previous occupations or to accept other positions in the government. The following table shows the current Board members, when their terms will expire, and which president appointed them. Note that one seat on the Board is vacant. President Trump nominated Judy Shelton to fill this seat but it appears unlikely that she will be confirmed by the Senate before the change in administration takes place on January 20.

Name	Year Term Ends	Appointed to the Board by
Jerome Powell, Chair	As Chair: 2022 As Board member: 2028	As Chair: President Trump As Board member: President Obama
Richard Clarida, Vice Chair	As Vice Chair and as Board member: 2022	President Trump
Randal Quarles, Vice Chair for Supervision	As Vice Chair for Supervision: 2021; As Board member: 2032	President Trump
Michelle Bowman	2034	President Trump
Lael Brainard	2026	President Obama
Christopher Waller	2030	President Trump
Vacant

Information on the history and structure of the Board of Governors and on the backgrounds of current members can be found HERE on the Fed’s website. An announcement of Waller’s confirmation can be found HERE on the website of the St. Louis Fed. A news story discussing Waller’s confirmation and the likely outcome of Shelton’s nomination, as well as some of the politics involved with current Fed nominations can be found HERE (those with a subscription to the Wall Street Journal may also want to read the article HERE).

Janet Yellen Nominated to Be Treasury Secretary

Janet Yellen

President-elect Joe Biden has nominated Janet Yellen to be treasury secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, Yellen would be the first woman to hold that post. She would also be the first person to have been both Federal Reserve Chair and treasury secretary. Yellen also served as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration. Prior to entering government service, Yellen was on the economics faculties of Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. At the time of her nomination she was a Distinguished Fellow in Residence at the Brookings Institution.

A news story on her nomination can be read HERE. Her biography on the Brookings Institution web site is HERE (includes a video conversation from a few years ago with former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke). A speech she gave in 2018 reflecting on the 2007-2009 financial crisis can be read HERE.

Walter Williams, 1936-2020

Walter Williams

Walter Williams, John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, died on December 2, shortly after teaching class. In addition to his academic publications (listed HERE), Williams was a spirited participant in public policy debates through his syndicated columns and television appearances. Some of his recent columns can be read through the links HERE. An appreciation by Thomas Sowell of Stanford’s Hoover Institution can be read HERE.

Solved Problem: Pricing Video Games

Supports: Econ (Chapter 12 – Oligopoly: Firms in Less Competitive Markets (Section 14.2); Essentials: Chapter 11 – Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly (Section 11.6)

Solved Problem: Pricing Video Games

In November 2020, an article on bloomberg.com discussed the pricing of video games for consoles like PlayStation and Xbox. The article noted that firms selling video games had kept prices constant at $60 per game since 2005. But this stable price was about to change: “This week, video game publishers will press ahead with an industry-wide effort to raise the standard price to $70.” An article in the Wall Street Journal indicated that the number of people playing video games has been increasing and had reached 244 million in the United States and 3.1 billion worldwide in 2020. Answer the following questions assuming that the video game industry is an oligopoly.

a. Is it likely that the demand for video games and the cost of producing them have remained constant for 15 years? If not, what can explain the fact that the prices of video games remained constant from 2005 to 2020?

b. Given your answer to part a., what can explain the fact that the prices of video games increased by $10 in 2020? Does the fact that this increase was an “industry-wide effort” matter? Briefly explain.

Sources: Olga Kharif and Takashi Mochizuki, “Video Game Prices Are Going Up for the First Time in 15 Years,” Bloomberg.com, November 9, 2020; and Sarah E. Needleman, “From ‘Fall Guys’ to ‘Among Us,’ How America Turned to Videogames Under Lockdown,” Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2020.

Solving the Problem

Step 1: Review the chapter material. This problem is about pricing in an oligopolistic industry, so you may want to review Chapter 14, Section 14.2 “Game Theory and Oligopoly.”

Step 2: Answer part a. by discussing whether it’s likely that the demand for video games and the cost of producing them have remained constant for 15 years and by providing an alternative explanation for the prices of video games remaining constant over this period. Over such a long period, it’s unlikely that the demand for video games and the cost of producing them have remained constant. For one thing, the Wall Street Journal article indicates that the number of people playing video games has been increasing, reaching 244 million in the United States in 2020 (out of a U.S. population of about 330 million). The cost of producing most consumer electronics has declined over the years. Although we are not given specific information that the cost of producing video games has followed this pattern, it seems probable that it did. So, it’s unlikely that the reason that the prices of video games have remained constant is that the demand for video games and the cost of producing them have remained unchanged.

The problem tells us to assume that the video game industry is an oligopoly. We know that price stability in an oligopolistic industry can sometimes be the result of the firms in the industry finding themselves in a prisoner’s dilemma. In this situation, the most profitable strategy for a firm is to match the low price charged by competitors even though the firm and its competitors could, both as a group and individually, earn larger profits by all charging a higher price. It seems more likely that the firms in the video game industry were stuck for years in a prisoner’s dilemma than that they have faced unchanged demand and production costs over such a long period.

Step 3: Answer part b. by explaining why the prices of video games increased by $10 in 2020, taking into account that the increase was an “industry-wide effort.” As we note in the textbook, the prisoner’s dilemma is an example of a noncooperative equilibrium in which firms fail to cooperate by taking actions—in this case raising the prices of video games—that would make them all better off. Firms have an incentive to increase their profits by switching to a cooperative equilibrium of charging $10 more for video games by implicitly colluding to do so. Explicitly colluding by having firms’ executives meet and agree to raise prices is against the law in the United States and Europe. But implicit collusion in which firms signal to each other—perhaps by talking about their plans with journalists—that they intend to raise prices is a gray area of the law that governments may not take action against. The fact that the bloomberg.com article states that the price increase was an “industry-wide effort” is an indication that video game firms may have implicitly colluded to raise video game prices by $10.

Statement from the Economic Strategy Group Urging Congress to Provide Additional Spending in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Economic Strategy Group (ESG) is a program for discussing economic policy issues. On November 19, 2020, the ESG released a statement urging Congress to provide additional funding to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Glenn Hubbard joined economists from both political parties in signing the statement. You can read the statement HERE.

Now for Something Completely Different: Mickey Does Econ!

The O’Brien family dog takes a bite out of the Dismal Science.

Hmm. Should I keep playing in the leaves or should I do my MyLab assignment on opportunity cost?

Would you please explain the formula for price elasticity one more time?

Why did I sign up for an 8 am Econ class?

No, Mickey, you can’t copy my class notes. You need to start getting up on time!

My TA is always so helpful!

Measuring Changes in Income Inequality

As we discuss in Chapter 17, there are several complications in accurately measuring changes in the distribution of income over time. First, people will not typically remain in the same place in the income distribution their whole lives. Instead, their incomes are likely to fluctuate, moving them up and down the income distribution. So comparing the distribution of income for the whole population at two points in time can give a misleading idea of how the incomes of particular individuals changed. Measuring income mobility can be difficult, however, because it entails tracking the incomes of individuals over time. Doing that requires specialized studies rather than relying on the more readily available government data we can use to track changes in the incomes of the whole population.

Second, we are more interested in the income people have available to spend rather than the income they earn. Because people pay taxes on the incomes they receive and because many people receive transfer payments from the government, including unemployment insurance payments and Social Security payments, the income distribution is more equal if we measure it after taking into account the taxes people pay and the transfer payments they receive.

Finally, people earn income from a variety of sources in addition to wages and salaries, including dividends they receive from owning stock, capital gains they earn from selling a financial or other asset, and income they earn from owning a business such as a restaurant or dry cleaners. The income people at the top of the income distribution earn from owning a business can be particularly hard to measure because it depends on how the income is reported to the Internal Revenue Service, which depends in turn on changes in laws affecting how businesses are organized and how they pay taxes. Dealing with these measurement issues is particular important in determining how much the share of income earned by the top 1% of the income distribution has changed over time—an issue that has been the subject of much political debate.

Wojciech Kopczuk of Columbia University and Eric Zwick of the University of Chicago address these measurement issues in a new article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Even skimming the article makes clear just how difficult the measurement issues are. Click HERE to read the article.

Note that the article is part of a symposium on income and wealth inequality that appears in that issue of the journal. The other articles in the symposium are also worth reading. Articles that appear in the Journal of Economic Perspectives are frequently (but not always!) nontechnical summaries of research that can be read without knowledge of economics beyond the principles course.