Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Economists usually oppose high inflation, but they oppose it in a milder way than many non-economists. Robert Shiller, one of 2013’s Nobel Prize winners in economics, carried out…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: In the last three decades, inflation has been relatively low in the U.S. economy, with the Consumer Price Index typically rising 2% to 4% per year. Looking…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: The most commonly cited measure of inflation in the United States is the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Government statisticians at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculate the…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Dinner table conversations where you might have heard about inflation usually entail reminiscing about when “everything seemed to cost so much less. You used to be able…
Figure 9.1 Big Bucks in Zimbabwe This bill was worth 100 billion Zimbabwean dollars when issued in 2008. There were even bills issued with a face value of 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars. The bills had $100,000,000,000,000 written on them. Unfortunately, they were almost…
8.1 How Economists Define and Compute Unemployment Rate Unemployment imposes high costs. Unemployed individuals experience loss of income and stress. An economy with high unemployment suffers an opportunity cost of unused resources. We can divide the adult population into those in…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Cyclical unemployment explains why unemployment rises during a recession and falls during an economic expansion, but what explains the remaining level of unemployment even in good economic…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: We have seen that unemployment varies across times and places. What causes changes in unemployment? There are different answers in the short run and in the long…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Let’s look at how unemployment rates have changed over time and how various groups of people are affected by unemployment differently. The Historical U.S. Unemployment Rate Figure…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Newspaper or television reports typically describe unemployment as a percentage or a rate. A recent report might have said, for example, from September 2021 to October 2021, the…