Since I got the serious stuff out of the way, i.e. the column and the express-addendum, I can now do some humor before I officially close shop for the tonight.
An anonymous reader commented the following to my column on Turkish bond prospects:
Unemployment at 11 something percent and economists still fretting about inflation (currently below 4 percent). So, how do we get economists to worry about unemployment for once? What's that? Oh, I see, they never care about the people. They only care about the 'investors'. Gotcha. That must be the first thing they teach to econ students.
To clarify once and for all: I do not care much about investors. That's the main reason I never consider returning to the life of a market economist again. In fact, this is one of the few columns I write about "markets" every year...
Besides, I am fretting about inflation precisely because it will not stay at 4%:) But I also do care about employment, as you can see in my column back from 2009. In fact, as another anonymous reader responded:
It's all about priorities. Each one of the macroeconomic indicators is equally important. However, at the time being, inflation is the most critical factor and might have further distorting effects on employment unless properly managed.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Such comments make me take my columnist and blogging jobs seriously. After all, you get motivated when you notice your are being read by such folks...
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4 comments:
We are not policy makers, we are just economists who like to analyze interesting things. Discussing unemployment is boring because there is nothing to discuss. Inflation, on the other hand, has so many immediate effects on financial and macro indicators. It's fun to talk about it. :) When we become (!) politicians, we sure will be talking about unemployement more than anything else. No worries.
Abe Rudder
Another great comment! Inflation does not bring any tears, as unemployment does:)....
Unemployment has much more interesting dimensions for that matter: What is the lead-lag relationship between growth and unemployment? Is there a reliable estimate of the elasticity of unemployment to growth? What is the level of NAIRU for Turkish economy? Is it time varying or time-invariant? What is the share of employment in the production function for Turkish economy? How much the economy can benefit from changing the education profile of the unemployed people? How can we quantify the relationship between productivity and unemployment?
These are only a few of many interesting questions to be asked and analysed. I assume our "economist" friend knows the answers to all these questions and therefore find it "boring" to deal with unemployment.
It also seems this friend has managed to find a way to measure the immediate impacts of inflation on financial and macro indicators. What fools we economists be! We are still struggling with it!
Point taken, I have tried to answer a couple of the questions you are entertaining. For example, see here:
http://emredeliveli.blogspot.com/2010/08/weekly-hurriyet-column-demystifying.html
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