Gregory Gilpin of Montana State University, Ezra Karger of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and Peter Nencka of Miami University find that capital investments in libraries of at least $100 per person served cause visits to surge by 21%.
Generally, the authors find that markets are much less volatile following jumps whose causes are well-understood—and note that understanding of the reasons for market moves has increased over time, thanks to increasing corporate transparency, better data, falling communication costs and the professionalization of news reporting.
Using data from Statistics Canada’s Workplace and Employee Survey, Tony Fang of the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Morley Gunderson of the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, and Byron Lee of the China Europe International Business School find that workers under age of 50 are 9.3 percentage points more likely to receive workplace training than workers above 50, with the exception of computer software and health and safety training.
When businesses, for example, expect long-run prices to stay around the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target, they may be less likely to adjust prices and wages due to the types of temporary factors discussed earlier.
We expect that moving from a shutdown economy to a post-pandemic economy—with demand fueled by pent-up savings, relief funds, and low interest rates—will generate not just somewhat faster actual inflation but higher inflationary expectations too.