Econ Major: What is it Worth?

What is the value of an Economics Major? A lot. The full report is here. The report includes all college majors.

The Value of College Education (and Majors)

A grad school pal of mine, Jeff Strohl works at Georgetown University's Center for Education and the Workforce and they just came out with this study reports that:

[a]n analysis of the projected lifetime earnings of 171 college majors provides a clearer picture of what one bachelor's degree means compared to another in the labor market. And the answer can be as much as $3.64 million.

That's the difference between what petroleum engineering majors can expect to earn over a 40-year career ($4.8 million) and what counseling psychology majors could earn ($1.16 million). Even the lowest-paying major beats the $770,000 average earnings of a person who holds only a high school diploma.

And that gender and race matter:
White workers and men fare best, the Georgetown study found. Even in their highest paid major, electrical engineering, blacks earn $12,000 less a year on average than Asians and $22,000 less than whites with the same major. Women tend to hold the majority of degrees in many of the lower-paying fields, such as education. Female chemical engineering majors earn on average $20,000 less a year than male counterparts.
Here's a link to the full study.

What can the Fed do about stagflation?

The NY Times had a nice article about the Fed's lack of options to fight stagflation and the hope the China's economy doesn't sputter and make things worse for the U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/business/economy/29norris.html

FOMC post-meeting press conference

In an effort to be ever-more transparent, Ben Bernanke gave his first ever, of many, press conference. He'll be giving press conferences after every FOMC meeting.

Here is a summary of what he said,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-usa-fed-bernanke-highlights-idUSTRE73Q6ZU20110427

Seminar: Lisa Giddings

The final department seminar for the 2010-11 season will be held next week. On Friday, April 29th, our own Lisa Giddings will present "Children, Family Size and Household Specialization: A Comparison of Different-Sex and Same-Sex Couples Using Matching Techniques." The seminar will be at 3:30 in room 230 Wimberly.

Central Banking Videos

The Federal Reserve has a lot of videos on its website about monetary policy and the federal reserve in general, and even information about recent news monetary policy actions.

Here is one short video about what the Federal Reserve is:
http://bcove.me/yq3ydto2

Here are all of the vidoes:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/media.htm

Inflation and U.S. Federal Government Debt

Here is short interesting article from the St. Louis Fed about the possibility that the Federal Reserve might "monetize" the U.S. debt.

Fiscal Policy and Expected Inflation