Word: economists
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...since they stocked up in anticipation of a strong Christmas season. December sales fell 0.1% from the level of November, even though stores slashed prices to lure shoppers. "The most impressive evidence of a slowdown in the economy is the weakness in retail sales," says Lacy Hunt, chief economist for HSBC Securities. "Retailers are terribly overstocked despite the massive discounting." That is partly because rising interest rates have been making it more costly for already overburdened consumers to borrow and spend. Americans took out a hefty $120 billion in new loans last year, increasing consumer debt to a record...
...Many economists worry about two pernicious effects of raising the minimum. The first concerns job loss. Standard theory holds that every hike in the wage triggers employee firings, with the least skilled axed first. That view has been challenged by several recent studies co-authored by Alan Krueger, the Labor Department's chief economist. A modest increase, says Krueger, would have ``negligible negative employment effects''--or, in plain English, next to no job losses. Negligible, though, is a term of art. Because wage- related costs like unemployment compensation and payroll taxes rise along with the basic wage, most experts...
...even if Krueger's right and no one's fired,'' says University of Texas economist Daniel Hamermesh, ``a raise will deter employers from hiring new workers. That's bad especially for young minorities--over 30% of whom are unemployed--because they're the people we want in the labor force, so they can begin learning basic job skills...
...dollars were being pulled out of countries suddenly considered at risk, especially developing nations that were the darlings of money managers just a few months ago. ``What we're seeing around the world is a flight from risk and thus a flight from emerging markets,'' said Paul Horne, an economist with the investment firm Smith Barney in Paris. ``Investors have become concerned with countries in which the triple threat of a high deficit, high public debt and high unemployment is a problem...
...devalued. Last year $11 billion flowed into Argentina in direct and indirect investment; this year the amount is expected to drop by as much as half. ``There is a crisis of confidence and some fears that Argentina might have trouble paying its debt,'' says Pablo Gerchunoff, an economist at the Instituto di Tella in Buenos Aires. ``These fears may only be partly justifiable, but unjustified fears can sometimes become self-fulfilling prophecies...