Brookings – “Hutchins Roundup: State estate taxes, occupational licensing, and more”

Since 2018, the U.S. has imposed import tariffs ranging from 10 to 50 percent on goods from China. Using data collected at the border and at retailers, Alberto Cavallo of Harvard University and coauthors estimate that, on average, foreign exporters have passed 92% of the cost of the tariffs on to U.S businesses in the form of higher prices.

The New York Times – “Trump’s China Deal Leaves the Global Economy as Uncertain as Ever”

President Trump’s trade truce with China may have temporarily cooled tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Anew paper by researchers at Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston suggests that businesses and consumers in the United States are feeling an impact from the trade fight and that the pain could escalate.

The Economist – “Technology is making inflation statistics an unreliable guide to the economy”

Amazon is used to fielding accusations: that it has killed off physical retail business, that it mistreats warehouse workers, that it abuses its dominant platform in online sales. So perhaps it is not a surprise that some people also blame it for low inflation. In 2017 Janet Yellen, then chair of the Federal Reserve, wondered aloud if cut-throat online competition might be stopping goods-producers raising prices even in a world of rising demand. Alberto Cavallo of Harvard Business School has found that Amazon’s prices are 6% lower than those of eight large retailers, and 5% lower than on those retailers’ websites.

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