Presidential Probabilities

Now that Intrade is gone, here is one place to see who is ahead based on betting odds.

Update: A friend emails me:

It's clear from the numbers that this market doesn't expect a credible third-party candidate.  Interestingly, this means that the reported unconditional probability of becoming president (the third column) is the product of the reported probability of winning a party nomination (one of the first two columns) and the implied conditional probability.

Clinton's implied probability of getting elected conditional on winning the Democratic nomination is 60.3%.  That means that, "on average," the Republican nominee has a 39.7% chance of winning.  The market's view of the relative strengths of the Republican candidates can then be seen by comparing their implied conditional probabilities to this 39.7% figure: 

Rubio    41.9%

Trump   42.0%
Bush      55.4%
Carson  38.8%
Cruz      36.6%

Cochrane on Economic Growth

John describes his agenda for the next president.

Keep the Cadillac Tax

Click here to read a piece I co-authored with Larry Summers, which is coming out in Sunday's New York Times.

American Obesity

Critics of the U.S. health care system often say things like, "The United States spends more money than anyone else on health care but some other nations have better life expectancy." The next time someone starts making statements like that, keep in mind this chart.  It is a useful reminder that differences in health outcomes depend on a lot more than differences in the system for delivering medical care.

Source. Click on graphic to enlarge.

The Case for a Carbon Tax

An interview with the author of my favorite textbook.

A Feature, Not a Bug

A few weeks ago, a poll asked people what were the first words that they thought of when they heard the names of the various presidential candidates.  For Hillary Clinton, "liar" and "untrustworthy" ranked high.  Many commentators saw this result as a problem for her.

I bring this up now because Clinton just came out against the TPP trade deal, even though the Obama administration strongly favors it and Clinton previously favored it.  I don't know of any poll of economists on TPP, but an overwhelming majority of the profession agrees that "Past major trade deals have benefited most Americans."  I would guess that TPP would also poll well among economists.  FYI, here is CEA chair Jason Furman singing the praises of TPP, and here is an open letter from a sizeable group of past CEA chairs.

So, will those economists who like Clinton start to turn against her?  I doubt it.  My guess is that most of them don't believe what she is now saying.  They expect that once she moves back into the White House, she will return to the moderate view of trade deals that her husband championed.  In other words, they are counting on her being untrustworthy.  If they had reason to doubt her mendacity, then they would start to worry.

Olivier Blanchard

A profile (though I doubt the headline applies to readers of this blog).