Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
The Associated Press yesterday:
Unemployment Unchanged by Projects: An Associated Press analysis of stimulus spending found that it didn't matter if a lot of money was spent on highways or none at all: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless. And the stimulus spending only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, the analysis showed.... AP's analysis, which was reviewed by independent economists at five universities, showed the strategy of pumping transportation money into counties hasn't affected local unemployment rates so far. ''There seems to me to be very little evidence that it's making a difference,'' said Todd Steen, an economics professor at Hope College in Michigan who reviewed the AP analysis. And there's concern about relying on transportation spending a second time. ''My bottom line is, I'd be skeptical about putting too much more money into a second stimulus until we've seen broader effects from the first stimulus,'' said Aaron Jackson, a Bentley University economist who also reviewed AP's analysis.
For the analysis, the AP reviewed Transportation Department data on more than $21 billion in stimulus projects in every state and Washington, D.C., and the Labor Department's monthly unemployment data to assess the effects of road and bridge spending on local unemployment and construction employment. The analysis did not try to measure results of the broader aid that also was in the first stimulus such as tax cuts, unemployment benefits or money for states...
The Associated Press today:
Matt Apuzzo, at the AP, to Tyler Cowen: I'm happy to provide you the sources of our data and walk you through the statistical tests we conducted. Nothing we did is a secret, but there's no actual "study" to provide you, like there is in academia...
Tyler Cowen writes:
Marginal Revolution: The AP critique of the stimulus: I would like to see a copy of the study...
I would like to see a copy of the "analysis" as well.
My guess is that the "analysis" is rigged in advance to find nothing: $20 billion in a $15 trillion economy is 0.1%; that we don't measure unemployment in individual counties well enough to pick up an 0.1% shift in the county unemployment rate; that a substantial fraction of highway workers on projects in Alameda County live in Solana, a substantial fraction of highway workers on projects in Solano County live in Contra Costa, and that a substantial fraction of highway workers on projects in Contra Costa County live in Alameda; that AP's economists should have told it so--and that the BLS would certainly have told AP so.
But there are no signs anywhere that AP talked to the people in the BLS who know the data...
Transportation Secretary LaHood:
AP Misses the Transportation Stimulus Jobs Forest for the Trees: According to AP's analysis, "a surge in spending on roads and bridges has only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry." That's what my math teachers used to call comparing "apples and oranges." Referring to the "construction industry" when transportation stimulus spending is only designed to help the transportation construction industry... highway and road construction... totals about 258,000 jobs out of... 132 million jobs... [nd] transportation stimulus dollars make up only 7% of that nearly $800 billion package.
But, when we drill down to the transportation construction industry, the most appropriate basis for analysis, we find Recovery Act spending making a real difference... highway and street construction spending in November was 5.7% higher than it was in November a year ago, and other public transportation construction spending was up 18.8% from a year ago... [even though] states, counties, and municipalities have all cut their transportation construction budgets drastically...
