North America

UK incomes more closely tied to growth than those in US

March 18, 2013 2:47 pm by Norma Cohen

Britain’s official statistics agency, in its analysis of how median income households have fared over time, has found a small consolation for those on the eastern side of the Atlantic. While UK income inequality is rising, middle-earners’ incomes are more closely related to economic growth than in the US.

The Office for National Statistics used inflation-adjusted data from the US Census Bureau and International Monetary Fund that cover the years 1984 to 2008. It found that US median equivalised disposable income grew at less than half the rate of its GDP per person. For example, by 2008 – the latest year for which data are available – US GDP per person had grown by 55.3 per cent while median incomes had only grown by 26.1 per cent since 1984. Read more

Posted in Data, Economics, UK, United States |

Kate Allen A US president’s uncertain inheritance

January 21, 2013 5:05 pm by Kate Allen

Once the US presidential campaign is finished and the election won, the victorious candidate could be forgiven for thinking that the hard work has been completed. Whatever the state of the economy, the voters have chosen their set of policies and all that is needed now is to begin implementing them.

But the economy that the (re-)elected candidate thinks he is set to inherit may turn out to be quite different by the time of his inauguration. Read more

Posted in Data, Economics, United States |

Understanding American football, one standard deviation at a time

January 11, 2013 2:00 pm by Jason Abbruzzese

If you watched every American professional football team play every snap, analysed its success, compared it to all other plays in that situation, and then weighed it according to the defence it faced, you would reach an important conclusion: the Denver Broncos have the best chance of winning the Super Bowl on February 3.

That is according to FootballOutsiders.com, whose popular DVOA rating puts the Broncos as a slight leader (24.3 per cent) over second-favourite New England Patriots (23.6 per cent).

Founded by Aaron Schatz, an ESPN columnist, the site provides an in-depth analysis of every single play of the NFL season along with various ratings based on that analysis.

“For me, personally, I started this because I wanted to make better commentary,” says Mr Schatz. “The bigger gap that needed to be closed was between reality and the nonsense of colour commentators.”

Baseball’s “sabermetrics” movement – popularised by Moneyball (both the book and movie) – led the way increasing the sophistication of the statistics used in sport. It was primarily developed by people outside the baseball establishment to help teams properly value individual players.

In contrast, Football Outsiders does provide some predictive qualities, but the data analysis offers a different utility from the of baseball: to educate and inform football fans about a complicated and sometimes misunderstood sport. Read more

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Posted in Data, Sport, Statistics, United States |

2012 Election Watch: No time to be wasting time

November 5, 2012 4:47 pm by Jason Abbruzzese

With the US presidential election race coming to an end tomorrow (we hope!), it is time to take one last one last look at the RealClearPolitics (RCP) poll average and the Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) winner-take-all contracts and see where things stand.

We’re including one more data set this time just to give an additional picture – Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight model, which has become the source of quite a bit of contention.

One thing to point out about the IEM that we mentioned in the initial post – the contracts represent a probability, as does the much-cited FiveThirtyEight model that we’ll look at later in this post. That means that as it stands in the IEM, Obama is the favourite but far from a sure thing.

The RCP poll average appears neck and neck:

 Read more

Posted in Surveys and Polls, United States |

Keith Fray US data – don’t believe the hype

October 25, 2012 2:44 pm by Keith Fray
US President Barack Obama (L) greets Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R) following the third and final presidential debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, October 22, 2012 (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Two sets of impending economic data are likely to hit the headlines in the last days of the US presidential campaign: the first estimate of GDP for the third quarter of the year, out on Friday October 26, and the employment situation report for October, published on Friday November 2, four days before the election.

After the release of labour market data for September, President Obama’s camp made much of strong growth in hiring, up 114,000 compared with August, and a fall in the unemployment rate from 8.1 per cent to 7.8 per cent, taking the rate back to where it was when the president took office in 2009. Mitt Romney’s campaign countered that, if not for people exiting the labour market, the rate would be in double figures. Read more

Posted in Data, Economics, United States |

Martin Stabe Barometer poll shows business wary of Brics

May 18, 2012 10:32 am by Martin Stabe

With more than a year’s worth of of data from our exclusive business sentiment poll, the FT/Economist Global Business Barometer, now available, some interesting longitudinal patterns are becoming apparent for the first time.

Most notable among them is the steady erosion over the past year in executives’ perceptions of the “business friendliness” three of the world’s biggest developing economies, India, China and Brazil.

 Read more

Posted in Brazil, Canada, China, Eurozone, France, FT-Economist Business Barometer, Germany, India, Politics, polling and psephology, Russia, UK, United States |
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