by James Hamilton Could the phenomenal growth train get derailed? I remember my colleague Clive Granger telling me over a year ago about the conversations he had with people when traveling China. Everyone he spoke with seemed to believe that (1) the Chinese stock market was at that time experiencing a bubble that was going to burst, and (2) the crash would not come until after the 2008 Olympics. Clive expressed amusement that no one seemed to have worked backwards from this presumed equilibrium-- if you know the market is going to crash in August 2008, anybody with any sense would sell in July. And if there's heavy selling volume in July, the market's heading down, not up at that point, so the logical thing to do is to get out in June. But if the crash is going to begin in June, then what ...

Article Source Bruce Mizrach prepared some very thoughtful questions for an interview at the Society for Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics Symposium in San Francisco two months ago. We discussed a broad range of topics, including my background, Markov-switching models, the Fed, oil prices, and why I blog. Below are links you can follow to see the answers to particular questions. The background for the interview and details of the questions can be found in a nice write-up by Bruce Mizrach that appeared in the latest issue of Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics. Here are abbreviated versions of the questions with links to the relevant video. Thanks much to Bruce for preparing this and helping make it accessible to all our readers. 1. Why economics? [WMV] [Real Media] 2. Economics training [WMV] [Real Media 3. San Diego [WMV] [Real Media] 4. Markov switching ...