Today the Philadelphia Fed released coincident indices for the states and the US. Wisconsin outperforms Kansas — a very low bar — and yet has lagged all her neighbors.

Consider first Wisconsin compared to Kansas (like Wisconsin an ALEC darling) and Minnesota and California (not ALEC darlings).

Figure 1: Log coincident indicators for Minnesota (blue), Wisconsin (bold red), Kansas (green), California (teal) and US (black), all normalized to 2011M01, seasonally adjusted. Source: Philadelphia Fed, and author’s calculations.

Only the disastrous trajectory of Kansas’s economy makes Wisconsin’s performance look tolerable.

Some observers have argued that the dissimilarities between these states invalidates the preceding comparison. However, the comparison with Wisconsin’s neighbors does not cast Wisconsin economic performance in a noticeably better light.

Figure 2: Log coincident indicators for states adjoining Wisconsin — Minnesota (blue), Wisconsin (bold red), Illinois (teal), Iowa (green), Michigan (purple), and US (black), all normalized to 2011M01=0, seasonally adjusted. Source: Philadelphia Fed, and author’s calculations.

It is interesting to observe that — despite the ample scorn heaped upon Illinois by conservative commentators (including in the comments section of this weblog) — Illinois has outperformed Wisconsin for essentially all of the past three and a half years. And, as I mentioned, Wisconsin lags the (regional) pack.

(Note that regardless of whether one normalizes to the previous trough or peak, Minnesota outperforms Wisconsin.)