The Italian Job

A follow-up of the post on public investment. I had said that the resources available based on my calculation were to be seen as an upper bound, being among other things based on the Spring forecasts of the Commission (most likely too optimistic).

And here we are. On Friday the IMF published the result of its Article IV consultation with Italy, where growth for 2013 is revised downwards from -1.3% to -1.8%.

In terms of public finances, a crude back-of-the-envelop estimation yields a worsening of deficit of 0.25% (the elasticity is roughly 0.5). This means that in the calculation I made based on the Commission’s numbers, the 4.8 billions available for 2013 shrink to 1.5 once we take in the IMF numbers. It is worth reminding that besides Germany, Italy is the only large country who can could benefit of the Commission’s new stance.

And while we are at Italy, the table at page 63 of the EC Spring Forecasts (pdf) is striking. The comparison of 2012 with the annus horribilis 2009 shows that private demand is the real Italian problem.  The contribution to growth of domestic demand was of -3.2% in 2009, and -4.7% in 2012! In part this is because of the reversed fiscal stimulus; but mostly because of the collapse of consumption (-4.2% in 2012, against -1.6% in 2009). Luckily, the rest of the world is recovering, and the contribution of net exports, went from -1.1% in 2009 to 3.0% in 2012. This explains the difference in GDP growth between the -5.5% of 2009 and the -2.4% of 2012.

Italian households feel crisis fatigue, and having depleted their buffers, they are today reducing consumption. I remain convinced that strong income redistribution is the only quick way to restart consumption. Looking at the issues currently debated in Italy, this could be attempted  reshaping both VAT and property taxes so as to impact the rich and the very rich significantly more than the middle classes. The property tax base should be widened to include much more than just real estate, and an exemption should be introduced (currently in France it is 1.2 millions euro per household). Concerning VAT, a reduction of basic rates should be compensated by a significant increase in rates on luxury goods.

Chances that this will happen?