Dani for President

Dani Rodrik has an excellent piece on Project Syndicate. I strongly advise reading and sharing it. Rodrik points out that structural reforms (if well designed, I’d add) tend to destroy jobs in low productivity sectors, and to create them in high productivity ones. He then argues that for the second effect  to happen, the high productivity sectors need to face strong demand. This is not happening right now, so that structural reforms, where implemented, are only contributing to depressing employment and growth. He concludes that the very success of structural reforms depends on fixing the short run aggregate demand deficiency problem, through standard Keynesian policies. The zest of the paper is in the last two paragraphs:

Ultimately, a workable European economic union does require greater structural homogeneity and institutional convergence (especially in labor markets) among its members. So the German argument contains a kernel of validity: In the long run, EU countries need to look more like one another if they want to inhabit the same house.

But the eurozone faces a short-term problem that is much more Keynesian in nature, and for which longer-term structural remedies are ineffective at best and harmful at worst. Too much focus on structural problems, at the expense of Keynesian policies, will make the long run unachievable – and hence irrelevant.

Rodrik states something rather obvious: 

Austerity is Bad for Competitiveness

I wrote this piece with my friend Jean-Luc Gaffard. It is part of our ongoing thinking on the early steps of the new French administration. But I think it applies beyond France.

 

The French government faces a double challenge. The short run effects of the euro crisis compound a long-standing problem of competitiveness: from 1997 to 2012, the French market share fell from 5.3% to 3.3% of world exports. France is therefore suffering more than its neighbors, notably Germany, for the current slowdown.

In response to these challenges, François Hollande designed a two-arms strategy. First, he embraced austerity. To reduce public deficit to 3% next year, the French government presented a shocking 36 billion euros budget law for 2013. That will be mostly composed of tax increases. The second arm of the government strategy, a “competitiveness pact”, was, initially, aimed at shifting an important part of the burden of social security (20 billions euros) from firm contributions to the general taxation.

Should Paris Go East?

Last week I was invited to speak at a conference on the relationship between France and Germany, 50 years after the Elysée Treaty. It was an occasion to look at France’s options for the near future.

I started by highlighting the French weakness in this particular moment:

• France suffers, like all other eurozone countries, from a protracted period of slow growth; it is the effect of the global crisis, and its vicious evolution into a local sovereign debt crisis.
• This problem is compounded by the structural weakness of France, witnessed by its deteriorating external position in the past 15 years. A loss of competitiveness that contrasts  with the increasing strength of Germany.

The commonsensical solution seems therefore to “do like Germany”: structural reforms aimed at lower wages and lower taxes on firms, in order to improve competitiveness (I did not say it, but this of course goes together with a reduced role of the government and a leaner welfare state). Nevertheless, i pointed out  that there are a lot of “buts“, that make the solution less commonsensical than it would appear at first sight:

Time and Money

Thanks to the Financial Times of a couple of weeks ago, I have read an interesting paper on tax evasion in Greece. Interesting because it quantifies what everybody already knew: the Greek government is structurally incapable to collect taxes. The study estimates a lower bound of 28 billion euros of unreported income for Greece. As a consequence, the foregone government revenues amount to 31 percent of the deficit for 2009. We are talking about lower bounds here, so both figures could be substantially higher.

The excessive weight of the informal economy, and the inefficiency in tax collection had already been pointed out repeatedly, for example in the last OECD Economic Survey of Greece before the crisis hit (2009). A sentence of the accompanying Policy Brief best summarizes what we already knew before the crisis

Wages and Unemployment

The April data on Italian unemployment are out, and they look no good. Not at all. The overall rate (10.2%)  is at its maximum since the beginning of monthly data series (2004), and youth unemployment is  above 35%. The rest of Europe is not doing any better, with more than 17 millions people looking for a job in the eurozone alone.

We already knew. The latest data just add to the bleak picture. We also know (I discussed it) what the consensus diagnosis is: Too many rigidities, excessively high labour costs, both because of wages and of  taxes on labour (the so-called tax wedge). Therefore, let’s have lower wages, and all will be well! Unemployment will disappear, growth will resume. Mario Draghi said it rather nicely:

Policies aimed at enhancing competition in product markets and increasing the wage and employment adjustment capacity of firms will foster innovation, promote job creation and boost longer-term growth prospects. Reforms in these areas are particularly important for countries which have suffered significant losses in cost competitiveness and need to stimulate productivity and improve trade performance.

Unfortunately, things are not that simple. What about looking at a few data? It is simple to download them  from the website of Eurostat.

Filling the Empty Box of Growth

Last week a number of European public figures joined the ranks of those calling for renewed emphasis on growth. The most remarked was Mario Draghi during his audition before the European Parliament; but equally important was the joint statement of Mario Monti and Manuel Barroso. “Growth” seems to be the word of the month, a must in any European leader’s speech.

I will certainly not complain, about this, because both the reduction of unemployment and the sustainability of public finances in the eurozone simply cannot happen in stagnant economies. Nevertheless, once more, there are some reasons for being worried. At a close look, it seems as if the word were an empty box, simple lip service paid to public opinion in order to keep doing business as usual.