### Archive

Posts Tagged ‘EMU’

## ECB: One Size Fits None

Eurostat just released its flash estimate for inflation in the Eurozone: 0.5% headline, and 0.8% core. We now await comments from ECB officials, ahead of next Thursday’s meeting, saying that everything is under control.

Just this morning, Wolfgang Münchau in the Financial Times rightly said that EU central bankers should talk less and act more. Münchau also argues that quantitative easing is the only option. A bold one, I would add in light of todays’ deflation inflation data. Just a few months ago, in September 2013, Bruegel estimated the ECB interest rate to be broadly in line with Eurozone average macroeconomic conditions (though, interestingly, they also highlighted that it was unfit to most countries taken individually).

In just a few months, things changed drastically. While unemployment remained more or less constant since last July, inflation kept decelerating until today’s very worrisome levels. I very quickly extended the Bruegel exercise to encompass the latest data (they stopped at July 2013). I computed the target rate as they do as

$Target=1+1.5\pi_{core}-1(u-\overline{u})$.

(if you don’t like the choice of parameters, go ask the Bruegel guys. I have no problem with these). The computation gives the following:

Using headline inflation, as the ECB often claims to be doing, would of course give even lower target rates. As official data on unemployment stop at January 2014, the two last points are computed with alternative hypotheses of unemployment: either at its January rate (12.6%) or at the average 2013 rate (12%). But these are just details…

So, in addition to being unfit for individual countries, the ECB stance is now unfit to the Eurozone as a whole. And of course, a negative target rate can only mean, as Münchau forcefully argues, that the ECB needs to get its act together and put together a credible and significant quantitative easing program.

Two more remarks:

• A minor one (back of  the envelope) remark is that given a core inflation level of 0.8%, the current ECB rate of 0.25%, is compatible with an unemployment gap of 1.95%. Meaning that the current ECB rate would be appropriate if natural/structural unemployment was 10.65% (for the calculation above I took the value of 9.1% from the OECD), or if current unemployment was 11.5%.
• The second, somewhat related but more important to my sense, is that it is hard to accept as “natural” an unemployment rate of 9-10%. If the target unemployment rate were at 6-7%, everything we read and discuss on the ECB excessively restrictive stance would be significantly more appropriate. And if the problem is too low potential growth, well then let’s find a way to increase it

## Commission Forecasts Watch – March 2014 Edition

March 13, 2014 1 comment

Last week the Commission published its second flash estimates for 2013 GDP growth. This allows to update an earlier exercise I had made on forecast errors by the Commission (around this time last year). This is what I had noticed at the time:

The Commission tends to be overly optimistic, and forecasts turn out to be in general higher than actual values. It should not be like this. While I expect a government to inflate a bit the figures, a non-partisan, technocratic body should on average be correct.
Related, it is also surprising that in November of the same year the Commission is still consistently overoptimistic (yellow bar). Let me restate it. This means that in November 2012 the Commission made a mistake on GDP growth for 2012. November!

I had concluded that there was a likely political bias in the Commission’s forecasts, with excessive optimism used to deflect criticisms of austerity. I also ventured in a quick and dirty estimate of the range for GDP growth in 2013, based on the Commission’s past errors. Actual growth turned out to be -0.5%, i.e. at the lower bound of my range (and below the forecast of the time by the Commission, that was -0.3%). I must nevertheless confess that my range was rather wide…

Categories: EMU Crisis, Growth

## Greek Tragedies, 2014 Edition

Last week’s publication of a Lancet article1 on the effect of austerity on Greek public health  made a lot of noise (for those who know Italian, I suggest reading the excellent Barbara Spinelli, in La Repubblica).

The Lancet article sets the tone since the abstract, talking of “mounting evidence of a Greek public health tragedy”. It is indeed a tragedy, that highlights how fast social advances may be reversed, even in an advanced economy.

Some time ago (March 2012) I had titled a post “Greek Tragedies“. Mostly for my students, I had collected data on Greek macroeconomic variables. I concluded that austerity was self-defeating, and that at the same time it was imposing extreme hardship on Greek citizens. Of course one needed not be a good economist to know what was going on. It was enough not to work at the Commission or in Germany… But the Lancet article also allows to substantiate another claim I made at the time, i.e. that austerity would also have enormous impact in the long run. It is weird to quote myself, but here is my conclusion at the time:

Even more important, investment (pink line) was cut in half since 2007. This means that Greece is not only going through depressed growth today. But it is doing it in such a way that growth will not resume for years, as its productive capacity is being seriously dented.

What makes it sad, besides scary, is that behind these curves there are people’s lives. And that all this needed not to happen.

I think it is time for an update of the figure on the Greek tragedy. And here it is:

I said in 2012 that investment cut in half spelled future tragedy. Two years later it is down 14 more points, to 36% of 2007 levels. I am unsure the meaning of this is clear to everybody in Brussels and Berlin: when sooner or later growth will resume, the Greek will look at their productive capacity, to discover it melted. They will be unable to produce, even at the modest pre-crisis levels,without running into supply constraints and bottlenecks. I am ready to bet that at that time some very prestigious economist from Brussels will call for structural reforms to “free the Greek economy”. By the way, seven years into the crisis, the OECD keeps forecasting negative growth together with unsustainable (and growing) debt.

I also added unemployment to my personal “Greek Tragedy Watch”: Terrifying absolute numbers (almost 30% unemployment overall, youth unemployment around 60%, more than that for women!). And absolutely no trend reversal in sight. A final consideration, related to the melting of the capital stock. How much of this enormously high unemployment, is evolving into structural? How many of the unemployed will the economy be able to reabsorb, once it starts growing again? Not many, I am afraid, as there is no capital left.

Not bad as an assessment of austerity… And yet, just this morning the German government complained for a very limited softening of austerity demands.  Errare umanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum…

1. Kentikelenis, Alexander, Marina Karanikolos, Aaron Reeves, Martin McKee, and David Stuckler. 2014. “Greece’s Health Crisis: From Austerity to Denialism.” The Lancet 383 (9918) (February): 748–753. Back

Categories: EMU Crisis

## Look who’s Gloomy

Wolfgang Munchau has an excellent piece on today’s Financial Times, where he challenges the increasingly widespread (and unjustified) optimism about the end of the EMU crisis. The premise of the piece is that for the end of the crisis to be durable, it must pass through adjustment between core and periphery. He cites similar statements made in the latest IMF World Economic Outlook. This is good news per se, because nowadays, with the exception of Germany it became common knowledge that the EMU imbalances are structural and not simply the product of late night parties in the periphery. But what are Munchau’s reasons for pessimism? Read More

Categories: EMU Crisis

## Would Eurobonds be Enough?

George Soros writes a piece on Project Syndicate, that is both pedagogical and very clear in outlining a possible answer to the current EMU crisis. He starts with a diagnosis of the EMU imbalances that rejects the “Berlin View”, and argues for the existence of structural imbalances

Normally, developed countries never default, because they can always print money. But, by ceding that authority to an independent central bank, the eurozone’s members put themselves in the position of a developing country that has borrowed in foreign currency. Neither the authorities nor the markets recognized this prior to the crisis, attesting to the fallibility of both. Read more

Categories: ECB, EMU Crisis, EMU governance

## Wait Before Toasting

Just a quick note on yesterday’s announcement by the Commission that virtuous countries will be able, in 2013 and 2014, to run deficits and to implement public investment projects.
Faced with an excessive enthusiasm,  Commissioner Rehn quickly framed this new approach within very precise limits, that are worth transcribing:

The Commission will consider allowing temporary deviations from the structural deficit path towards the Medium-Term Objective (MTO) set in the country specific recommendations, or the MTO for Member States that have reached it, provided that:

(1) the economic growth of the Member State  remains negative or well below its potential

(2) the deviation does not lead to a breach of the 3% of GDP deficit ceiling, and the public debt rule is respected; and

(3) the deviation is linked to the national expenditure on projects co-funded by the EU under the Structural and Cohesion policy, Trans-European Networks (TEN) and Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) with positive, direct and verifiable long-term budgetary effect.
This application of the provisions of the SGP concerning temporary deviations from the MTO or the adjustment path towards it is related to the current economic conditions of large negative output gap. Once these temporary conditions are no longer in place and the Member State is forecast to return to positive growth, thus approaching its potential, any deviation as the above must be compensated so that the time path towards the MTO is not affected.

For once, the Commission is not vague about what is allowed and what is not, and the result is that this announcement will turn out to be nothing more than a well conceived Public Relations operation. Allow me to attach some numbers to the Commission proposal.

## Supporting Aggregate Demand in Fiscally Constrained Economies

In the past weeks I have argued at length that  the eurozone is in recession because of a strong contraction of aggregate demand; and that in spite of this fact the overall fiscal stance is restrictive.

I also argued that in the current situation the best that can be hoped for peripheral countries is a more gradual consolidation (ideally a neutral stance, but this is too much to ask). I do believe that a fiscal expansion, even in the periphery, would be sustainable and growth-enhancing. But at this stage this is just daydreaming. It won’t happen.

The fiscal stance of the eurozone will not become expansionary (as is sorely needed), if the core (and in particular Germany) does not implement robustly expansionary fiscal policies.

If their fiscal space is limited or non-existent, what can peripheral countries do, besides waiting for an improbable fiscal stimulus in Germany? A lot, actually. If public demand cannot be significantly increased (and will actually be further compressed, albeit at a slower pace), it is all the more important that the governments of Italy, Greece, Spain and so on, find ways to restart private demand.

There is a lot of discussion about structural reforms. They are not the answer. First, because they have an impact mostly on supply (and the problem, let me repeat it, is demand); second, because their benefits, if any, won’t materialize before a few years. And there is no time. The cumulate effect of five years of crisis is now threatening social cohesion in most peripheral countries.

A more straightforward policy, that could be implemented in the next few months with immediate effects, is a strong redistribution of the tax burden towards higher incomes. The increasing inequality of income of the past three decades is in my opinion one of the deep causes of the crisis;  inequality has further increased since 2008. The squeeze of revenues for low incomes, coming from the combination of high unemployment and fiscal adjustment, is depressing both the capacity to spend and the morale of households. Increased inequality contributed to global imbalances in the past, and  is recessionary in the current crisis.

In September, when the season of budget laws begins, governments in the periphery should propose to their parliaments revenue-neutral tax adjustments, lowering taxes on low income households and increasing them on the rich and very rich. This would be fair, and more importantly, effective to boost morale and consumption. I am talking about a substantial shift of the burden, large enough for its macroeconomic impact to be significant. This is all the more necessary if standard Keynesian deficit spending can not be implemented.

## Living in Terror of Dead Economists

Kenneth Rogoff has a piece on the Project Syndicate that is revealing of today’s intellectual climate. What does he say?

1. The eurozone problems are structural, and stem from a monetary and economic integration that was not followed (I’d say accompanied) by fiscal integration (a federal budget to be clear). Hard to disagree on that
2. Without massive debt write-downs, no reasonable solution to the current mess seems feasible. Hard to disagree on that as well
3. Some more inflation would be desirable, to bring down the value of debt. Hard to disagree on that as well.

In a sentence, intra eurozone imbalances are the source of the current crisis. Could not agree more…

Unfortunately, Rogoff does not stop here, but feels the irrepressible urge to add that

Temporary Keynesian demand measures may help to sustain short-run internal growth, but they will not solve France’s long-run competitiveness problems [...] To my mind, using Germany’s balance sheet to help its neighbors directly is far more likely to work than is the presumed “trickle-down” effect of a German-led fiscal expansion. This, unfortunately, is what has been lost in the debate about Europe of late: However loud and aggressive the anti-austerity movement becomes, there still will be no simple Keynesian cure for the single currency’s debt and growth woes.

The question then arises. Who ever thought that a more expansionary stance in the eurozone would solve the French structural problems? And at the opposite, why would recognizing that France has structural problems make it less urgent to reverse the pro-cyclical fiscal stance of an eurozone that is desperately lacking domestic demand? Let me try to sort out things here. This is the way I see it: Read more