Who’s Rebalancing

Just a quick note. The two largest surplus economies have lately decided to take radically different paths.  China expressed concern for the imbalances lying behind its large current account surplus, and pledged since at least 2009 to re-balance its growth model towards higher domestic demand. I had already discussed that a little more than one year ago, noticing how the challenge for China was to steer away not only from exports, but also from excessive investment. In the same piece I had argued that while China seemed fully conscious of its contribution to the global imbalances that had led to the crisis, Germany had decided to walk the opposite path.

And here we are. With  timely synchronization, we learn that wages in Bavaria will increase  by 5.6% over the next two years,  maybe triggering a more generalized increase. Or maybe not. While in China they increased 17% in the year 2012.

Even taking into account differences in inflation and in growth, the difference is revealing. China is actually playing the game it committed to. Not only it tries to reduce its dependence on foreign demand; but, domestically, it is trying to boost consumption and to curb investment.

In the meantime Germany is stuck with its small-country syndrome: export-led growth and restraints to domestic demand (both public and private). In spite of recent troubles, austerity remains the course Europe is following (with disastrous results). It is telling that even when partially acknowledging that austerity did not bring the fruits she hoped for, Angela Merkel can only suggest, as an alternative, structural reforms to boost competitiveness. Expanding domestic demand has not, is not, and will not be an option for the German government.

The Berlin View is alive and kicking.

Leaks in the Dam?

Interesting things happened this morning. I assisted to one of the presentations of the OECD interim assessment. There is nothing very new in the assessment, that concerning the eurozone, can be summarized as follows

• The outlook remains negative (while the rest of the OECD countries are doing better)
• There is still room for monetary accommodation
• This monetary accommodation may not benefit the countries that need it more, because the transmission mechanism of monetary policy is still not fully working
• The Cyprus incident shows that there is a desperate (this I added) need of a fully fledged banking union
• EMU countries need to continue on the path of fiscal stabilization, even if automatic stabilizers should be allowed to fully play their role, even at the price of missing nominal targets

Austerity and Ideology

Wolfgang Munchau has another interesting editorial on austerity, in yesterday’s Financial Times. He argues that the US may become the next paying member of the austerity club, thus making the perspective of another lost decade certain.

Munchau’s article could be the n-th plea against austerity, as one can by now read everywhere (except in Berlin or in Brussels; but this is another story). What caught my attention are two paragraphs in particular.

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:

The Ancient Roots of EU Problems

Il Sole 24 Ore just published an editorial I wrote with Jean-Luc Gaffard, on the structural problems facing the EU. Here is an English (slightly longer and different) version of the piece:

It is hard not to rejoice at the ECB announcement that it would buy, if necessary, an unlimited amount of government bonds. The Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program is meant to protect from speculation countries that would otherwise have no choice but to abandon the euro zone, causing the implosion of the single currency. As had to be expected, the mere announcement that the ECB was willing to act (at least partially) as a lender of last resort calmed speculation and spreads came down to more reasonable levels.

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

Quantitative Easing and Lender of Last Resort: Lots of Confusion under the Sky

I have read an interesting article by Wolfgang Münchau, on the Financial Times.  To summarize, Münchau argues that because of politician’s complacency, there is a chance that the new OMTs program launched by the ECB will never be used, and hence prove ineffective in boosting the economy. He therefore argues that the ECB should have done like the Fed, and announce an unconditional bond purchase program (private and public alike).

The piece is interesting because Münchau is at the same time  right, and off the target. It is worth trying to clarify.

Of Old Ideas about Inequality and Growth

Update: An edited version of this piece appeared as a Project Syndicate commentary

A few weeks ago on Project Syndicate Raghuram Rajan offered his view on inequality and growth, thought provoking as usual. His argument can be summarized as follows:

• Inequality increased starting from the 1970s, across the board
• Two different explanations of this increase can be offered: a progressive one, that blames pro-rich policies, and an “alternative” one, that focuses on skill biased technical progress. I do not understand Rajan’s restraint, and as I like symmetry, I will label this alternative view “conservative”.
• Both views agree that inequality led to excessive debt and hence to the crisis.
• According to Rajan, nevertheless, the alternative/conservative view is more apt at explaining what happened to Europe, that remained more egalitarian, but was able to hide the ensuing low growth and competitiveness through the euro and increased debt.
• The exception is Germany where, following the reunification, structural reforms had to be implemented to reduce workers’ protection. This explains why Germany today is so strong in Europe.
• Thus the solution is for Southern Europe to implement structural reforms and accept increased inequality through lower workers’ protection; the alternative is sliding into an “egalitarian decline” like Japan.

The way I see it, there are a number of problems with Rajan’s analysis, and more importantly a fundamental (and unproven) assumption that underlies his argument. Let me start with the problems in his analysis, and then I’ll turn to the core of this piece, i.e. challenging the underlying assumption.

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.