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?

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.

Wrong Models

Sebastian Dullien has a very interesting Policy Brief on the “German Model”, that is worth reading. Analyzing the Schroeder reforms of 2003-2005, it shows that it fundamentally boiled down to encouraging part-time contracts, but it did not touch the core of German labour market regulation:

Note, however, what the Schröder reforms did not do. They did not touch the German system of collective wage bargaining. They did not change the rules on working time. They did not make hiring and firing fundamentally easier. They also did not introduce the famous working-time accounts and the compensation for short working hours, which helped Germany through the crisis of 2008–9.

Thus, Dullien concludes, the standard Berlin View narrative, i.e. the success of the German Economy is due to fiscal consolidation and structural reforms in particular in labour markets, needs to be reassessed to say the very least. But there is more than this.