Marginal Productivity? Think Again

I am writing  a paper on inequality and the crisis,  for which I used Piketty and Saez ‘s World Top Income Database to try to understand whether the distributional effect changed over time. Unfortunately their data cover 2012 only for a handful of countries, among which are the United States; waiting for new data here is the evolution of income percentiles, including capital gains, from 2007 to 2009 (yellow bars), and from 2009 to 2012 (red bars):

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 mainly hit asset prices, thus having a major impact on the richest layers of the income distribution. In fact, the top 0.1% to 0.01% (a handful of people) lost more than 40% of their income in real terms, while average income of the bottom 90% dropped of around 10%. This was short-lasted, nevertheless, as the prolonged recession, and the jobless recovery that followed, quickly restored, and further deepened the distance between the rich on one side and the middle and lower classes on the other.  Since 2009 average income of the bottom 95% stagnated (for the bottom 90% it kept decreasing). Nothing really new, here. The iAGS 2014 report, to which I (marginally) contributed, reaches similar conclusions. But I thought it would be interesting to share it.

And while we are at it, here are the ratios of average income of those at the very top, with respect to income of the bottom 90% (from the same dataset):

The top 0.1%-0.01%, the same handful of people as before, has an average income that is 120 times the average income of the bottom 90%. This is also barely breaking news…

Now, as we all know, the traditional view on income distribution states that  factors of production are paid according to their contribution to the production process (their “marginal productivity”). Within this traditional view, the recent steep increase of inequality would be explained by skill-biased technical progress and increased competition in the globalized labor market: the entrance in the global labor market of low-skilled workers from emerging and developing economies lowered the average marginal productivity of labor, thus reducing its share of national income. Increasing inequality would then be an ineluctable process that policy is not supposed to address, if not at the price of reduced efficiency and growth. Is this a caricature? Not so much. in his recent Project Syndicate comment on Piketty, Kenneth Rogoff proposes once again the old tradeoff between inequality and growth that the crisis seemed to have buried once and for all (just look at the widely cited IMF discussion paper  by Ostry et al). The traditional view is alive and kicking, and those who oppose it are dangerous liberal extremists! After all, Rogoff tells us, the tide raises all boats…

The bottom line is that if a top executive makes on average 120 times the wage of his or her employee, well, this means that he or she is 120 times more productive. Rent seeking and political capture play no role in explaining the difference in pay. Circulez, il n’y a rien à voir…

Nothing new under the sky, I guess. But it is important, from time to time, to send out reminders.

Wrong Debates

Paul Krugman has a short post on the Eurozone, today (I’d like him to write more about us; he has been too America-centered lately), pointing out that the myth of fiscal profligacy is, well, just a myth. in fact, he argues, the only fiscally irresponsible country, in the years 2000 was Greece. It is maybe worth reposting here a figure that from an old piece of this blog, that since then made it into all my classes on the Euro crisis: 
The figure shows the situation of public finances in 2007, against the Maastricht benchmark (3% deficit and 60% debt) before the crisis hit. As Krugman says, only one country of the so-called PIIGS  (the red dots) is clearly out of line, Greece. Portugal is virtually like France, and Spain and Ireland way better than most countries, including Germany. Italy has a stock of old debt, but its deficit in 2007 is under control.

So Krugman is right in reminding us that fiscal policy per se was not a problem before the crisis; And yet, what he calls fiscal myths, have shaped policies in the EMU, with a disproportionate emphasis on austerity. And even today, when economists overwhelmingly discuss unconventional measures available to the ECB to contrast deflation, fiscal policy is virtually absent from the debate and continued fiscal consolidation is taken for granted. I will write more on this in the next days, but it is striking how we aim at the wrong target.

Reforming Europe

I just finished editing a collective volume, in English and in French, on possible ways to reform Europe. Here is the blog post that presents it:

What Reforms for Europe?

by Christophe Blot, Olivier Rozenberg, Francesco Saraceno  et Imola Streho 

From May 22 to May 25, Europeans will vote to elect the 751 Members of the European Parliament. These elections will take place in a context of strong mistrust for European institutions. While the crisis of confidence is not specifically European, in the Old Continent it is coupled with the hardest crisis since the Great Depression, and with a political crisis that shows the incapacity of European institutions to reach decisions. The issues at stake in the next European elections, therefore, have multiple dimensions that require a multidisciplinary approach. The latest issue of the Debates and Policies Revue de l’OFCE series (published in French and in English), gathers European affairs specialists – economists, law scholars, political scientists – who starting from the debate within their own discipline, share their vision on the reforms that are needed to give new life to the European project. Our goal is to feed the public debate through short policy briefs containing specific policy recommendations. Our target are obviously the candidates to the European elections, but also unions, entrepreneurs, civil society at large and, above all, citizens interested by European issues.

In the context of the current crisis, the debate leading to the next European elections seems to be hostage of two opposing views. On one side a sort of self-complacency that borders denial about the crisis that is still choking the Eurozone and Europe at large. According to this view, the survival of the euro should be reason enough to be satisfied with the policies followed so far, and the European institutions evolved in the right direction in order to better face future challenges.

At the opposite, the eurosceptic view puts forward the fundamental flaws of the single currency, arguing that the only way out of the crisis would be a return to national currencies. The different contributions of this volume aim at going beyond these polar views. The crisis highlighted the shortcomings of EU institutions, and the inadequacy of economic policies centered on fiscal discipline alone. True, some reforms have been implemented; but they are not enough, when they do not go in the wrong direction altogether. We refuse nevertheless to conclude that no meaningful reform can be implemented, and that the European project has no future.

The debate on Europe’s future and on a better and more democratic Union needs to be revived. We need to discuss ways to implement more efficient governance, and public policies adapted to the challenges we face. The reader nevertheless will not find, in this volume, a coherent project; rather, we offer eclectic and sometimes even contradictory views on the direction Europe should take. This diversity witnesses the necessity of a public debate that we wish to go beyond academic circles and involves policy makers and citizens. Our ambition is to provide keys to interpret the current stakes of the European debate, and to form an opinion on the direction that our common project should take.

The volume can be downloaded  in French and in English, and for free!!