jamesz

Economists tackle ‘the surge’

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Economists like to claim that their discipline is about providing tools for analysis, not answers to ready-made problems. OK, so they’re hardly alone in that but Dani Rodrik links an interesting paper by Michael Greenstone that walks the walk. Greenstone

…shows how data from world financial markets can be used to shed light on the central question of whether the Surge has increased or diminished the prospect of today’s Iraq surviving into the future. In particular, I examine the price of Iraqi state bonds, which the Iraqi government is currently servicing, on world financial markets. After the Surge, there was a sharp decline in the price of those bonds, relative to alternative bonds. This decline signals a 40% increase in the market’s expectation that Iraq will default. This finding suggests that, to date, the Surge is failing to pave the way toward a stable Iraq and may in fact be undermining it.

I really like how he uses modern economic and econometric techniques to tackle important public policy issues. However, we shouldn’t rely too heavily on the wisdom of the market in evaluating the effectiveness of the surge. While the aggregation of information that occurs in market pricing might be a better indicator than anecdotal evidence, ‘The Market’ doesn’t have superpowers that grant it access to information nobody else has. Many of the decision makers in that market likely have little more access to information about the surge than you or I. Aggregation tends to dampen the influence of extreme views but it doesn’t guarantee accuracy.

Matt Nolan

RBNZ, NZX and equity markets

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The NZX wants the RBNZ to pay more attention to the way the equity market behaves when the bank change the official cash rate.

Now I can’t find a copy of the submission anywhere, but the above stuff article at least tells us that the NZX would like policy goals to be focused on long term economic growth. Now I think the ultimate goal of the RBNZ is long term economic growth, however the Bank believes that the way to do it is to provide an environment with a high degree of price stability.

The NZX counter-argument is that the narrow focus of RBNZ policy leads to higher equilibrium interest rates, which increases the cost of capital for firms, retarding long run economic growth.

Now I have some sympathy with the idea that our equilibrium interest rate is too high, however I think we have to figure out why interest rates seem to be, on average, higher in NZ than in the rest of the developed world. The RBNZ acknowledges the fact that New Zealand seems to have higher equilibrium interest rates than other develop nations, but they see this as a result of New Zealand’s poor net investment position. As it is the result the Bank doesn’t see monetary policy as the problem, the problem is structural.

The question I have to ask then is, why is our net investment position so bad (current account deficits damn it) and how do we get out of it?

P.S. If anyone knows where I can find copies of the submissions to Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee, please tell me in the comment section. I can only seem to find the Reserve Bank one.

Matt Nolan

A little bit of risk is a dangerous thing

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So, our dollar has fallen 5% against the US, and 8% against the yen in the last few days. While some people may think that the prospect of no more interest-rate hikes is the driver, the truth is that market participants have become a bit more risk-averse.

A little bit of wobblying in the US stock markets, and suddenly a bunch of people have decided to unwind carry trades, and as we are the number one carry trade country, our exchange rate eased. That is why we are only down by 2% against the Aus$ since Thursday, they were a carry trade currency as well.

I expect us to stay around in the mid-70’s, we might even climb up a bit against the US. After all, this new found risk is based on subprime lending worries in the US, and the fundamentals of the strong NZ$ (high interest rates, strong commodity prices) are still in place. However, if asset prices (especially housing) start to ease too quickly, our exchange rate might be in for a bumpy ride.

Will Taylor

A Strict Application of “Kiwi Made” Actually Hurts Our Exporters

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While I am all for supporting the domestic economy, I think that a strict interpretation of the requirements for a good to be labelled “Made in New Zealand” actually harms our exporters. People get upset when they find out that something that is “Made in New Zealand” is manufactured using inputs purchased from another country. Any attempt to put pressure on exporting firms to use entirely NZ inputs is detrimental given that we are a small open economy with a very volatile exchange rate. The argument I’m making has absolutely nothing to do with price or quality but instead centres on a corporate finance concept known as “Natural Hedging”. Put simply if you have a company that sells its output in a foreign currency, purchasing your inputs in that currency naturally hedges movements in the exchange rate.  A good example of this is Navman who appear to be doing fine because they purchase a lot of their inputs in US$

While I accept that a good should still in essence be New Zealand made, I  believe that when the firm is an exporter, they should outsource as much of their inputs as possible.

Will Taylor

Why the Exchange Rate Makes Me Smile

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So the exchange rate has reached record highs much to the despair of the government, reserve bank and local exporters. There is one sector of the economy that is poised to benefit from this though…. ME

Given all the noise coming from the government about the exchange rate being overvalued and the fact that the reserve bank intervened when the dollar was still below $0.80, I’m thinking it’s a fairly safe bet that over the medium-long term the dollar will come back down. With that in mind, now is fantastic time to buy overseas shares and reap the gains as you ride the dollar back down.

It’ll also be a nice self fulfilling prophecy if will all start sending money overseas, we believe the kiwi dollar is going to fall so we dump it which causes it fall. Think about it, you could actually be helping our exporters by investing in foreign companies, I’ve never felt so good about not investing in the local economy!