Matt Nolan

How does a fiscal boost work?

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This is an important question, given that we are in a situation where governments around the world are looking to loosen fiscal policy. Tyler Cowen succinctly lists the four (five) ways that fiscal policy influences the economic situation – note that this ignores issues of the quality or distribution of spending. These are:

  1. Generate some investments which are worthwhile on their own terms,
  2. If the broader monetary aggregates are falling, because of either a credit crunch or a liquidity trap, a fiscal boost can keep aggregate demand from deteriorating,
  3. fiscal boost can provide a beneficial “sunspot” in a multiple equilibrium model, thereby moving everyone to the higher output equilibrium,
  4. If spending needs to fall, a fiscal boost can postpone this fall,
  5. The economy needs a boost to aggregate demand and since monetary policy isn’t working any more, fiscal policy has to step in (which he notes requires 2 and 4 anyway).

So what do I have to add – only a little bit.

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goonix

SKY TV and the market for live sport

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The previous Labour government bestowed a legacy upon NZ that included the first ever review of broadcasting regulations.

Essentially the question being asked in this review is: does the current market situation warrant government intervention?

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Matt Nolan

And we wonder why interest rates are rising …

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It appears that the UK wants to spend their way out of a recession. The US has a plan too, as does New Zealand, Europe, and Australia. Governments all across the world want to spend their way out of a recession – however, there is only three ways they can get the money together.

  1. Increase taxes – knocking out any stimulus anyways,
  2. Borrow,
  3. Print money.

Assume that monetary policy will act to constrain any excessive “money printing” that will be going on this leaves us with borrowing.

If all the governments in the world want to increase their borrowing, this will increase demand for global credit, which will push up interest rates – won’t it? This will lead to an increase in private savings, and will just move around the allocation of resources rather than creating wealth.

There is no free lunch when it comes to “getting out of a recession” – give me the “market failure” we are facing, then we can talk about improving outcomes!

Matt Nolan

Forcing savers to help borrowers?

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Over at the Standard they discuss one of Lord Keynes’s “real ideas” – namely an international organisation that tries to push savers to spend, by buying the things borrowers save.  When I put it this way the idea sounds ridiculous – which it is.

This unusual view comes from a belief that a trade deficit or surplus is a “imbalance” that needs to be “solved” by a benevolent organisation.  This is of course rubbish, nations, like individuals, should be able to run trade balances or surpluses based on the preferences of the individuals involved.

Now I haven’t heard this idea before, and if Keynes did come up with it I think it has more to do with the elitist world view of the Cambridge school combined with some foggy mercantilist sentiment than with the practical relevance of such a policy.

“Imbalances” that are caused by market failures are the ones we should solve – not arbitrary imbalances that we have assumed exist because we want to regulate.

Ultimately, there has been a disjoint between risk and return in some areas of society, a problem that has been able to occur because of large information asymmetries across the financial market.  Transparency of information and wider education surround risk are the best ways to improve outcomes in the financial market – not arbitrary regulation based on a view that “all countries should run a trade balance”.

Matt Nolan

When not to stimulate

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Sorry for linking to the Standard twice in one day, however they have written about a couple of things I wish to touch on recently. In a recent post Irish Bill states that:

One of the things I like about being left wing is how often the best moral decision is also the best economic decision.

Take economic stimulus for example.

Now, on the first point I would state that the best policy decision and the “morally right” decision always match when you are a utilitarian like me. Getting the two to separate in anyway involves making some pretty specific assumptions and what a “economic decision” is and what a “moral decision” is.

Still this isn’t the point I was interested in discussing – I was interested in Irish Bill’s belief that a stimulus package is good policy in the New Zealand environment. In a credit driven slowdown like the one we are facing a stimulus is not the way to fix things as we are not suffering from a “demand deficiency” – or at least not the type that cannot be solved with monetary policy.

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Matt Nolan

Do we want “productivity growth”?

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CPW has requested that we cover the Standard’s coverage of the National-Act coalition agreement, specifically this section:

National/Act agree to close the ‘income gap’ between Australia and NZ by 2025, requiring ‘3% productivity growth per year’. Which is just economic techno-babble. What ‘income gap’ are they talking about? GDP per capita or wages or what? And how would a faster rate of productivity growth close this gap? Anyone who knows what productivity is (the amount of wealth produced in a unit of work) knows that merely increasing productivity doesn’t necessarily boost GDP or wages. GDP = productivity x work done. So, GDP not only depends on productivity it also depends on how many people are in work. And boosting productivity doesn’t lead automatically to higher wages – wages are determined by supply and demand in the labour market, nothing to do with productivity. In fact, productivity grows faster when employment drops because it’s the low quality workers that lose their jobs first and lower quality capital that sits idle first, but wages don’t go up because there is more slack in the labour market.

After reading it we felt that a non-biased explanation of the “economic techno-babble” was in order.

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