Friday, April 23, 2021

Summers at FT

Martin Wolf's FT interview with Larry Summers is a great read. It would be a great read for its articulate numeracy if Larry were a Republican, stepping down from the Trump CEA or Treasury. That he is on the the other team makes it ever more poignant. 

If you look at the economy at the beginning of this year, prevailing forecasts were that Covid would reduce wages and salaries to American households by $20bn-$30bn a month, with that figure declining over the year. So, that would be a $250bn-$300bn hole in wages and salaries over the course of the year.

So, I look at this hole and then I see $900bn of stimulus in the December package, $1.9tn of stimulus in the recently passed package and $2tn in the savings overhang, which is also likely to be spent. I see the Fed with its foot on the accelerator as hard as any Fed has ever done....

So, I look at that dwindling hole. Then I look at expenditures that aren’t hard to add into the multiple trillions, and I see substantial risk that the amount of water being poured in vastly exceeds the size of the bathtub.

Wait Larry, aren't you Mr. Secular Stagnation, Hysterisis, borrow and spend? 
How does this square with my earlier views on secular stagnation? I looked at the global economy and, indeed, at the US economy during the pre-Covid period and what I saw was that, at near-zero real interest rates, there was a quite substantial gap between private savings and investment, driven by demography, cheap capital goods, inequality and technology.
That substantial gap meant a deflationary tendency, one towards sluggishness and for savings to flow into existing assets and create asset bubbles. So, I felt that savings absorption was a central macroeconomic problem and the order of the problem was 3 or 4 per cent of GDP at very low interest rates that themselves carry substantial risks.
Now, when we’re talking about fiscal stimulus totalling 14 per cent of GDP in its first round, when we’re also talking about extraordinary monetary measures, structural effects of Covid — notably a large savings overhang — it seems to me that we are way overdoing the requisite response.
I always thought of economics as a quantitative field...

Not all of this makes sense to me. The stories of excess savings seem ephemeral, how savings vs. investment has anything to do with inflation -- a nominal question at the scale of decades -- and how any of that privileges "savings flow into existing assets and create asset bubbles" is a head-scratcher. 

Most of all, I am dubious of the hydraulic Keynesianism to which macro policy has returned. Find your GDP gap, divide by 1.5 (actually, here, divide by 1) that equals the amount to borrow and spread around. 

But I am here to praise not to quibble. At least hydraulic Keynesianism is quantitative, in a back of the envelope sense. Larry is pointing to the complete lack of quantification in macro policy otherwise. 

Later, 

Let me put it in a different way and it’s sort of ironic. The bet that we can do this is a bet on secular stagnation being even more true than I had supposed. For this to be right, the long-term demand gap has to be far larger than I had imagined.

I don’t think that, until recently, the principal criticism of my views on secular stagnation was that I was very much underestimating its force. So I find it not a preponderant probability

In other words, MMT has won. I do chuckle a little at Summers and others, passed on the left by MMT, saying "no, we didn't mean that much stimulus, or that much slack." But Summers is and was quantitative,   he did not subscribe to the "how much? MORE" attitude of the current left. 

Of course, people in the Administration can also add. So the logical conclusion is that "stimulus" therefore is just a talking point, not a serious policy. They're taking Rahm Emmanuel's advice to heart and not letting the opportunity go to waste, not for macro benefit but to hand money out to where they want to hand money out. Larry essentially says as much. 

...no one was advocating a programme of this magnitude last December. This was not anyone’s economic analysis. So, the argument might be right — but it was not an argument anyone had come to before it became politically expedient.
On infrastructure (this is the last bill, not the current one, but I think Larry will probably say the same given how little actual infrastructure is in this one)  
I could have been comfortable with a headline figure well in excess of $1.9tn if it had been a large-scale, multiyear programme of public investment responding to our deepest societal concerns. But that’s not what this is.

It transfers to state and local governments that don’t have any new budget problem, according to the latest figures. It’s paying people, who have been unemployed, more in unemployment insurance than they earned when they were working. It’s giving cheques to families in the 90th percentile of income distribution.

It doesn’t seem prudent on resource allocation grounds, as well as being problematic on macroeconomic grounds.

Larry then goes back to the back of the stimulus envelope 

..there’s much discussion that suggests you can’t measure the GDP gap but, gosh, employment is 10m people lower than it might otherwise have been, so there’s got to be enormous slack.

As a rough calculation, if employment is 10m people short, that’s about 6 per cent of the labour force and, it appears, those who are not employed have wages of perhaps 60 per cent of the average worker. In terms of the shortfall in effective labour input, you’re at 60 per cent of 6 per cent, which is about 3.6 per cent.

So, in employment terms that gets you to just about the same gap that you come to in terms of more traditional estimates. You also don’t see the Fed or others substantially revising upwards their estimates of potential GDP.

There is a lot more on taxes, the possibility of closing the gap by taxing the rich,  and size of government I could quibble with, but leave that alone. Kudos to Larry for speaking out so forcefully when "his team" is headed in the wrong direction. 

A last golden paragraph:

...in many ways, today’s situation is a bit like the 1960s. It was then hoped that the laws of economic arithmetic could be suspended and that it would all work out. That experiment didn’t work out well for Lyndon Johnson, economically, and it didn’t work out well for the Democratic party, politically. I think there is a significant risk that something of the same kind will happen today.

I hope Larry will next look at climate policy, which is suffering a similar lack of quantification. Has anyone seen a single cost-benefit analysis? [Update with important qualification, and thanks for the comment pointing I out: ...In the recent policy rush. Yes, the  literature is chock full of cost-benefit calculations, and it is exactly those that I miss. But from Keystone pipeline to the climate disclosure and ban fossil fuel movement at Fed and FSOC I have not seen any even referenced. I am happy to be shown to be wrong on this.] 



20 comments:

  1. Prof. Summers in all honor, but here's the point:

    "..there’s much discussion that suggests you can’t measure the GDP gap but, gosh, employment is 10m people lower than it might otherwise have been, so there’s got to be enormous slack."

    On account they're not allowed to work [much] or it doesn't pay to work.

    Anybody for a supply shock?

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  2. It is interesting. From China to Japan to Europe to the United States, all economies are operating below the inflation targets of their respective central banks.

    My bias is the 2% inflation target is about 1% too low, but the set that aside.

    If there are pending higher inflation rates, it is not showing up in financial markets now. German 10-year bonds are still offering negative interest rates.

    Will this time be different, will this time after 40 years of inflation-forecasts will the US actually see a higher rate of inflation?

    There have been supply constraints this time around, and US housing markets are suffering from chronically tightened supply. (Chronic US trade deficits also means there is a lot of foreign capital seeking a home in the US, and that includes housing markets).

    Suppose inflation rises to the 3% to 4% range for a couple of years and then drifts back to 2%. This has happened in Australia in recent decades.

    Will the rise in inflation be justified by much better labor markets?

    Is it axiomatic that if inflation gets above 3%, it must skyrocket to 15%?

    My own bias is that a nation with "labor shortages" is a happy country. I wish upon the US generations of labor shortages.





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    1. "They're taking Rahm Emmanuel's advice to heart and not letting the opportunity go to waste, not for macro benefit but to hand money out to where they want to hand money out. Larry essentially says as much."

      "There is a lot more on taxes, the possibility of closing the gap by taxing the rich, and size of government I could quibble with, but leave that alone. Kudos to Larry for speaking out so forcefully when his team is headed in the wrong direction."

      Nope, I would say that BOTH "teams" (Republican and Democrat) are headed in the wrong direction.

      This is what happens in a two party political system that is closely divided - the extreme elements in either party have an outsized influence over policy making decisions all in an effort to generate political "wins" for each team.

      Do you understand why there is a push to eliminate the filibuster?

      The only way to break the cycle is for one party to be neutered (see Republican Party during and after the Great Depression) or for a third political party to be introduced.

      Henry Kissinger understood this on a geopolitical scale with triangular diplomacy. Apparently Larry Summers does not. My advice to Mr. Summers would be to leave the Democratic Party for a party of moderates.

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    4. George Shultz (deceased) had the guts to stand his ground over opposition to wage and price controls and quit his position inside the Nixon White House.

      Does Larry Summers have the same dedication to his principles?
      We shall see.

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    5. Summers has no job in the current Administration, so he hardly has the opportunity to quit. By this public dedication to principles he certainly won't get one, in particular Fed Chair which I presume he might like. So the answer is, yes.

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    6. "There is a lot more on taxes, the possibility of closing the gap by taxing the rich, and size of government I could quibble with, but leave that alone. Kudos to Larry for speaking out so forcefully when his team is headed in the wrong direction."

      Does Larry have enough dedication to his principles that he would consider quitting his team?

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  3. "Has anyone seen a single cost-benefit analysis?" [of climate change policy]

    Here is a handful of articles and papers spread over two and a half decades, as a sample of cost-benefit analysis of climate policy. URLs below each citation.

    "A cost-benefit analysis of slowing climate change", Maddison, D., Energy Policy, vol. 23, #s. 4-5, April-May, 1995, pp. 337-346. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0301421595901584

    "Equitable cost-benefit analysis of climate change policies", Tol, R.S.J., Ecological Economics, vol. 36, #1, Jan. 2001, pp. 71-85. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800900002044

    "Paris Climate Agreement passes the cost-benefit test", Glanemann, N., S. N. Willner, A. Leverman, Nature Communications, 11, art.# 110 (2020), Jan. 27, 2020.
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13961-1

    "Can cost benefit analysis grasp the climate change nettle? And can we justify ambitious targets?", Rhys, J., Feb. 25, 2019, Oxford Martin School, Univ. of Oxford, UK. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/blog/can-cost-benefit-analysis-grasp-the-climate-change-nettle-and-can-we-justify-ambitious-targets/

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  4. On whether a cost-benefit analysis would serve any purpose.

    The ethicist would say that an economic cost-benefit analysis is immaterial, from an ethical point of view. The ethicist would say that the harm posed or done as a result of climate change must be reduced irrespective of the cost incurred in doing so because of equity. The ethicist would cite moral imperative as a rationale to disregard cost in the course of reducing harms arising because of emissions; and she would assert that those who contributed the most to the cause of climate change should bear the greater burden of reducing those related harms. In short, climate change policies are should be judged on non-monetary standards, and those standards are cardinal (i.e., absolute scale), not ordinal (relative scale).

    According to the ethicist 'cap-and-trade' policies do little to reduce harms--that type of policy simply permits pollution without reduction at the source, she says. Carbon pricing (e.g., 'carbon tax') is a policy of selling indulgences, and allows the polluter to pollute with a clear conscience undeterred by concern for his behavior once the carbon tax is paid, or so the ethicist would assert.

    The ethicist requires nation-states to determine their 'fair share' responsibility for mitigation of harms arising from anthropogenic climate change, and then to determine the path that mitigation will take to achieve the greatest reduction in the least amount of time. If cost considerations enter the picture they do so in the form of resource constraints and not within the objective function to be minimized. If one had to characterize the type of optimization problem the ethicist is faced with, it would be "...that of forcing a system to change from an initial state to a desired terminal state in minimum time, subject to satisfying limitations imposed on the control and state variables." [Pierre, D. A., Optimization Theory with Applications, "Time Optimal Control", pp. 500 & ff., NY, NY, Dover Publications, 1986.] The economic variables of interest would be the values of the co-state variables.

    The typical approach has been to develop integrated assessment models ("IAMs") of varying complexity to simulate the effects of different policy prescriptions on average global temperature outcomes over a span of 100 to 200 years. The results have been indifferent and confounding. Because of this and other reasons, the political class has entered the fray and is determined to set targets for emissions reductions that are to be achieved by specific deadlines, without specifying limitations on control or state variables, on the principle that "...if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." [Alice in Wonderland, Carroll, L.] The attraction here for the political class is that the politician's work is done when she has set the target and the drop-dead date on which the target is to be reached. She leaves it to others, the engineers and the economists to determine the 'how, who, when, where and what' or fail at their peril. The Imperial prerogative.

    Summers, L., wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot bean pole, and rightly so.

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    1. As I sit here in Chicago (where there was a mile of ice above me 25,000 years ago), I find my self strangely unconcerned by the prospect that the earth may warm slightly over the next 100 years through human activity. I worry more about what to do when things turn cold again, which they undoubtedly will. In 150 years, will we be paying people to spew CO2 into the atmosphere? Maybe sooner?

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    2. Old Eagle Eye,

      "According to the ethicist 'cap-and-trade' policies do little to reduce harms--that type of policy simply permits pollution without reduction at the source, she says."

      "Carbon pricing (e.g., 'carbon tax') is a policy of selling indulgences, and allows the polluter to pollute with a clear conscience undeterred by concern for his behavior once the carbon tax is paid, or so the ethicist would assert."

      Not only that, for a carbon tax to work, the administrator of those taxes MUST be a disinterested third party.

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/06/13/report-the-u-s-military-emits-more-co2-than-many-industrialized-nations-infographic/?sh=34a7e9054372

      "BP's Statistical Review of World Energy records carbon dioxide emissions in different countries and in 2017, total estimated CO2 emissions in Sweden came to 48 million tons by comparison. The U.S. military also produced more greenhouse gases than Morocco, Peru, Hungary, Finland, New Zealand and Norway. According to the research from Brown University, the Pentagon would be the world's 55th largest CO2 emitter if it was a country."

      How exactly do Carbon taxes deter total CO2 emissions if the government (including the Pentagon) is a recipient of that tax revenue?

      Also, if the Washington, DC should be it's own state, should the Pentagon be it's own country?

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    3. I heard on the BBC today that 40% of Sweden's power is provided by nuclear plants. The Pentagon could run those, too. After we get that going, we can aspire to be France: 70% of their power comes from nuclear generation.

      To get carbon out of the picture, we could embrace nukes. The sky is the limit!

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    4. "The ethicist would say that an economic cost-benefit analysis is immaterial, from an ethical point of view. The ethicist would say that the harm posed or done as a result of climate change must be reduced irrespective of the cost incurred in doing so because of equity." Poppycock! That claim is easily refuted by reductio ad absurdum. If the cost is immaterial, that suggests that there could be no ethical objection to spending $1 trillion to reduce GHG emissions by 1 tonne per annum: an immoral waste of public resources.

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    5. In response to "Paul" (April 26, 2021 3:04PM), the ethicist's response is that an expenditure of $1 Trillion to reduce GHG emissions by 1 metric ton per annum is economically inefficient provided that the harm of that 1 metric ton per annum is insignificantly different from zero; otherwise, it would be ethically appropriate to spend the $1 Trillion.

      To "Amadeus 48" (April 24, 2021 1:30 PM), some countries, such as Canada are actively considering nuclear energy as a means of providing zero-carbon/green-house-gas emissions from electricity generation plants to replace coal- and natural gas-fired thermal plant electricity production in the country. They believe that the technology will be cost-competitive and allow the country to meet its NDC commitments.

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    6. To "Old Eagle Eye" -- I'm confused by your reversion to "economic efficiency." To my mind, economic efficiency consists of two parts, allocative efficiency and productive efficiency. The former is achieved if no changes made to improve one person's utility without harming that of another. The latter implies that no additional output of one good is possible without reducing that of another (so we're on the production possibility frontier), and production occurs at the lowest average total cost. Given that, I don't understand your aversion to CBA -- it is simply a method for moving towards a more efficient outcome.

      Productive efficiency: no additional output of one good can be obtained without decreasing the output of another good, and production proceeds at the lowest possible average total cost.

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  5. I, as a student, am cofused. From Econ 101, I have learned that S=I.
    So, how is it possible that "savings flow into existing assets and create asset bubbles"? I really would be grateful if anyone could possibly guide me about this.

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    1. Anonymous,

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving-investment_balance

      S-I=EX-IM

      If exports = imports, then the equation simplifies to S=I.

      However, the equation S=I is not time consistent because of things like market pricing and depreciation.

      If I invest in a new computer today by paying $2,000, then today my $2,000 is EQUAL to my investment (new computer).

      5 years from now, the relative value of the $2,000 that I paid and the computer that I purchased will have changed - my computer will have depreciated, it will be worth less than the $2,000 that I paid for it.

      S=I is an instantaneous look at flows, it does not account for market price changes or depreciation.

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  6. The president having decided, last week, upon the required emissions reduction by the specified date, the only remaining task is to determine the least cost pathway to the target emission reductions. The benefit is implicit in the target chosen and the date that the target is to be achieved by.

    We can entertain certain scenarios being played out...

    "If it can be shown that (a) restricting the exploration for, production and distribution and use of petroleum and natural gas and natural gas liquids, or (b) curtailing investment in and loans to publicly-listed corporations or trusts engaged in the exploration for, production and distribution or importation of those commodities will achieve the desired objectives then it is to be expected that the federal departments and agencies will pursue those ends. The means need not be inquired into, for any and all means will be considered, if it can be shown that the ends are justified." [Cf., "Manifesto for a Millennial Revolution", Anon., Tortus Publications, Hampstead Heath, London, UK, 2021 preprint]

    …with certain calculated measures…

    "In consideration of the takings clause of the constitution, certain calculated measures will need to be considered prior to launching a concerted assault on the private sector. However, two points should be kept in mind going forward: (i) the dimensions of the harms arising from continuing emissions (high confidence), and (ii) the levels of subsidies and expenditures to be made in partial compensation to the affected parties (high uncertainty). The interplay between (i) and (ii) should be used to magnify the one and minimize the other with consideration given to over-riding resistance to the line of action connected with stated policy goals." [Internal memorandum, DC:JB, policy cntr. dir.; 04-01-21; & encl.]

    ...and, certain doctrines being overturned in the process...

    As with "MMT", the benefit-cost analysis ("BCA") assumes different characteristics depending on the socio-political objective considered. Greater emphasis on empathy is considered desirable (high confidence) versus objective academic hard-headed calculus (very high confidence). Government agency is preferred over individual initiative (outside personal resistance actions on the front lines) (high confidence). &c.

    [The foregoing is a parody on the current political scene as it is unfolding before our very eyes, though it is no joke given the magnitude of the sums involved and the seriousness of the actors involved in the play. The speed with which the political transition has occurred should be a lesson to those who may have thought that the incoming administration was not intent on wholesale transformation of the government and economy. As with every revolution, haste is a means of ensuring that resistance is kept off balance. We should expect more of the same, with mounting intensity. “Carpe Diem.” O.E.E. 04-26-21]

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  7. MMT isn't new. From the first coin debasement through the Keynesian myths, "politicians have unceasingly recommended more deficit spending in order to cure or reduce existing unemployment ... systematically diverting attention from the real causes of our unemployment ... government economic interventions." —Henry Hazlitt, 1978.

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