Chris Giles of the FT thinks they will. His reason is
straightforward: economic growth will continue to outstrip productivity growth,
implying unemployment will fall below the MPC’s 7% threshold, and the MPC will
worry that inflation will start rising.
While I try an avoid making forecasts (see my first answer to
the FT questionnaire here), I would agree that strong growth in
2014 is more than possible. The savings ratio could continue to fall, net trade
could pick up and non-residential investment may begin to recover. It would be bad
news if this was accompanied by continuing near zero productivity growth, but
as we do not know why UK productivity growth has stalled, we cannot rule this
out.
Yet if interest rates did rise as a result, it would be extraordinary.
To see why, just compare the UK with the US. US GDP began growing strongly at
the end of 2009. So the UK is a full three
years behind. Yet the US still has interest rates at their zero lower
bound, four years after their recovery began, and has only just begun to scale
back increases in its quantitative
easing programme. (The MPC stopped increasing their programme some time ago.)
So if we followed the US, there would be no question of raising rates this
year.
The UK has been unusual in the past because of inflation. While
US inflation has been at or below target for the past year and a half, it has
been above target in the UK for 4 years. Yet the UK inflation rate is now down
to 2.1%, despite the recovery in output. So it increasingly looks like high UK
inflation in the past was down to a number of temporary factors, which the MPC
rightly ignored. This is consistent with other
measures of UK inflation, which have been lower throughout.
Now of course if inflation really does look like taking off in
2014, the MPC will raise rates. But what would ‘taking off’ mean precisely. As
the MPC focuses on inflation two or so years down the line, I think it would
have to mean a sudden tightening in the labour market. Given that unemployment
is currently around 7.4%, and averaged 5.25% between 2000 and 2008, and
earnings growth is currently running at 0.9% in nominal terms (!), we seem
to have a long way to go before anyone could argue the labour market is about
to initiate a wage price spiral.
Think of it another way. UK GDP is currently between 15% and
20% below where it would have been if it had followed past trends and there had
been no recession. Past trends involved average growth rates of at least 2%.
With that historically unprecedented gap, if two years of GDP growth one or two
per cent above that past average meant monetary policy had to be tightened, it
would mean accepting that something catastrophic and irredeemable had happened to the UK economy. That is why a rate
rise this year would be extraordinary.
Now you might say a small increase in UK short term interest
rates would still mean that monetary policy was easy, but just a little less
so, and so a modest rate rise would be no big deal. The Resolution Foundation
would strongly disagree. In a recent report they looked at the impact that various
different scenarios for interest rates would have on households. The following
chart indicates the key point.
The left hand panel gives the proportion of households paying
over 25% of their disposable income in debt repayments (light pink), and over
50% (dark pink). The key point is this. The 2011 proportions are not very
different from the average over the previous two decades, despite interest
rates being much lower. In other words, we have not seen a wave of defaults and
repossessions following the recession because the MPC cut interest rates to the
bone. If interest rates rise but real wages do not (because productivity growth
continues to stall), then that wave may happen after all. (See the right hand
panel.)
As a result, even a small increase in interest rates is likely
to have a large impact on at least some parts of the UK economy. The Bank is
well aware of this (pdf, HT Pieria), so members of the MPC should not take
this action lightly. As I have argued before, given the risks and uncertainties
associated with the economy’s current position, it makes much more sense to
take risks with inflation than to risk stalling the recovery. But I also
thought that in 2011, when GDP growth was flat, and a
third of the MPC disagreed, so nothing is for sure.
We can at least be thankful that interest rate decisions are
not made by the so called ‘Shadow MPC’, a group set up
by the Institute of Economic Affairs. They have been voting since February 2013
to raise interest rates! How can you vote for higher rates before a recovery
starts, when it is obvious that there is large scale involuntary unemployment
and underemployment? Well back in the 1940s Michal Kalecki had a theory, but then he was a Polish
immigrant!
