Ireland and Greece

Ireland is often regarded as a success story for Eurozone austerity, compared to the total failure of Greece. That can lead to nonsense like this: instead of whingeing, the Greeks should buckle under and get on with it as Ireland has done. An alternative narrative is to explain the different experience of the two economies by looking at structural factors, as in these two examples.

Whether you can describe Irish unemployment rising from 12% in 2009 to 14.7% in 2012 as a success is of course moot. But Ireland does give us a clear example of how austerity is supposed to impact an open monetary union member, according to standard theory. A permanent reduction in government spending or higher taxes will increase unemployment, which will reduce wages and prices. This will improve competitiveness, leading to higher external demand for Ireland’s products (and less imports) which will eventually replace the lost demand due to austerity. However, because wages and prices are ‘sticky’, this adjustment will not happen quickly.

The fact that Ireland is now growing strongly and unemployment is falling reflects this process. The OECD estimates that growth in 2014 was nearly 5%, and this was greatly helped by a 12% increase in the volume of exports. In this sense Ireland’s response to austerity has been textbook. The interesting question is why Greece has been so different. Here is growth in the two economies (all data comes from the OECD’s Economic Outlook). .

Of course the 2009 recession affected everyone, but from 2010 until 2014 the Irish experience was bad, but for Greece it was a disaster.

The most important reason for the difference is straightforward: there has been a lot more austerity in Greece. Here is one summary measure: the underlying government primary surplus.

Looking at this measure the fiscal contraction between 2009 and 2013 in Greece has been 2.7 times greater than in Ireland. This measure is not ideal because the impact of tax changes can be smoothed, but looking at changes to government consumption gives a similar picture.

In both cases we have had what economists call ‘internal devaluation’, which is the improvement in competitiveness that I described earlier. Here is what has happened to wages.

The fall in wages in Ireland produced a significant improvement in competitiveness, which is a major factor behind why exports are now booming. With much more, and more persistent, unemployment in Greece, the fall in wages has been much more persistent. So we would expect a much larger and more persistent improvement in competitiveness and exports. But here we have a small puzzle: neither has happened. Here are export volumes in both countries.

The pattern is similar, but if anything the improvement in exports has been greater in Ireland than Greece.

Is this where stories of structural weaknesses in Greece come in? In one sense yes. Greece certainly exports less than you might expect given the usual (‘gravity’) models that economists use to explain such things, as this European Commission study shows. The study also argues that you can explain this finding by institutional weaknesses in Greece’s economy. That in turn is one factor behind a very important difference between Ireland and Greece. Ireland is much more open, which means that any percentage increase in exports will have a much bigger impact on GDP and employment than in Greece. (It also receives much more foreign direct investment.)  In technical terms, if the slope of the Phillips curve is similar in both countries, Greece’s adjustment was always going to be more difficult, because it is a much less open economy.

However it is not clear why these structural differences should make Greek exports less responsive to any change in wages. What appears to explain this puzzle is that competitiveness in Greece has improved much less than in Ireland, even though the fall in wages has been greater. Theodore Pelagidis at Brookings has an explanation: other non-labour costs have gone up to offset these lower labour costs, particularly energy prices. He writes:

“part of the adjustment program Greece had proceeded to significantly increase excise taxes on energy used in productive activities…..The resulting evolution of exports in energy intensive sectors like steel and textiles is most revealing. In spite of the large fall in wages, the rapid increase in energy costs meant that exports of these commodities, price takers on the international market, plummeted…..These two sectors largely account for the stagnation of Greek non-fuel exports”

To what extent these increases in energy taxes were sanctioned by the Troika is unclear. However one of the measures imposed as part of the latest agreement is an increase in VAT for the tourist industry, which of course will also hit competitiveness in that industry. In both these cases, austerity measures have and will actively hinder the way the economy adjusts to fiscal consolidation.

To sum up, the main reason Greece has suffered so much more than Ireland is that the amount of austerity imposed on Greece has been much greater. Any recession is also likely to be greater because Greece is a less open economy, so a larger internal devaluation is required to offset the impact of austerity. One final factor is that large cuts in wages have not been translated into improvements in competitiveness, in part because of the way austerity was implemented.  

Labour and the deficit: a Tristram Hunt follow-up

My recent post on this was in one way generous to some Labour party figures. It assumed that they knew that George Osborne’s ‘going for surplus’ was a bad policy, but felt they had to follow it to regain credibility in handling the nation’s finances.

However there is an alternative and more straightforward explanation for Labour politicians proposing to follow Osborne’s policy, and that is that they do not know it is a bad policy. Some evidence for the second explanation is provided by this recent speech by Tristram Hunt. He is not trying to resurrect Blairism, as he agrees with Miliband that tackling inequality has to be at the core of Labour’s mission. But on fiscal policy it is hopeless. Here is one particular excerpt:

“the economy is growing and the deficit stands at around five per cent.  Even John Maynard Keynes would be arguing for retrenchment in this context.”

The idea that because the economy is growing we should be having fiscal retrenchment makes the schoolboy error of confusing levels and rates of change, and this is certainly not an error that Keynes would have made. In the 1920s and 1930s, when UK unemployment was never below 6% and often much higher, UK growth was often positive and sometimes strong - was that a good time for fiscal retrenchment? Tristram Hunt was originally a lecturer in modern British history, so maybe is unaware of this letter from Keynes to Roosevelt after the disastrous US return to austerity following strong growth in 1937.

Putting Keynesian issues to one side, Tristram Hunt repeats the idea that fiscal retrenchment is sensible because of the amount that the government pays in debt interest. Paying debt interest may be costly because of the distortions created by the taxes needed to pay it (or the missed opportunities for public spending), but taxes also have to rise (or spending to fall) to reduce debt. As I discussed here, a recent paper from the IMF makes it clear that this is not a good argument for austerity.

All of which raises an intriguing question. Where is this nonsense economics coming from? Tristram Hunt makes many of the same mistakes as Chuka Umunna made in a speech I also criticised – is that coincidence? I cannot believe that any academic economist, whatever their views on fiscal rules, would make errors as obvious as these. Are they simply parroting stuff that comes from the Conservative Party, which is repeated in much of the press? Does it come from some City economist? If anyone knows, please tell me (confidentially by email if necessary).

Evidence for monetary offset

As Tony Yates among others has observed, antagonism towards using fiscal policy for macroeconomic stabilisation seems to be an essential part of market monetarism. However their argument is not that fiscal policy will have no impact on demand and therefore output, but rather that monetary policy can always offset this impact. This can be called the ‘monetary offset’ argument.

As I have noted before, the idea of monetary offset is actually a key part of Keynesian objections to austerity in a liquidity trap [1]. In a liquidity trap monetary policy’s ability to offset fiscal austerity is severely compromised, but at other times it can be done. It therefore makes much more sense to postpone austerity until a time when monetary offset is clearly possible. So the idea that monetary offset can happen is common ground. What is in dispute is the extent to which a liquidity trap (or almost equivalently the fact that nominal interest rates cannot become too negative) prevents complete monetary offset.

If empirical evidence could be found that complete monetary offset has operated during a liquidity trap that would be powerful support for the market monetarist case. Scott Sumner recently presented (HT Nick Rowe) some analysis by Mark Sadowski which he said did just that. Taking the cyclically adjusted primary balance as a measure of fiscal policy, it showed that there was no correlation between this and growth in nominal GDP in the single period from 2009 to 2014 for those countries with an independent monetary policy.

There are tons of problems with simple correlations of this kind, some of which I discuss here, which is why quite elaborate econometric techniques are nowadays used to assess the impact of fiscal policy. But there is a rather simpler problem with this correlation. As far as I know, no one had expressed a concern about fiscal austerity because of the impact this will have on nominal GDP. The issue is always the impact on real activity, for reasons that are obvious enough.

So what happens if we relate fiscal policy to real GDP growth, using Sadowski’s data set? Here is the answer.

There are two obvious outliers here: at the top Singapore, and to the right Iceland. Exclude those and we get this.

There is a clear negative correlation between the extent of fiscal tightening and the amount of real GDP growth. Strange that Sumner gave no hint of this :)

Do I think this is definitive evidence? No, for two reasons. First, the obvious problems with simple correlations of this kind noted earlier. Second, this sample includes quite a few countries where interest rates over this period have averaged over 2% (Australia, Norway, New Zealand, and Korea) and so are unlikely to be subject to a liquidity trap. Others may only have been in a liquidity trap for a part of this period. What we can say is that these correlations are perfectly consistent with the view that austerity reduces growth in countries with an independent monetary policy. [2]

If you were to conclude that we just do not have enough data to know to what extent monetary offset can operate in a liquidity trap, I think you would be right. If you then went on to say that therefore the data cannot discriminate between the two sides in terms of policy, you would be wrong. What market monetarists want you to believe is that there is no need to worry about fiscal austerity in a liquidity trap, because an independent monetary policy can and will always offset its impact. This is wrong, precisely because the empirical evidence is so limited. We know, both from theory and the great majority of econometric studies, that fiscal contraction has a fairly predictable impact in reducing GDP. We have virtually no idea how much unconventional monetary policy is required to offset this impact. Given lags, that means trying to achieve monetary offset in a liquidity trap is always going to be hit and miss. The moment you think about uncertainty, the market monetarist argument for not worrying about austerity in a liquidity trap falls apart. 

[1] It is not the only reason why fiscal austerity in a severe recession might be a bad idea. There is a lot of empirical evidence that the impact of austerity is greater in recessions than when the economy is stronger, and there are other theoretical reasons besides monetary offset why that may be the case. This is of some importance for individual economies in a monetary union.

[2] If the coefficient on fiscal policy was lower for this sample than for Eurozone countries (I’ve not tried), would that at least be evidence for some monetary policy offset? The trouble here is that some of the countries driving the EZ results were also suffering from an overvalued real exchange rate as a result of earlier excess demand, and so this might bias upwards the coefficient on fiscal policy in those regressions.

Labour and the deficit

A constant refrain from those who help make Labour party policy goes like this. I know what you economists say makes sense, but we tried that policy at the last election, and failed horribly. We have to listen to what the people are telling us.

So, for example, we cannot oppose George Osborne’s deficit plans, because we tried that at the last election and lost. We cannot talk about the problem of rent seeking by the 1%, because we tried that and it was seen by voters as anti-aspiration. We cannot argue for a higher minimum wage because that will be seen as anti-market and anti-business - oh wait.

I would draw exactly the opposite conclusion from the election result. On the deficit Labour tried to avoid discussion, and let the Conservatives spin the idea that austerity was the last Labour government’s fault. By failing to challenge both this nonsense [1], and the austerity policy enacted in 2010 and 2011, and the austerity policy proposed after 2015, in terms of perception it adopted the Conservative policy on the deficit. [2] That was why it lost heavily.

Some will say that come the next election the government will be running a budget surplus anyway, so why oppose the process of getting there? The answer to that is aptly illustrated by Labour’s decision not to oppose Budget plans to limit child tax credits to the first two children, or plans to reduce the benefit cap. Both are terrible policies, and it is incredulous that Labour is not opposing them. But once you concede the need for austerity, it becomes much more difficult to oppose the measures that come with it.  

Another argument is that Labour has to accept Osborne’s surplus target, because nothing else will stop Labour being accused of being fiscally spendthrift. (See Hopi Sen for example - HT Simon Cox ‏@s1moncox) This just sounds politically naive. George Osborne (as Chancellor or PM) will not suddenly drop the spendthrift argument just because Labour adopts his plans. Instead the argument will change to focus on credibility. He will say: Labour now admits that it was spendthrift in government, and in opposition it has changed its mind so often, you just cannot believe what they say – so any future Labour government will be as spendthrift as the last.

Others will respond to the above by saying how can you argue Labour lost because it was not left wing enough! But challenging austerity is not ‘left wing’, it is just good macroeconomics. The idea that opposing austerity, or advocating less inequality, is akin to what Labour did between 1979 and 1983 is absurd.

If there are examples to draw from, it is to see how your opponents succeeded where you failed. The Conservatives did not regain power in 2010 by moving their policies to the left. They did it by changing their image. Until a couple of years before 2010 they had promised to match Labour on spending. But when circumstances changed, they seized their chance to change policy and focus on the deficit. It was a smart move not because of the economics, but because of how it could be spun.

In 2015, the SNP saw that times had changed compared to 2010. The idea that we might become like Greece was no longer credible, and voter attitudes on the deficit were much more divided. So they campaigned against austerity, and partly as a result wiped Labour out. (Their actual policy proposals were not very different from Labour, but unfortunately few voters look at the numbers: it is perception that matters.)

The lesson is that when the external environment changes, you try to exploit this change in a way that enhances the principles you stand for and gains you votes. As the deficit falls, putting this at the centre of policy will seem less and less relevant. In contrast, the costs of austerity and rising poverty that are the result of ‘going for surplus’ will become more and more evident. Osborne, by going for an unnecessarily rapid reduction in debt by means of increasing poverty, has thrown a potential lifeline to Labour. Unfortunately, Labour appear to be swimming away from it.

   

[1] Chuka Umunna writes: “Some economists reject this [supporting going for surplus] approach as it would, in their view, necessarily entail simply capitulating at the feet of George Osborne. In their view all we need to do is – in ever more strident and louder terms – shout back at the electorate that it was not profligacy on the part of the last Labour government that caused the crash, but a banking crisis. And, in respect of borrowing, far from acknowledging that we understand the need to reduce national debt, we need to enthusiastically go about making complex arguments for different types of borrowing. Do this and the public will see the light.”

I guess I am one of those economists. I would respond that Labour in 2015 made no attempt to seriously debate this issue, let alone shout about it. The only people challenging the myth that Osborne and much of the media were telling were ‘some economists’. I do not think it is ‘complex’ to argue that you should borrow to investment when interest rates are low, and I think this argument can be effective - which is why Cameron called the people making it dangerous voices.

[2] The SNP saw that Labour were endorsing the importance of deficit reduction, and exploited this by arguing against austerity.

Greece and Trust

Nick Rowe pulls me up on a point that I didn’t make in my account of what should have happened to Greece after 2010. I argued that some external body (e.g. IMF) should lend sufficient money for Greece to be able to achieve primary surplus (taxes less non-interest government spending) gradually, thereby avoiding unnecessary unemployment. Gradual adjustment is required because the improvement in competitiveness required to achieve ‘full employment’ with a primary surplus cannot happen overnight because of price rigidity.

Nick’s point is that for this to happen, the external body has to have a degree of trust in Greece: trust that it will not take the money and at some stage default on this new loan. This trust may be particularly problematic if Greece had defaulted on its original debt, which I think it should have done. This, after all, is one reason why Greece would not be able to get such finance from the markets.

This is what the IMF is for. Governments are more reluctant to upset the international community, and so defaults on IMF loans are rare. As Ken Rogoff writes: “Although some countries have gone into arrears, almost all have eventually repaid the IMF: the actual realized historical default rate is virtually nil.”

But does this help explain why other Eurozone countries keep going on about how Greece has lost their trust? I think the answer is a clear no. In fact I would go further: I think this talk of lost trust is largely spin. The issue of trust might have explained the total amount the Troika lent from 2010 to 2012. However, as I have said often, the mistake was not that the total sum lent to Greece was insufficient, but that far too much of it went to bail out Greece’s private sector creditors, and too little went to ease the transition to primary surplus. (The mistake is hardly ever acknowledged by the Troika’s supporters. Martin Sandbu discusses the - misguided - reasons for that mistake. [0])

The reason the Troika give for lack of trust is that Greece has repeatedly ‘failed to deliver’ on the various conditions that the Troika imposed in exchange for its loans. The Troika has tried to micromanage Greece to such an extent that there will always be ‘structural reforms’ that were not implemented, and it is very difficult to aggregate structural reforms. However this is exactly what the OECD tries to do in this document, and if I read Figure 1.2 (first panel) correctly, Greece has implemented more reform from 2011 to 2014 than any other country. [1] We can more easily quantify austerity, and here it is clear that Greece has implemented almost twice as much austerity as any other country. [4] The narrative about failing to deliver is just an attempt to disguise the fact that the Troika has largely run the Greek economy for the last five years and is therefore responsible for the results. [3]

You could argue with much more justification that the failure of trust has been on the Troika’s side. Greece was told that the austerity demanded of it would have just a small impact on growth and unemployment, and the Troika were completely wrong. They were then told if they only implemented all these structural reforms, things would come good, and they have not. You could reasonably say that the election of Syriza resulted from a realisation in Greece that the trust they had placed in the Troika was misguided.

Given these failures by the Troika, a reasonable response to the election of Syriza would have been to acknowledge past mistakes, and enter genuine negotiations. [2] After all, as Martin Sandbu points out in a separate piece, a pause in austerity in 2014 had allowed growth to return, and because Greece had achieved primary surplus new loans were only required to repay old loans. But it is now pretty clear that large parts of the Troika never had any real wish to reach an agreement. Over the last few months we were told (and the media dutifully repeated) that the lack of any agreement was because the ‘irresponsible adolescents’ of Syriza did not know how to negotiate and kept changing their minds. We now know that this was yet more spin to hide the truth that large parts of the Troika wanted Grexit.

The lesson of the last few months, and particularly the last few days, is not that Greece failed to gain the trust of the Troika. It is that creditors can be stupidly cruel, and when those creditors control your currency there is very little the debtor can do about it. 

 

[0] Greece was prevented from defaulting because of fears of contagion of one kind or another, which meant that Greece was taking on a burden for the sake of the rest of the Eurozone. The right response to these fears was OMT, and direct assistance to private banks, as Ashoka Mody explains clearly here. But given that this was not done, what should have then happened is that once that fear had passed, the debt should have been written off. But politicians cannot admit to what they did, so the debt that was once owed to private creditors and is now owed to the Troika remains non-negotiable.

 

[1] The Troika can also speak with forked tongues on this issue: see Mean Squared Errors here (HT MT).

[2] I am often told that the Troika had to stand firm because of a moral hazard problem: if Greek debts were written down, other countries would want the same. But the moral hazard argument has to be used proportionately. Crashing an economy to avoid others asking for debt reductions is the equivalent of the practice in 18th century England of hanging pickpockets.

[3] I am sometimes asked why I focus on the failures of the Troika rather than the mistakes of Syriza. The answer is straightforward - it is Troika policy that is the major influence on what happens in Greece. And when the Troika gives Greece’s leaders the choice between two different disasters, it seems rather strange to focus on the behaviour of Greece’s leaders.

[4] Postscript: Peter Doyle suggests that, all things considered, Greece overachieved on fiscal adjustment     

The Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis

Pandemonium erupted in Congress yesterday as senators disagreed on how to deal with the subprime problem. Borrowers are still finding it difficult to repay, despite the government buying these mortgages from the banks seven years ago and imposing strict conditions on the borrowers. Some senators favour continuing the program of compulsory community service and self-improvement lessons, but now others in the senate are openly talking about revoking the US citizenship of these borrowers.

The Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis are normally treated as different. Most accounts of the Great Recession see this as a consequence of a financial crisis caused by profligate lending by - in particular - US and UK banks. The crisis may have originated with US subprime mortgages, but few people blame the poor US citizens who took out those mortgages for causing a global financial crisis.

With the Eurozone crisis that started in 2010, most people tend to focus on the borrowers rather than the lenders. Some ill-informed accounts say it was all the result of profligate periphery governments, but most explanations are more nuanced: in Greece government profligacy for sure, but in Ireland and other countries it was more about excessive private sector borrowing encouraged by low interest rates following adoption of the Euro. Seeing things this way, it is a more complicated story, but still one that focuses on the borrowers.

However if we see the Eurozone crisis from the point of view of the lenders, then it once again becomes a pretty simple story. French, German and other banks simply lent much too much, failing to adequately assess the viability of those they were lending to. Whether the lending was eventually to finance private sector projects that would end in default (via periphery country banks), or a particular government that would end up defaulting, becomes a detail. In this sense the Eurozone crisis was just like the global financial crisis: banks lent far too much in an indiscriminate and irresponsible way.

If borrowers get into difficulty in a way that threatens the solvency of lending banks, there are at least two ways a government or monetary union can react. One is to allow the borrowers to default, and to provide financial support to the banks. Another is to buy the problematic loans from the banks (at a price that keeps the banks solvent), so that the borrowers now borrow from the government. Perhaps the government thinks it is able to make the loans viable by forcing conditions on the borrowers that were not available to the bank.

The global financial crisis was largely dealt with the first way, while at the Eurozone level that crisis was dealt with the second way. Recall that between 2010 and 2012 the Troika lent money to Greece so it could pay off its private sector creditors (including many European banks). In 2012 there was partial private sector default, again financed by loans from the Troika to the Greek government. In this way the Troika in effect bought the problematic asset (Greek government debt) from private sector creditors that included its own banks in such a way as to protect the viability of these banks. The Troika then tried to make these assets viable in various ways, including austerity. Two crises with the same cause but very different outcomes.

The non-independent ECB

Imagine that the Scottish National Party (SNP) had won the independence referendum. The SNP starts negotiating with the remaining UK (rUK) government over issues like how to split up national debt. On some issue the negotiations get bogged down. Rumours start circulating that this might mean that rUK will not form a monetary union with Scotland, and that Scotland might have to create its own currency. People in Scotland start withdrawing money from Scottish banks.

Now it is almost the definition of a private bank that if everyone who has an account at the bank wants to withdraw their money, the bank will run out of cash and go bust. That is why bank runs are so dangerous. It is also why one of the key roles of a central bank is to supply an otherwise solvent private bank with all the cash they need, so they will never deny depositors their money. (To be a lender of last resort.) If they did not do this, anyone could start a rumour that a bank was insolvent, and as people withdrew their cash just in case the rumour was true, the bank would run out of money and go bust anyway.

So in my hypothetical story, as people started withdrawing cash from Scottish banks, the Bank of England should supply these banks with all the cash they need. Except suppose it did not. Suppose it put a limit to the amount of cash it would supply. The Scottish banks would protest - you agreed we were solvent before independence, they would say, so why are you rationing our liquidity? The Bank of England replies that although they might have been solvent before independence, if there is no agreement solvency is less clear. The Bank of England says that the limit on cash will remain until the Scottish and rUK government come to an agreement.

This announcement of course leads everyone in Scotland to try and get their money out, and the Scottish Banks have to close. The Scottish economy begins to grind to a halt. The English media report that Scotland is running out of money because the Bank of England will not ‘lend’ any more to the Scottish banks. The Scottish government is forced to agree to the rUK’s terms. The English media say look what happens when you elect a radical government. In Scotland they call it blackmail. What would you call it?

If it sounds to you like the Bank of England is taking sides and putting impossible pressure on Scotland, then you will know what it feels like in Greece right now. When, on 28th June, the ECB stopped providing emergency funding to Greek banks, it took sides. Part of the ECB’s logic is that Greek banks may be insolvent if there is no agreement between the Troika and Greece (even though it is the Central Bank of Greece, and therefore the Greek people, which stands to suffer losses from defaults by commercial banks).

Why should the failure to reach an agreement influence the solvency of the Greek banks? Is it because without an agreement there would be a Greek exit? But Greece does not want to abandon the Euro, and the other Eurozone countries have no formal grounds to expel Greece. Greece will only leave the Eurozone if the ECB stops supplying Euros. We reach exactly the same self-fulfilling logic of a bank run. Is it because without an agreement the Greek government would default on some of its debts, and that might adversely influence the solvency of Greek banks? But the fact that the Greek government will not get money from the Troika to pay back the Troika seems to have no implications for the underlying solvency or either the Greek state or its banks. (Paul De Grauwe discusses this further.) If the Troika can make Greece insolvent by itself withholding money we have another self-fulfilling justification.   

The real explanation for the ECB’s actions is much simpler. Limiting funding on 28th June was the Greek government’s punishment for failing to agree to the Troika's terms and calling a referendum the day before. The ECB was not, and never has been, a neutral actor just following the rules of a good central bank. It has always been part of the Troika, and right now it is the Troika’s enforcer.

As Charles Wyplosz recounts, this is not the first time the ECB has chosen to bow to political pressure. There will be some on the left who will say of course - what else do you expect of a central bank? In response, let me go back to my hypothetical example involving Scotland and the Bank of England. I may be wrong, but I think in that case the Bank of England would have supplied unlimited cash to the Scottish banks. I may be naive, but I believe it would have realised that to do anything else was an overtly partisan political act, and recoiled from doing that. Just as I do not think it was inevitable that the Eurozone committed itself to austerity, I also think it was possible that the ECB could have been a more independent central bank. The really interesting question is why it has turned out not to be such a bank.