Economist's View

'A Slippery New Rule for Gauging Fiscal Policy'

Greg Mankiw:

A Slippery New Rule for Gauging Fiscal Policy: the case for dynamic over static scoring is strong in theory. Yet three problems make the task difficult in practice.

First, any attempt to estimate the impact of a policy change on G.D.P. requires an economic model. Because reasonable people can disagree about what model, and what parameters of that model, are best, the results from dynamic scoring will always be controversial. ...

Second, accurate dynamic scoring requires more information than congressional proposals typically provide. ...

Third, dynamic scoring matters most over long time horizons. Some policy changes, such as those aimed at encouraging capital investments, take many decades to have their full impact on economic growth. Yet congressional budgeting usually looks only five or 10 years ahead. ...

So there are good reasons for the economists hired by Congress to pursue dynamic scoring. But there are also good reasons to be wary of the endeavor. ...

Another worry is the politicization of the CBO. See here and here. Also see here and here on the application of dynamic scoring to things such as Head Start and infrastructure spending.

John Whitehead comments:

Mankiw on dynamic scoring: ...Mankiw:

First, any attempt to estimate the impact of a policy change on G.D.P. requires an economic model. Because reasonable people can disagree about what model, and what parameters of that model, are best, the results from dynamic scoring will always be controversial. Just as many Republicans are skeptical about the models of climatologists when debating global warming, many Democrats are skeptical about the models of economists when debating tax policy.

My read of the article was going just fine until the climate model analogy. Two assumptions are made:

1. All economists agree on "the models of economists" 
2. Reasonable people can disagree about climatology models

In terms of #1, there is significant disagreement amongst economists about macroeconomic models (i.e., have you read Krugman lately?). In terms of #2, science is different than social science. Climatology involves forecasts so it is different than tests of the law of gravity, but still, ninety-x percent of climate scientists agree. That is a bit higher than the number of economists who agree on anything macro. 

My stance is that we should accept that the earth is likely warming and people contribute to it (even the U.S. Senate, including those Republicans that Mankiw mentions [did he miss that vote?], overwhelming thinks so). That moves us to the debate on whether we should do anything it or learn to adapt. I think that reasonable people can disagree on that second question. 

Links for 02-28-15

• The Closed Minds Problem - Paul Krugman
• New Keynesian Financial Frictions - Robert Waldmann
• Why Markets Can't Price the Priceless - TAP
• Handy Book of Economic Growth - Growth Economics
• Market monetarists and the ‘myth’ of long and variable lags - longandvariable
• Conducting Monetary Policy with a Large Balance Sheet - Stanley Fischer
• Quantitative easing was not a 'beggar-thy-neighbour' policy - Interpreter
• Putting U.S. Labor Force Participation in Context - Tim Taylor
• The Great Recession was not so Great - Vox EU
• Credit supply and the housing boom - Vox EU
• The "cost" bias - Stumbling and Mumbling
• Disaster - mainly macro

'Credit Supply and the Housing Boom'

Alejandro Justiniano, Giorgio Primiceri, and Andrea Tambalotti at Vox EU:

Credit supply and the housing boom: ... Conclusion In this column, we argued that any reconstruction of the fundamental causes of the housing and credit boom that preceded the Great Recession must be consistent with four stylised facts: house prices and debt surged, the ratio of debt to house values was roughly constant, and real mortgage rates fell. From the perspective of these four facts, explanations that rely exclusively on an increase in credit demand associated with more generous credit conditions—for instance in the form of higher loan-to-value ratios—are lacking. On the contrary, a shift in credit supply associated with the emergence of securitisation and shadow banking, is qualitatively and quantitatively consistent with the four facts.

This interpretation of the macroeconomic facts has the additional merit of being consistent with the micro-econometric evidence of Mian and Sufi (2009 and 2010). They show that an expansion in credit supply was the fundamental driver of the surge in household debt, and that borrowing against the increased value of real estate accounts for a significant fraction of this build-up in debt.

Shifting the focus of the inquiry into the causes of the boom from credit demand to credit supply has potentially important implications for the study of macro-prudential policy, since much of the literature on this topic has tended to model the boom as stemming from looser borrowing constraints. Exploring the normative implications of the alternative view proposed in this article is an exciting avenue for future research.

Paul Krugman: What Greece Won

How well did Greece do?:

What Greece Won, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Last week, after much drama, the new Greek government reached a deal with its creditors. ... So how did it go?

Well, if you were to believe many of the news reports and opinion pieces of the past few days, you’d think that it was a disaster... Some factions within Syriza apparently think so, too. But it wasn’t. ... Greece came out of the negotiations pretty well, although the big fights are still to come. ...

To make sense of what happened, you need to understand that the main issue of contention involves just one number: the size of the Greek primary surplus, the difference between government revenues and government expenditures not counting interest on the debt. The primary surplus measures the resources that Greece is actually transferring to its creditors. ...

Syriza has always been clear that it intends to keep running a modest primary surplus. If you are angry that the negotiations didn’t make room for a full reversal of austerity, a turn toward Keynesian fiscal stimulus, you weren’t paying attention.

The question instead was whether Greece would be forced to impose still more austerity. The previous Greek government had agreed to a program under which the primary surplus would triple over the next few years, at immense cost to the nation...

Why would any government agree to such a thing? Fear ... that the creditors would cut off their cash flow or, worse yet, implode their banking system if they balked at ever-harsher budget cuts.

So did the current Greek government back down and agree to aim for those economy-busting surpluses? No, it didn’t. In fact, Greece won new flexibility for this year, and the language about future surpluses was obscure. ... And the creditors ... made financing available to carry Greece through the next few months. ...

Why, then, all the negative reporting..., nothing that just happened justifies the pervasive rhetoric of failure. Actually, my sense is that we’re seeing an unholy alliance here between left-leaning writers with unrealistic expectations and the business press, which likes the story of Greek debacle because that’s what is supposed to happen to uppity debtors. But there was no debacle. Provisionally, at least, Greece seems to have ended the cycle of ever-more-savage austerity..., the first real debtor revolt against austerity is off to a decent start, even if nobody believes it. What’s the Greek for “Keep calm and carry on”?

Have Blog, Will Travel

I am here today:

NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC.
EF&G Research Meeting
Manuel Amador and Andrea Eisfeldt, Organizers
February 27, 2015
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
101 Market Street
San Francisco, CA

PROGRAM

8:30 am Continental Breakfast

9:00 am
Pablo Kurlat, Stanford University and NBER
Asset Markets with Heterogeneous Information
Discussant:  Veronica Guerrieri, University of Chicago and NBER

10:00 am Break

10:15 am
Johannes Stroebel, New York University
Joseph Vavra, University of Chicago and NBER
House Prices, Local Demand, and Retail Prices
Discussant:  John Leahy, New York University and NBER

11:15 am Break

11:30 am
Daniel Greenwald, New York University
Martin Lettau, University of California at Berkeley and NBER
Sydney Ludvigson, New York University and NBER
Origins of Stock Market Fluctuations
Discussant:  John Cochrane, University of Chicago and NBER

12:30 pm Lunch

1:30 pm
Fatih Guvenen, University of Minnesota and NBER
Fatih Karahan, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Serdar Ozkan, University of Toronto, Jae Song, Social Security Administration
What Do Data on Millions of US Workers Reveal About Life-Cycle Earnings Risk?
Discussant:  Luigi Pistaferri, Stanford University and NBER

2:30 pm Break

2:45 pm
Thomas Philippon, New York University and NBER
Philippe Martin, Sciences Po
Inspecting the Mechanism: Leverage and the Great Recession in the Eurozone
Discussant:  Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, University of California at Berkeley and NBER

3:45 pm Break

4:00 pm
Rabah Arezki, International Monetary Fund
Valerie Ramey, University of California at San Diego and NBER
Liugang Sheng, Chinese University of Hong Kong
News Shocks in Open Economies: Evidence from Giant Oil Discoveries
Discussant:  Nir Jaimovich, Duke University and NBER

5:00 pm Adjourn

5:15 pm Reception and Dinner

Links for 02-27-15

• Quantitative Easing and Monetary Aggregates - Paul Krugman
• The Taylor rule conundrum - Antonio Fatas
• Are Shifts in Industry Composition Holding Back Wage Growth? - macroblog
• Sellars and Bhaskar - Understanding Society
• Growing Incarceration Contributed Little to Drop in Crime - CBPP
• Net neutrality should apply to mobile networks - Digitopoly
• Racial Wealth Gaps: What a Difference 25 Years Doesn’t Make - WSJ
• Textbook trauma - The Register-Guard
• Jobs & Inequality - Prakash Loungani
• On RRP Pro and Con - John Cochrane
• The IPCC at a Crossroads - Robert Stavins
• Sweden and peak cash - JP Koning
• The Libertarian Delusion - Robert Kuttner
• What Is ‘Middle-Class Economics’? - NYTimes.com
• Degree centrality in networks - EurekAlert!
• Babies as Human Capital in an OLG model - Nick Rowe
• Liquidity risk and systemic banking crises - Vox EU
• A Decline in On-the-Job Training - Tim Taylor
• Despicable Monetary Me - Paul Krugman
• Chris Christie, Peacock - Paul Krugman
• The gender pay gap - Jérémie Cohen-Setton
• Noah and Nick, Too - MaxSpeak
• Toil and Technology - James Besson
• The Eurozone Counterfactual - David Beckworth
• America’s Current Accounts Deficits: Not Quite Déjà Vu - Capital Ebbs and Flow
• Icelandic lesson for stabilising the Greek banks* - Fistful Of Euros
• Fiscal multipliers in downturns and the effects of Eurozone consolidation - Vox EU

The Decline in Unionization and Inequality

Research by Jaumotte and Carolina Osorio Buitron of the IMF finds that "The decline in unionization in recent decades has fed the rise in incomes at the top":

Power from the People: Inequality has risen in many advanced economies since the 1980s, largely because of the concentration of incomes at the top of the distribution. ...

While some inequality can increase efficiency by strengthening incentives to work and invest, recent research suggests that higher inequality is associated with lower and less sustainable growth in the medium run (Berg and Ostry, 2011; Berg, Ostry, and Zettelmeyer, 2012), even in advanced economies (OECD, 2014). Moreover, a rising concentration of income at the top of the distribution can reduce a population’s welfare if it allows top earners to manipulate the economic and political system in their favor (Stiglitz, 2012). ...

We examine the causes of the rise in inequality and focus on the relationship between labor market institutions and the distribution of incomes, by analyzing the experience of advanced economies since the early 1980s. ... [W]e find strong evidence that lower unionization is associated with an increase in top income shares in advanced economies during the period 1980–2010 (for example, see Chart 2)... This is the most novel aspect of our analysis, which sets the stage for further research on the link between the erosion of unions and the rise of inequality at the top. ...

'Can Helicopter Money be Democratic?'

Simon Wren-Lewis:

Can helicopter money be democratic?: Helicopter money started as an abstract thought experiment..., in technical terms this is a combination of monetary policy (the creation of money) and fiscal policy (the government giving individuals money). Economists call such combinations a money financed fiscal stimulus. With the advent of Quantitative Easing (QE), it has also been called QE for the people.

Some have tried to suggest that central banks could undertake helicopter money for the first time without the involvement of governments. This is a fantasy that those who dislike the idea of government have concocted. Others who dislike the idea of fiscal policy have suggested that helicopter money is not really a fiscal transfer. That is also nonsense. ...

If initiation by the central bank is the defining feature of helicopter money, and this policy always requires the cooperation of government, might it be possible to imagine a form of helicopter money that was more ‘democratic’? ... A left wing government might decide that, rather than giving money to everyone including the rich, it would be better to increase transfers to the poor. A right wing government might decide it should only go to ‘hard working families’, and turn it into a tax break. We could call this democratic helicopter money.

I can see two problems with democratic helicopter money. ...

Given these problems, why even think about democratic helicopter money? One reason may be political. A long time ago I proposed giving the central bank limited powers to make temporary changes to a small set of predefined tax rates, and I found myself defending that idea in front of the UK’s Treasury Select Committee. To say that the MPs were none too keen on my idea would be an understatement. Making helicopter money democratic may be what has to happen to get politicians to support the idea.

'Making Do with More'

Brad DeLong:

Making Do with More: If we as a species can avoid nuclear war; curb those among us who are violent because they are God-maddened, state-maddened, or ethnicity-maddened; properly coordinate global action to reduce global warming from its current intolerable projected path to a tolerable one, adapt to the global warming that occurs, and distribute paying for the costs of that adaptation--well, if we can do all of those things, the human race can have a very bright future indeed. ...

Is Competition to Attract Businesses Harmful?

At MoneyWatch:

Is competition to attract businesses harmful?: State and local governments often use incentives such as tax cuts, rebates, promises of government services and the easing of regulatory restrictions to induce new or existing businesses to locate in their region.

But this strategy raises some important questions:

• Do these policies work
• Do the costs exceed the benefits?
• Do the policies simply redistribute economic activity from one region to another, what economists call a "zero-sum game," or do they create a positive aggregate effect from easing tax burdens and other restrictions?
• Finally, if it is a zero-sum game, would the U.S. benefit from banning this sort of competition for businesses at the state and local level because it lowers the tax revenue needed to fund critical services and erodes regulatory protections?

These questions are addressed... First...

Links for 02-26-15

• Explaining Recovery Performance in Europe - Paul Krugman
• The relative income problem - Stumbling and Mumbling
• U.S. R&D in (Troubling) Context - Tim Taylor
• How to Make College Cheaper - NYTimes.com
• Monetarism in Winter - Paul Krugman
• Working with Qualitative Variables - Econbrowser
• Shareholders vs. the real economy - Updated Priors
• Fiscal multipliers in downturns and Eurozone consolidation - Vox EU
• The U.S. Federal Reserve and Shared Prosperity - Thomas Palley
• Stark inequalities in aging - EurekAlert!
• Steve Poloz on inflation targeting - Nick Rowe
• Connecting Policy with Frontier Research - St. Louis Fed
• Causes of the 2014 oil price decline - Vox EU

'The Links Between Institutions and Shared Growth'

A follow-up to the Autor post below this one. This is by David Howell, a professor of economics and public policy at The New School in New York City:

The links between institutions and shared growth, Washington Center for Equitable Growth: ...since the 1980s, U.S. economic growth failed to produce enough jobs, and equally important, enough “decent jobs, ” which I defined as those paying adequate wages with adequate hours of work. ...

What happened to shared growth? Most economists continue to explain the explosion of earnings inequality with conventional supply-and-demand stories, in which worker compensation is believed to accurately reflect the contribution workers make to production. Thus, in this view, CEOs and financiers have received skyrocketing salaries, especially since the mid-1990s, because they are now contributing dramatically more to their firms and to the economy as a whole.

Similarly, the bottom 90 percent have seen stagnant and falling wages because they’ve fallen behind in the “race between education and technology.” The computerization of the workplace requires greater cognitive skills, but workers have not kept up, as indicated by the slowdown in college graduation rates. Assuming (nearly) perfectly competitive markets, the explosion in wage inequality in this view must reflect a similarly explosive increase in skill mismatch (too many low skill workers, too few high skill ones).

Such arguments leave little or no room for labor market institutions and public policies in the determining changes in the distribution of earnings up and down the income ladder. An alternative view is that institutionally-driven bargaining power is a critical piece of the story, whether it is the noncompetitive “rents” earned by top managers and financiers, or the collapsing power of hourly wage employees. As Thomas Piketty argues in “Capital in the Twenty-First Century:”

In order to understand the dynamics of wage inequality we must introduce other factors, such as the institutions and rules that govern the operations of the labor market in each society [and explain] the diversity of wage distributions we observe in different countries at different times.

All rich countries face challenges from technology and globalization, but only the United States and the United Kingdom show inequality rising to extreme levels.

In order to understand wage inequality and unshared productivity growth in the United States, we must take a much closer look at the ways in which institutions affect labor market outcomes. ...

'Robots Aren’t About to Take Your Job'

Timothy Aeppel at the WSJ:

Be Calm, Robots Aren’t About to Take Your Job, MIT Economist Says: David Autor knows a lot about robots. He doesn’t think they’re set to devour our jobs. ... His is “the non-alarmist view”...

Mr. Autor’s latest paper, presented to a packed audience at this year’s meeting of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyo., emphasized how difficult it is to program machines to do many tasks that humans find often easy and intuitive. In it, he played off a paradox identified in the 1960s by philosopher Michael Polanyi, who noted that humans can do many things without being able to explain how, like identify the face of a person in a series of photographs as they age. Machines can’t do that, at least not with accuracy.

This is why big breakthroughs in automation will take longer than many predict, Mr. Autor told the bankers. If a person can’t explain how they do something, a computer can’t be programmed to mimic that ability. ...

To Mr. Autor, polarization of the job market is the real downside of automation. He calculates middle-skill occupations made up 60% of all jobs in 1979. By 2012, this fell to 46%. The same pattern is visible in 16 European Union economies he studied.

The upshot is more workers clustered at the extremes. At the same time, average wages have stagnated for more than a decade. He attributes this to the loss of all those relatively good-paying middle-range jobs, as well as downward pressure on lower-skilled wages as displaced workers compete for the lesser work. ...

I've been arguing for a long time that in coming decades the major question will be about distribution, not production. I'm not very worried about stagnation, etc. -- we'll have plenty of stuff to go around. I'm worried about, to quote the title of a political science textbook I used many, many, many years ago as an undergraduate, "who gets the cookies?" not how many cookies we're able to produce So I agree with Autor on this point:

Mr. Autor ... added, “If we automate all the jobs, we’ll be rich—which means we’ll have a distribution problem, not an income problem.”

'The Cost of Delaying Action to Stem Climate Change'

Jason Furman, Ron Shadbegian, and Jim Stock:

The cost of delaying action to stem climate change: A meta-analysis, Vox EU: Summary The cost of delaying climate action has been studied extensively. This column discusses new findings based on a meta-analysis of published model runs. A one-decade delay in addressing climate change would lead to about a 40% increase in the net present value cost of addressing climate change. If anything, the methodology used in this analysis could understate the cost of delay. Uncertainty and the possibility of tipping points provide a motivation for more action as a form of insurance against worse outcomes.

What's a Fair Tax Rate?

Me, at MoneyWatch:

What's a fair tax rate? It depends: How progressive should the U.S. tax system be? Answering this question requires an assumption about what's fair in terms of tax burdens across income groups. But people differ widely on what they consider fair. Therefore, fairness isn't something economic theory can address. Instead, a principle of fairness must be assumed.

For example...

Links for 02-25-15

• Phantom Phiscal Crises - Brad DeLong
• Phantom Phiscal Crises - Paul Krugman
• For Noah and Nick - MaxSpeak
• Does capital income exist? - Nick Rowe
• Free Trade That American Workers Can Live With - NYTimes.com
• The “Plucking Model” of Recessions and Recoveries - Bruegel.org
• James Poterba Is Worried About Your Golden Years - MIT Tech Review
• 1997: The Relevant Threshold in the US Current Account - Econbrowser
• Jenny Lind, Taylor Swift, and Me - Paul Krugman
• Yes, the World Is Out to Get Active Managers - Justin Fox
• Wage insurance: A way to help the middle class - Brookings Institution
• Why Germany must swallow this Keynesian free lunch - Andrew Graham
• Why Congressional challenges to the Yellen Fed matter - Washington Post
• The cost competitiveness obsession - Vox EU
• Defining ‘responsible’ fiscal policy for Europe - Vox EU
• Why the taxpayer is on the hook - Hans-Werner Sinn
• China's Economy in Two Pictures - Tim Taylor
• Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress - Janet Yellen
• Stagnation & intergenerational justice - Stumbling and Mumbling
• Reduced to rouble? An update on the Russian economy - CER
• Greek debt negotiations - Duncan Cameron
• Back to corporatism? - Noahpinion
• How ‘patient’ is Yellen? - Gavyn Davies
• Greece and primary surpluses - mainly macro

The Best Investment the U.S. Could Make — Affordable Higher Education

I have a new column. Education is not the solution to inequality, but we still need to a much better job of supporting higher education:

The Best Investment the U.S. Could Make — Affordable Higher Education

[I should add that I wrote this before I saw Paul Krugman's latest column.]

'Long-Run Real GDP Forecasts: The Hopeless Task of Trying to Pierce the Veil of Time and Ignorance'

Brad DeLong:

Long-Run Real GDP Forecasts: The Hopeless Task of Trying to Pierce the Veil of Time and Ignorance Weblogging: Focus, by Brad DeLong: I draw somewhat different conclusions from the wavering track of potential GDP since 1990 than do the viri illustres Steve Cecchetti and Kermit Schoenholtz...

First, I think that monetary policymakers should not be looking at potential output and the output gap at all. They should be looking at the labor market. ...[graph 1, graph 2]

Second, I think that the most important macroeconomic research question of our age is the extent to which these fluctuations in the projected growth path arise because of signal-processing considerations in an environment in which the growth rate is subject to both transitory and permanent shocks, rather than to short-run shocks casting very long-run shadows. To the extent that it is the second–and the older I get the more it looks to me as though it might well be–the more it becomes the case that successful management of aggregate demand and the business cycle is the ball game, rather than just being an amuse bouche that it is nice to have.

Third, there is the question that I now harp upon incessantly of the relationship between measured real GDP and money-metric utility in a consumer-surplus sense. (Plus there is the question of the relationship between money-metric utility in a consumer surplus sense and societal well-being.)

Fourth, I question whether previous pre-1980 studies of the U.S. economy would reveal similar fluctuations in trend growth projections. In fact, as best as I can determine, it does not. Going back to the start of the 1890s, at least, and even with such enormous shocks as the Great Depression and World War II, straightforward projections of real GDP do not fluctuate nearly as much as those that have been made over the last twenty years...[graph 3] ... Is this an illusion? Accidental overlapping and offsetting shocks that just happened to sum to zero? It may well be...

'Disability Insurance: An Essential Part of Social Security'

Kathy Ruffing at the CBPP:

Disability Insurance: An Essential Part of Social Security: With a House subcommittee holding a hearing tomorrow on the future of Disability Insurance (DI), policymakers need to understand that DI is an essential part of Social Security.

Social Security is much more than a retirement program.  It pays modest but guaranteed benefits when someone with a steady work history dies, retires, or becomes severely disabled. Although nobody likes to think that serious sickness or injury might knock them out of the workforce, a young person starting a career today has a one-third chance of dying or qualifying for DI before reaching Social Security’s full retirement age. ...

DI’s eligibility criteria are strict (...most applications are denied) and its benefits modest..., on average, only about half of their lost earnings... DI beneficiaries are far likelier to be poor or near-poor than other Americans. ...  And at age 66, DI beneficiaries are seamlessly switched to retirement benefits without filing a fresh application. ...

Despite ... close links, the disability program’s trust fund is separate from the retirement and survivor program.  There’s no longer any good reason for that — the 1979 Advisory Council recommended a merger of the trust funds — but lawmakers instead have relied on periodic reallocations of tax revenue between the two programs to shore up whichever trust fund needed it.  They need to do so again to prevent a sudden, 20-percent cut in payments to vulnerable DI beneficiaries in 2016.

The need to replenish DI isn’t a crisis, nor would reallocating simply “kick the can down the road” as some contend.  Instead it’d allow lawmakers to focus on the real task:  assembling a package of revenue increases and modest benefit reforms to preserve long-term solvency for all of Social Security.  Americans of all ages and incomes support Social Security and are willing to pay for it.

Links for 02-24-15

• Game Theory Calls Cooperation into Question - Scientific American
• Financial crisis, the Euro and the need for political union - Antonio Fatas
• Monetary-Policy Wizards and Political Moral Hazard - Robert Rubin
• Physicists make 'weather forecasts' for economies - Nature
• Are Oil Prices "Passing Through"? - macroblog
• Trends in global income inequality... - Branko Milanovic
• Competing for Jobs: Local Taxes and Incentives - FRBSF
• The early retirement movement - Updated Priors
• Forecasts on Interest Rates Distort the Budget Outlook - NYTimes.com
• The Rise of the Robots - Brad DeLong
• Europe’s proposed capital markets union - Vox EU
• Passing dishonesty on to children - Vox EU
• Piketty and Wealth Inequality - Tim Taylor
• Brain makes decisions using WW2 Enigma code method - EurekAlert!
• Is teaching undergraduates central to the mission…? - Crooked Timber
• Insolvency after the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform - Liberty Street Economics
• Unemployment and Shorter Hours -- Howard Foster - EconoSpeak
• The case for Capital - MaxSpeak
• Kudlow’s Deficit Dance - EconoSpeak
• Unbiasedness: It doesn't means what you think it means - Andrew Gelman
• Forecasting Trend Growth: Living with Uncertainty - Cecchetti & Schoenholtz

'If China Stops Manipulation, Its Currency Will Depreciate'

Jeff Frankel:

If China Stops Manipulation, Its Currency Will Depreciate: A rare issue on which the two parties in the US Congress agree is the problem of “currency manipulation,” especially on the part of China. Perhaps spurred by the 2014 appreciation of the dollar and the first signs of a resulting loss of American net exports, Congress is once again considering legislation to attack currencies that are seen as unfairly undervalued. The proposed measures include the threat of countervailing duties against imports from offending countries, although that would be inconsistent with international trading rules.

Even if one accepts the possibility of identifying a currency that is manipulated, however, China no longer qualifies. Under recent conditions, if China allowed its currency to float freely, without intervention, the renminbi would more likely depreciate against the dollar than appreciate. US producers would then find it harder to compete on international markets, not easier. ...

Dean Baker tweets:

this assumes that only flows affect currency values and not stocks. The fact China holds close to $4tr in reserves likely matters

'Even Better Than a Tax Cut'

Larry Mishel:

Even Better Than a Tax Cut: With the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign underway and millions of Americans still hurting financially, both parties are looking for ways to address wage stagnation. That’s the good news. The bad news is that both parties are offering tax cuts as a solution. What has hurt workers’ paychecks is not what the government takes out, but what their employers no longer put in — a dynamic that tax cuts cannot eliminate. ...

Yes, a one-time reduction in taxes through, say, expanded child care credits or a secondary earner tax break, as Democrats propose, could help families. But as wages continue to stagnate, it is impossible to continuously cut taxes and still pay for things like education and social programs for the growing population of older Americans. ...

Contrary to conventional wisdom, wage stagnation is not a result of forces beyond our control. It is a result of a policy regime that has undercut the individual and collective bargaining power of most workers. Because wage stagnation was caused by policy, it can be reversed by policy, too.

Paul Krugman: Knowledge Isn’t Power

A skills gap is not the problem, it's economic power:

Knowledge Isn’t Power, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: ... Just to be clear: I’m in favor of better education. Education is a friend of mine. And it should be available and affordable for all. But ... people insisting that educational failings are at the root of still-weak job creation, stagnating wages and rising inequality. This sounds serious and thoughtful. But it’s actually a view very much at odds with the evidence, not to mention a way to hide from the real, unavoidably partisan debate.

The education-centric story of our problems runs like this: We live in a period of unprecedented technological change, and too many American workers lack the skills to cope with that change. This “skills gap” is holding back growth, because businesses can’t find the workers they need. It also feeds inequality, as wages soar for workers with the right skills... So what we need is more and better education. ...

It’s repeated so widely that many people probably assume it’s unquestionably true. But it isn’t..., there’s no evidence that a skills gap is holding back employment...

Finally, while the education/inequality story may once have seemed plausible, it hasn’t tracked reality for a long time..., the inflation-adjusted earnings of highly educated Americans have gone nowhere since the late 1990s.

So what is really going on? Corporate profits have soared as a share of national income, but there is no sign of a rise in the rate of return on investment..., it’s what you would expect if rising profits reflect monopoly power rather than returns to capital... — all the big gains are going to a tiny group of individuals holding strategic positions in corporate suites or astride the crossroads of finance. Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power.

Now, there’s a lot we could do to redress this inequality of power. We could levy higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and invest the proceeds in programs that help working families. We could raise the minimum wage and make it easier for workers to organize. It’s not hard to imagine a truly serious effort to make America less unequal.

But given the determination of one major party to move policy in exactly the opposite direction, advocating such an effort makes you sound partisan. Hence the desire to see the whole thing as an education problem instead. But we should recognize that popular evasion for what it is: a deeply unserious fantasy.

Fed Watch: Yellen Heading to the Senate

Tim Duy:

Yellen Heading to the Senate, by Tim Duy: All eyes will be focused on Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen as she presents the semi-annual monetary policy testimony to the Senate Banking Committee. I anticipate that she will stick to an economic outlook very similar to that detailed in the last FOMC statement and related minutes. Expect her to indicate that the Fed is closing in on the time of the first rate hike - after all, this was clearly the topic of conversation at the January FOMC meeting. I anticipate the "Audit the Fed" movement will be on display in the Q&A, which will provide Senators the opportunity to display their ignorance of monetary policy. And with any luck, we will learn how "patient" the Fed really is.

That said, I am wary of expecting much in the way of insight on "patient." The Fed has trapped itself with that language, and I am thinking that it will take the collective power of the FOMC to devise a way out. And they have little choice but to deal with that issue at the March FOMC meeting. The basic problem is this: The hawks would be happy with pulling the trigger on 25bp at the March meeting. The center isn't ready to go along with that, but they want the option of being able to pull the trigger in June. But Yellen, in trying to signal in December that a rate hike was not imminent, linked the term "patient" to two meetings. So if they keep "patient" in the statement, it seems to imply that June is off the table, but that message will brings squeals of unhappiness from the hawks and even leave the center uncomfortable. But just pulling "patient" risks leaving the impression that a June hike is a certainty, which is a message the center doesn't want to send.

If you think this is a dumb way to manage monetary policy, you are correct. Now that the Fed is closer to meeting their employment mandate, they simply cannot credibly signal intentions six months in advance. They need to let the data start doing the work for them, but don't know how to make that transition.  

It something of a shame that Yellen couldn't leave well enough alone in December and let financial market participants believe that "patient" would be used as it had been in 2004. In that case, "patient" would have no time horizon other than that dropping the word "patient" meant that a rate hike was likely just one meeting away. They could credibly manage such a signal. Anything more than one meeting ahead is problematic.

On the economic outlook, I would say that if Yellen were to deviate from the January FOMC meeting, it would be in a generally positive direction. I think they will take the subsequently released upbeat employment report as strong evidence that underlying trends remain solid. The news that Wal-Mart is raising salaries will likely be viewed as just the tip of the iceberg. I doubt anyone on the FOMC believes Wal-Mart leadership acted out of the kindness of their hearts. Yellen herself will probably think something to the effect that "I told you that the quits rate was important."  

Assuming the Greece situation holds together for another 24 hours, that coupled with easing by global central banks in recent weeks will lead FOMC members to believe that global risks have dissipated. And to top it off, US equities pushed back to record highs. What's not to like? Maybe the GDP numbers, but Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester gave what I think is the consensus view on the topic:

WSJ: Putting aside the tailwinds that you’re seeing. The growth data look a little soft at the moment.

MESTER: Not really. The fourth quarter came in after two quarters of really robust growth. The employment report actually was revised up for those last couple of months. There is this tendency to look at the last data point. I’m just not that concerned. I think we’ve seen growth pickup. I think there is more momentum in the economy.

Hence why I also don't agonize about what a snowstorm means for monetary policy. It means nothing.

There is plenty on the docket beyond Yellen this week. Existing and new home sales, consumer confidence, regional Fed manufacturing indexes, durables goods orders, CPI, Case-Shiller, GDP revisions, and, if that weren't enough, speeches by Fed Presidents of Atlanta (Lockhart), Cleveland (Mester), and New York (Dudley), and Federal Reserve Governor Stanley Fischer. The fun just won't stop!

Bottom Line:  I expect the Fed will continue to walk the fine line between keeping June in play while signaling that the data will soon justify a rate hike though not necessarily in June. And watch for signs of an effort to shift the focus to the expected gradual pace of rate hikes in an effort to minimize adverse market reaction to the possibility of June. Expect generally positive views of recent data; the Fed thinks the economy is finally on the right path.

Links for 02-23-15

• Austerity and the Costs of Internal Devaluation - Paul Krugman
• The Fed’s global responsibilities - Gavyn Davies
• Yellen faces interest rates language test - FT.com
• Yellen’s problem with US felons - FT.com
• Rip Van Skillsgap - Paul Krugman
• Why We're All Becoming Independent Contractors - Robert Reich
• Where and why food prices lead to social upheaval - The Washington Post
• What would Galbraith think about Google? - Enlightened Economist
• Ours the task eternal -- investing in human capital - Nick Rowe
• Scarier Than You Think - David Warsh

'Helicopter Money and the Government of Central Bank Nightmares'

Simon Wren-Lewis:

Helicopter money and the government of central bank nightmares: If Quantitative Easing (QE), why not helicopter money? We know helicopter money is much more effective at stimulating demand. Helicopter money is a form of what economists call money financed fiscal stimulus (MFFS). In their current formulation independent central banks (ICB) rule out MFFS, because the institution that can do the stimulus (the government) is not allowed to cooperate on this with the institution that creates money (the ICB). In a world where governments - through ignorance or design - obsess about deficits when they should not, it turns out that MFFS or helicopter money is all we have left to prevent large negative demand shocks leading to deep and prolonged recessions. So why is it taboo? 

One reason why it is taboo among central banks is that they want an asset that they can later sell when the economy recovers. QE gives them that asset, but helicopter money does not. The nightmare (as ever with ICBs) is not the current position of deficient demand, but a potential future of excess inflation that they are unable to control. .... Helicopter money ... puts money into the system at the ZLB, in a much more effective way than QE, but it cannot be put into reverse by central banks alone. The central bank cannot demand we pay helicopter money back. [4] 

If the government cooperates, this is no problem. The government just ‘recapitalises’ the central bank, by either raising taxes or selling more of its own debt. Economists call this ‘fiscal backing’ for the central bank. In either case, the government is taking money out of the system on the central bank’s behalf. So the nightmare that makes helicopter money taboo is that the government refuses to do this. [1] ...

After explaining, he concludes

So this nightmare that makes helicopter money taboo is as unrealistic as most nightmares. The really strange thing is that ICBs have already had to confront this nightmare. It is more than possible that when central banks sell back their QE assets, they will make a loss, and so will be faced with exactly the same problem as with helicopter money. [3] A central banker knows better than not to worry about something because it might not happen. So the nightmare has already been faced down. It therefore seems doubly strange that the taboo about helicopter money remains. ...

'Greece Did OK'

How did Greece do? Paul Krugman says:

Greece Did OK: Now that the dust has settled a bit, we can look calmly at the deal — if it really is a deal that survives through tomorrow, which some people doubt. And it’s increasingly clear that Greece came out in significantly better shape, at least for now.

The main action, always, involves the Greek primary surplus — how much more will they need to raise in revenue than they can spend on things other than interest? The question these past few days would be whether the Greeks would be forced into agreeing to aim for very high primary surpluses under the threat of being pushed into immediate crisis. And they weren’t. ...

Right now, Greece has avoided a credit cutoff, and worse yet an ECB move to pull the plug on its banks, and it has done so while getting the 2015 primary surplus target effectively waived.

The next step will come four months from now, when Greece makes its serious pitch for lower surpluses in future years. We don’t know how that will go. But nothing that just happened weakens the Greek position in that future round. ...

So Greece has won relaxed conditions for this year, and breathing room in the run-up to the bigger fight ahead. Could be worse.

Links for 02-22-15

• People Aren't Androids - Paul Krugman
• All the Governor’s Men (Economists) - Econbrowser
• US income distribution changes from 2007 and 2013 - Branko Milanovic
• Keynesian Cross as simultaneous moves symmetric Nash equil - Nick Rowe
• Punching up - Stumbling and Mumbling
• Some random thoughts on the Apple Car - Digitopoly
• Social structures as entities - Understanding Society
• Capital flow waves to and from Switzerland - Vox EU
• Growth quality: A new index - Vox EU
• Is human capital really capital? - Noahpinion

'Faster Real GDP Growth during Recoveries Tends To Be Associated with Growth of Jobs in “Low-Paying” Industries'

This is from the St. Louis Fed:

Faster Real GDP Growth during Recoveries Tends To Be Associated with Growth of Jobs in “Low-Paying” Industries, by Kevin L. Kliesen and Lowell R. Ricketts: Typically, deep recessions are followed by rapid growth. However, since the second quarter of 2009, when the latest recession officially ended, real (inflation- adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) has increased at only a 2.3 percent annual rate.¹ Prior to the latest recession, the economy’s long-term growth rate of real potential GDP was about 3 percent per year.² Thus, the current business expansion could not only be the weakest on record—although that conclusion will ultimately depend on its length and future growth—but it could signal a worrisome downshift in the economy’s long- term growth rate of real potential GDP.

A common refrain among many economic pundits and analysts is that the bulk of the job gains during this recovery have been in “low-wage jobs,” a term that is rarely defined. This essay will explicitly define “low-wage” jobs in order to assess the validity of this claim. (This essay will not delve into the numerous hypotheses that have been put forward to explain why the economy fell into a deep recession and why the current expansion’s growth rate has been so anemic. Interested readers should refer to those articles listed in the reference section.)

To preview our conclusion, we found that the percentage change in job losses during the latest recession was higher in “high- paying” private-sector industries—which we define as industries with above-average hourly earnings—than in low-paying sectors. Likewise, the percentage change in job gains during the recovery was also proportionately larger in high-paying industries. It should be pointed out, though, that the total number of jobs in low-paying industries exceeds the number of jobs in high-paying industries by nearly 70 percent. Thus, an equal percentage increase in jobs in both industries would generate much larger job gains in low-paying industries than in high-paying industries. We also found that the percentage change in job gains in low- paying industries was much stronger following the 1981-82 and 1990-91 recessions, which also happened to be periods of much stronger real GDP growth. ...

Links for 02-21-15

• Mindless and Mindful Austerity - Brad DeLong
• Delphic Demarche - Paul Krugman
• Summers Demolishes the Robots and Skills Arguments - Rortybomb
• Chastened Exceptionalism - Paul Krugman
• Exploitation in the lab - Stumbling and Mumbling
• Tax progressivity and tax revenue - Vox EU
• Measuring Progress on Student Debt Repayment - Liberty Street
• Roots of German monetary and fiscal conservatism - longandvariable
• Social Security Trust Fund Cash Flows and Reserves - SSA
• Waiting for Eurogodot - Paul Krugman
• Liftoff Levers - John Cochrane

'Investment Charges When Mexico Privatized Social Security'

What happened after Mexico privatized Social Security?:

Investment Charges When Mexico Privatized Social Security, by Tim Taylor: If many people start making choices about how to invest their retirement assets, how much of their money will end up in the hands of financial advisers? The answer will of course vary across countries and situations, but Justine Hastings explains the dispiriting outcome in Mexico in "Privatizing Social Security: Lessons from Mexico," appearing in the latest NBER Reporter (2014, Number 4).

When Mexico privatized its Social Security system in 1997, it wanted to avoid a situation where people would make risky investments with their retirement accounts, In fact, the regulations that it set up were so tight that everyone was required to have essentially the same investment. Hastings writes:

"Mexico launched a fully-privatized defined contribution plan in 1997, with 17 participating fund managers which could compete to manage investors’ privatized social security accounts. Given the tight regulations on investment vehicles, fund managers each offered one, essentially homogenous investment product. Investors could choose which firm they wanted to have manage and invest — for a fee — their personal social security account. Despite the large number of competitors selling an essentially homogeneous product, management fees and fund manager profits were high."

Here's some evidence on the fees that emerged. The "initial load" is the amount of each deposit that is is immediately paid to the investment adviser. The "annual fee" is then paid each year on the balance in the account. As Hastings explains: "Fund managers charged an average load (a fee taken as a share of account contributions at the time of contribution) of 23 percent and an annual fee on assets under management of 0.63 percent, implying that a 100-peso deposit earning a 5 percent annual real return would only be worth 95.4 pesos after five years." ...

Growth in Real Average Income for the Bottom 90%

Growth in real average income for the bottom 90%

From: A brief history of middle-class economics: Productivity, participation, and inequality in the United States, by Jason Furman.

Paul Krugman: Cranking Up for 2016

Creating an alternate reality:

Cranking Up for 2016, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Scott Walker ... did what, these days, any ambitious Republican must, and pledged allegiance to charlatans and cranks. ...

Mr. Walker, in what was clearly a rite of passage into serious candidacy, spoke at a dinner at Manhattan’s “21” Club hosted by the three most prominent supply-siders: Art Laffer...; Larry Kudlow...; and Stephen Moore... Politico pointed out that Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, attended a similar event last month. Clearly, to be a Republican contender you have to court the powerful charlatan caucus.

So a doctrine that even Republican economists consider dangerous nonsense has become party orthodoxy. And what makes this political triumph especially remarkable is that it comes just as the doctrine’s high priests have been setting new standards for utter, epic predictive failure.

I’m not talking about the fact that supply-siders didn’t see the crisis coming,... the people Mr. Walker was courting have spent years warning about the wrong things. “Get ready for inflation and higher interest rates” was the title of a June 2009 op-ed ... by Mr. Laffer; what followed were the lowest inflation in two generations and the lowest interest rates in history. Mr. Kudlow and Mr. Moore both predicted 1970s-style stagflation. ...

Something else worth noting: as befits his position at Heritage, Mr. Moore likes to publish articles filled with lots of numbers. But his numbers are consistently wrong... And somehow these errors always run in the direction he wants.

So what does it say about the current state of the G.O.P. that discussion of economic policy is now monopolized by people who have been wrong about everything, have learned nothing from the experience, and can’t even get their numbers straight?

The ... modern American right seems to have abandoned the idea that there is an objective reality out there... What are you going to believe, right-wing doctrine or your own lying eyes? These days, the doctrine wins.

Look at another issue, health reform. ... Then there’s foreign policy. ... And don’t get me started on climate change.

Along with this denial of reality comes an absence of personal accountability. If anything, alleged experts seem to get points by showing that they’re willing to keep saying the same things no matter how embarrassingly wrong they’ve been in the past.

But let’s go back to those economic charlatans and cranks: Clearly, failure has only made them stronger, and now they are political kingmakers. Be very, very afraid.

Links for 02-20-15

• These are Not the Droids You are Looking For - Growth Economics
• The bizarre war against AP U.S. history courses - The Washington Post
• On "human capital" one more time - Branko Milanovic
• Pennacchi on Narrow Banking - John Cochrane
• Robert Shiller's Bubble Vision - Justin Fox
• The 2015 Economic Report of the President - The White House
• Insert German Curse Word Here - Paul Krugman
• What Size Firm Has Created the Most Jobs in the Recovery? - St. Louis Fed
• Greece and educating economists - mainly macro
• Investment in the Euro Area: Why Has It Been So Weak? - iMFdirect
• Heritability & the left - Stumbling and Mumbling
• Student Loan Defaults through a Larger Window - Liberty Street
• Getting companies to invest long-term - Vox EU
• Corporate cash piles and financial shocks - Vox EU

'1870 as the Inflection Point in Trade and Transport'

Brad DeLong:

Today’s Economic History: 1870 as the Inflection Point in Trade and Transport: ... The old rule-of-thumb before the railroad was that you simply could not transport agricultural goods more than 100 miles by land. Over that distance the horses or the oxen would have eaten as much as they could have pulled. Either find a navigable watercourse—and it had better be much closer than 100 miles—or find yourself stuck in self-sufficiency for anything other than small and light preciosities...

The coming of steam coupled with the metallurgy to cheaply make the rails and the engines of the railroad made a difference. It made transport over land wherever the rails ran as cheap as travel up navigable watercourses or across the oceans had ever been. It made it much faster as well. This was a big difference for people who wanted to move about. The was a big difference for spoilable or time-sensitive goods. This was not much of a difference for durable staples over routes that had been and still could be travelled by water. And since most people had for good reason settled near the water routes, the railroad was a very welcome boost, but not that much more. For the rise of Mexico City—with no water routes to the coasts and thus the world economy—the railroad was a game-change. But for the rise of New York City the game-change was not the Iron Horse but rather the Erie Canal.

The true revolution in transportation? The one that mattered for everyone? That came not in the 1830s with the railroad. That came later: it was the iron-hulled ocean-going coal-fired steamship.

It was the year 1870 that saw the Harland and Wolff shipyard of Belfast in northern Ireland launch the iron-hulled (rather than wooden-hulled), steam-powered (rather than wind-powered, but it did still have masts and sails), screw-propellered (rather than paddle-wheeled), passenger steamship the R.M.S. Oceanic. It took 9 days from Liverpool to New York, a journey that in 1800 would have taken more like a month. Its crew of 150 supported 1,000 third-class passengers at a cost of £3–$15–for a third-class passenger. Third class on the Oceanic cost half as much as passage a generation earlier during the Irish Potato Famine had. It coast roughly a fourth as much as in 1800. ...

The falling cost of transporting people marched alongside a falling cost of transporting goods. Food that cost 1.5 cents per pound more in London than in New York in 1840 cost only 0.5 cents per pound more after 1870 . This was a fall in the price of carrying the raw materials for a loaf of bread across the Atlantic. What had cost the equivalent of 30 minutes’ worth of unskilled labor time in 1840 cost less than ten minutes’ worth come 1870. After 1870 every commodity that was neither exceptionally fragile nor spoilable could be carried from port to port across oceans for less than it cost to move it within any country.

All this mattered for two reasons.

First, it meant that everyplace in the world was, as long as there were connecting harbors, docks, and railroads, cheek-by-jowl to every other place, economically. Everyone’s economic opportunities and constraints depended on what was going on across the globe. This had not been true before. Before just the consumption patterns of the elite depended on what was going on in other countries and on other continents.

Second, wherever you could cheaply move goods in mass you could move other things. Most particularly, you could also move and supply armies. Thus conquest—or at least invasion and devastation—became things that nearly any European power could undertake in nearly any corner of the world.

'The Upside of Waiting in Line'

I really hate waiting in lines:

The Upside of Waiting in Line, by Tyler Cowen: Waiting in line got a bad rap as an ever-present part of the Communist Soviet Union. It could turn out to be a big part of America’s urban future, because some lines are actually useful. ...

'Should the US Switch to a Declining Discount Rate?'

Tim Taylor:

Should the US Switch to a Declining Discount Rate?: Imagine that that you can save 100 lives by enacting one of two regulatory policies. The policies have the same cost, which must be paid right now. However, one of the regulatory policies saves the 100 lives in the present, while the other saves 100 lives 50 years from now. In this hypothetical example, the two policies are equal in their costs. Are the policies equal in their benefits, because both policies save 100 lives? Or does saving 100 lives in the present have a different value--a greater value--than saving 100 lives in the future?

This question involves what economists call the "discount rate," which expresses how much future benefits should be "discounted" compared to present benefits of the same size. If your answer to the hypothetical question is that saving the 100 lives 50 years from now has the same value as saving 100 lives right now, you are applying a discount rate of 0%--that is, benefits in the future are not discounted relative to benefits in the present. If your answer is that saving 100 lives now is a greater benefit than saving 100 lives 50 years from now, you are applying a positive discount rate.

Almost all economists argue that a positive discount rate is appropriate. At an intuitive level, having a benefit happen sooner is worth something. Also, there is a level of certainty in saving 100 lives right now, while saving 100 lives in 50 years has some degree of uncertainty as to whether that will happen. In addition, say that the hypothetical example would cost $1 billion in the present. If you invested that money in a safe financial that pays 3% per year, then after 50 years of compound interest it would add up to $4.38 billion--which makes the cost-benefit tradeoff 50 years from now look less attractive. A discount rate of zero would mean that we treat all costs and benefits as equivalent, no matter whether they occur in the present, the near-future, the middle-future, or the unimaginably distant future. Thus, the near-certainty of a large asteroid hitting the earth in the next few million years would be treated as of equal concern to if we could see the asteroid coming and the event was 10 years away--because the future isn't discounted.

But what should the discount rate be? And should the discount rate be a constant value over time, or a declining value over time? Consider what's at stake here. A higher discount rate means that we have more of an orientation to the present, and in particular will treat future benefits as much less important. A lower discount rate means that while we still have an orientation to the present, we are giving greater weight to what happens in the future. For public policy issues that involve spending resources now for a benefit that would occur (at least partly) in the distant future, like some of the risks of climate change, or the chance of an asteroid hitting the earth, it turns out that the choice of discount rate is extremely important.

An all-star list of environmental and welfare economists tackle this issue in "Should Governments Use a Declining Discount Rate in Project Analysis?" which appeared in the Summer 2014 issue of the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy (8:2, pp. 145–163). The list of authors is Kenneth J. Arrow, Maureen L. Croppery, Christian Gollierz, Ben Groom, Geoffrey M. Heal , Richard G. Newell, William D. Nordhaus, Robert S. Pindyck, William A. Pizer, Paul R. Portney, Thomas Sterner, Richard S. J. Tol , and Martin L. Weitzman. Here's how the authors describe the curent US policy with regard to discount rates:

In the United States, however, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recommends that project costs and benefits be discounted at a constant exponential rate (which, other things equal, assigns a lower weight to future benefits and costs than a declining rate), although a lower constant rate may be used for projects that affect future generations. ... For intragenerational projects, the OMB (2003) recommends that benefit-cost analyses be performed using a discount rate of 7 percent, representing the pretax real return on private investments, and also a discount rate of 3 percent, representing the “social rate of time preference.

Two points are worth noticing here. First, the U.S. policy has a fixed discount rate over time. Second, the difference between a 7% rate and a 3% discount rate over a long period of time like a century is enormous. Consider a policy that has a benefit of $100 billion that occurs 100 years in the future. At a discount rate of 7%, it is worth spending $115 million or less in the present to achieve that benefit. (Sometimes it's useful to think of this calculation in reverse: If you invested $115 million at a 7% annual interest rate, you would have approximately $100 billion at the end of a century.) At an annual discount rate of 3% of annual rate it would be worth spending up to $5.2 billion in the present to achieve that benefit. Thus, one of the differences between those who would spend many billions of dollars in the present to reduce the risks of climate change in the decades and centuries ahead, and those who would spend only millions of dollars, can be traced to different discount rates.

But what about other countries? The authors write (citations omitted):

In evaluating public projects, France and the United Kingdom use discount rate schedules in which the discount rate applied today to benefits and costs occurring in the future declines over time. That is, the rate used today to discount benefits from year 200 to year 100 is lower than the rate used to discount benefits in year 100 to the present.

They argue that after taking issues into account like uncertainty about the future, and the fact that the path of benefits recognized in the future will tend to follow a correlated pattern (rather than being random from year to year), a declining discount rate makes sense. You can check the articles for some ways in which such a rate could be estimated from data, but in practice, the decision of what rate to use may be guided by such studies, while ultimately being chosen by a regulator. They conclude:

We have argued that theory provides compelling arguments for using a declining certainty equivalent discount rate. ... Clearly, policymakers should use careful judgment in estimating a DDR [declining discount rate] schedule, whichever approach is used. Moreover, as emphasized earlier, the DDR schedule should be updated as time passes and more data become available. Establishing a procedure for estimating a DDR for project analysis would be an improvement over the OMB’s current practice of recommending fixed discount rates that are rarely updated.

Links for 02-19-15

• The Intellectual War Over the Rise of the Machines - Brad DeLong
• Failed Theory Posed by Wall Street Dems - Larry Mishel
• These Are the Econ Blogs You Need to Read - Noah Smith
• The Mystery of Moore - Paul Krugman
• The Student Loan Landscape - Liberty Street Economics
• Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, and Stability - Jerome Powell
• The Utility of Utility (about the methodology of economics) - EconoSpeak
• Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee, January 27-28 - FRB
• Shocking incentive failure rate in North Carolina - Ken Thomas
• Endogenous supply and depressed demand - mainly macro
• Fixed exchange rates and Blame Thy Neighbour - Nick Rowe
• Significant Changes in GDP Growth - Growth Economics
• Who are the Uber Drivers? - Tim Taylor
• Subtle Bias, Fed Head Edition - Paul Krugman
• Blogroll - Noahpinion

Fed Watch: January FOMC Minutes

Tim Duy:

January FOMC Minutes, by Tim Duy: Minutes from the January FOMC meeting were released today. It is fairly clear that the Fed is gearing up for rates hikes:

Participants discussed considerations related to the choice of the appropriate timing of the initial firming in monetary policy and pace of subsequent rate increases. Ahead of this discussion, the staff gave a presentation that outlined some of the key issues likely to be involved...

The debate sounds familiar. On one side are those concerned that the Fed's zero rate policy will overstay its welcome:

Several participants noted that a late departure could result in the stance of monetary policy becoming excessively accommodative, leading to undesirably high inflation. It was also suggested that maintaining the federal funds rate at its effective lower bound for an extended period or raising it rapidly, if that proved necessary, could adversely affect financial stability...

while on the other side doesn't want to pull the trigger too early:

In connection with the risks associated with an early start to policy normalization, many participants observed that a premature increase in rates might damp the apparent solid recovery in real activity and labor market conditions, undermining progress toward the Committee's objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. In addition, an earlier tightening would increase the likelihood that the Committee might be forced by adverse economic outcomes to return the federal funds rate to its effective lower bound.

I would say that "many" is greater than "several," which means that as of January, the consensus leaned toward later than sooner. Indeed:

Many participants indicated that their assessment of the balance of risks associated with the timing of the beginning of policy normalization had inclined them toward keeping the federal funds rate at its effective lower bound for a longer time...

Here it would be helpful to know the expected time horizons. How long is a "longer" time? My sense is that the possibility of a March hike was on the table at the request of the hawks, and "longer" meant sometime after March. But when after March? That is data dependent, but the Fed is challenged to describe exactly what conditions need to be met before justifying a rate hike:

Participants discussed the economic conditions that they anticipate will prevail at the time they expect it will be appropriate to begin normalizing policy. There was wide agreement that it would be difficult to specify in advance an exhaustive list of economic indicators and the values that these indicators would need to take.

Still, they have some broad guidelines:

Nonetheless, a number of participants suggested that they would need to see further improvement in labor market conditions and data pointing to continued growth in real activity at a pace sufficient to support additional labor market gains before beginning policy normalization. Many participants indicated that such economic conditions would help bolster their confidence in the likelihood of inflation moving toward the Committee's 2 percent objective after the transitory effects of lower energy prices and other factors dissipate.

It seems then that "many" participants are focused primarily on the labor market. It would be interesting to see how "many" of those "many" saw their confidence increase after the positive January numbers. Others pointed to inflation measures and wages as important indicators:

Some participants noted that their confidence in inflation returning to 2 percent would also be bolstered by stable or rising levels of core PCE inflation, or of alternative series, such as trimmed mean or median measures of inflation. A number of participants emphasized that they would need to see either an increase in market-based measures of inflation compensation or evidence that continued low readings on these measures did not constitute grounds for concern. Several participants indicated that signs of improvements in labor compensation would be an important signal, while a few others deemphasized the value of labor compensation data for judging incipient inflation pressures in light of the loose short-run empirical connection between wage and price inflation.

My take is this: To get a reasonably sized consensus to support a rate hike, two conditions need to be met. One is sufficient progress toward full-employment with the expectation of further progress. I think that condition has already been met. The second condition is confidence that inflation will indeed trend toward target. That condition has not been met. To meet that condition requires at least one of the following sub-conditions: Rising core-inflation, rising market-based measures of inflation compensation, or accelerating wage growth. If any were to occur before June, I suspect it would be the accelerating wage growth.

On communication, the Fed sees that is has trapped itself:

Participants discussed the communications challenges associated with signaling, when it becomes appropriate to do so, that policy normalization is likely to begin relatively soon while remaining clear that the Committee's actions would depend on incoming data. Many participants regarded dropping the "patient" language in the statement, whenever that might occur, as risking a shift in market expectations for the beginning of policy firming toward an unduly narrow range of dates. As a result, some expressed the concern that financial markets might overreact, resulting in undesirably tight financial conditions.

If "patient" means exactly two meetings as is widely believed, then why would dropping patient imply higher rates in an "unduly narrow range of dates"? Isn't "two" two? If "two" is two, why the need for the adjective "unduly"? The definition of "unduly" according to the dictionary is:

to an extreme, unreasonable, or unnecessary degree

So "two" is thus extreme or unreasonable? Either "two" isn't two or patient wasn't meant to imply always two meetings. Indeed, Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester suggests that "two" is only one interpretation. Via the Wall Street Journal:

WSJ: When you say that, do you have April in mind or do you have June in mind?

MESTER: Given what we’ve communicated, June is a viable date. We have the patient language which has been interpreted as two meetings.

The language "has been interpreted" not "means" two meetings. If "two" is plainly two, how can it have any other interpretation? And "has been interpreted" by whom, for that matter?

You get the point. The Fed can't keep itself from making calendar dependent statements, and thus undermines it's own communications. Yellen should have said "patient" means "until the data says otherwise." But she couldn't help herself by not including some kind of calendar dependent qualifier. As a consequence, now the Fed is stuck with modifying the language to keep a June rate hike on the table.

Wait, is a June rate hike still on the table? Although the minutes were interpreted dovishly by financial market participants, I doubt the Fed will want to pull the plug on June just yet. Incoming Fed speak continues to signal a rate hike is coming (including Mester describing June as a "viable option" this week), the January labor report was solid, via the minutes the Fed sees external risks as dissipating, we have four more employment reports before the June meeting, and I doubt the Fed really wants to start signaling policy two periods in advance. Too early to pull June off the table, but they can't move in June without something solid on the inflation front. So the March statement, or subsequent press conference, will be about dealing with the "patient" language, and the April meeting will be about whether they really expect to move in June or not.

One more consideration. It has been noted that the length of the minutes ballooned in January. Less noted is that the FOMC has a new secretary, Thomas Laubach, who succeeds William English. The additional detail may reflect that change, and the additional detail may swing our interpretation of the minutes relative to past minutes.

Bottom Line: The Fed is plainly focused on raising rates. As a group, they sense the time is coming to begin policy normalization. But they don't yet know when exactly that time will be. They don't yet have everything they need to begin, and they don't know when they will have everything (which is why they need to end calendar-dependent language). We know not yet. June? Maybe, maybe not.

'Basic Personality Changes Linked to Unemployment'

Another potential cost of unemployment:

Basic personality changes linked to unemployment: Unemployment can change peoples' core personalities, making some less conscientious, agreeable and open, which may make it difficult for them to find new jobs, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"The results challenge the idea that our personalities are 'fixed' and show that the effects of external factors such as unemployment can have large impacts on our basic personality," said Christopher J. Boyce, PhD, of the University of Stirling in the United Kingdom. "This indicates that unemployment has wider psychological implications than previously thought." ...

The study suggests that the effect of unemployment across society is more than just an economic concern -- the unemployed may be unfairly stigmatized as a result of unavoidable personality change, potentially creating a downward cycle of difficulty in the labor market, Boyce said.

"Public policy therefore has a key role to play in preventing adverse personality change in society through both lower unemployment rates and offering greater support for the unemployed," Boyce said. "Policies to reduce unemployment are therefore vital not only to protect the economy but also to enable positive personality growth in individuals."

'Betting the House: Monetary Policy, Mortgage Booms and Housing Prices'

How risky is it when interest rates are held too low for too long?:

Betting the house: Monetary policy, mortgage booms and housing prices, by Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan Taylor: Although the nexus between low interest rates and the recent house price bubble remains largely unproven, observers now worry that current loose monetary conditions will stir up froth in housing markets, thus setting the stage for another painful financial crash. Central banks are struggling between the desire to awaken economic activity from its post-crisis torpor and fear of kindling the next housing bubble. The Riksbank was recently caught on the horns of this dilemma, as Svensson (2012) describes. Our new research provides the much-needed empirical backdrop to inform the debate about these trade-offs.

The recent financial crisis has led to a re-examination of the role of housing finance in the macroeconomy. It has become a top research priority to dissect the sources of house price fluctuations and their effect on household spending, mortgage borrowing, the health of financial intermediaries, and ultimately on real economic outcomes. A rapidly growing literature investigates the link between monetary policy and house prices as well as the implications of house price fluctuations for monetary policy (Del Negro and Otrok 2007, Goodhart and Hofmann 2008, Jarocinski and Smets 2008, Allen and Rogoff 2011, Glaeser, Gottlieb et al. 2010, Williams 2011, Kuttner 2012, Mian and Sufi 2014).

Despite all these references, there is relatively little empirical research about the effects of monetary policy on asset prices, especially house prices. How do monetary conditions affect mortgage borrowing and housing markets? Do low interest rates cause households to lever up on mortgages and bid up house prices, thus increasing the risk of financial crisis? And what, if anything, should central banks do about it?

Monetary conditions and house prices: 140 years of evidence

In our new paper (Jordà et al. 2014), we analyse the link between monetary conditions, mortgage credit growth, and house prices using data spanning 140 years of modern economic history across 14 advanced economies. Such a long and broad historical analysis has become possible for the first time by bringing together two novel datasets, each of which is the result of an extensive multi-year data collection effort. The first dataset covers disaggregated bank credit data, including real estate lending to households and non-financial businesses, for 17 countries (Jordà et al. 2014). The second dataset, compiled for a study by Knoll et al. (2014), presents newly unearthed data covering long-run house prices for 14 out of the 17 economies in the first dataset, from 1870 to 2012. This is the first time both datasets have been combined. ...

After lots of data and analysis, they conclude:

... We have established that loose/tight monetary conditions make credit cheaper/dearer and houses more expensive/affordable. But what about the dark side of low interest rates – do they also increase the risk of a financial crash?

The answer to this question is clearly affirmative, as we show in the last part of our paper using crisis prediction models. Over the past 140 years of modern macroeconomic history, mortgage booms and house price bubbles have been associated with a higher likelihood of a financial crisis. This association is even stronger in the post-WW2 era, which was marked by the democratization of leverage through the expansion of housing finance relative to GDP and a rapidly growing share of real estate loans as a share of banks’ balance sheets.

Conclusion

Our findings have important implications for the post-crisis debate about central bank policy. We provide a quantitative measure of the financial stability risks that stem from extended periods of ultra-low interest rates. We also provide a quantitative measure of the effects of monetary policy on mortgage lending and house prices. These historical insights suggest that the potentially destabilizing by-products of easy money must be taken seriously and considered against the benefits of stimulating flagging economic activity. Policy, as always, must strike a fine balance between conflicting objectives.

An important implication of our study is that macroeconomic stabilization policy has implications for financial stability, and vice versa. Resolving this dichotomy requires central banks to make greater use of macroprudential tools alongside conventional interest rate policy. One tool is insufficient to do two jobs. That is the lesson from modern macroeconomic history. ...

Links for 02-18-15

• Game Theory and Greek Default - The Leisure of the Theory Class
• The Promise and Failure of Community Colleges - NYTimes.com
• Long-Term Effects of the Great Recession - Econbrowser
• The misleading terminology of "human capital" - Branko Milanovic
• A lazy central banker's guide to escaping liquidity traps - Moneyness
• Greece’s Syriza Deserves the Benefit of the Doubt - EconoMonitor
• Grexit doesn’t have to be the end of the Euro - longandvariable
• Why Banks Hold Excess Reserves: Nuts and Bolts - Tim Taylor
• Demographic changes and structural deflation - Jérémie Cohen-Setton
• No Economy is an Island - Dan Alpert
• Comparative Austerity - Paul Krugman

'What's (Not) Up with Wage Growth?'

Macroblog:

What's (Not) Up with Wage Growth?: In recent months, there's been plenty of discussion of the surprisingly sluggish growth in hourly wages. It certainly has the attention of our boss, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, who in a speech on February 6 noted that

The behavior of wages and prices, in contrast, remains less encouraging, and, frankly, somewhat puzzling in light of recent growth and jobs numbers.

So what's up—or not up—with wage growth? ...

After lots of analysis, they conclude:

... Lower-than-normal wage growth appears to be a very widespread feature of the labor market since the end of the recession.

'Animal Spirits and Business Cycles'

Human animals and their spirits:

Animal Spirits and Business Cycles, by Rhys Bidder, Economic Letter, FRBSF: What causes economic fluctuations? The economy is buffeted by many factors, such as technological advances, commodity price changes, and policy stimulus. But a long-running tradition attributes part of the ups and downs in the business cycle to changes in consumer sentiment, or “animal spirits.” Researchers have considered many approaches to explaining this nebulous concept. In this Economic Letter I discuss a novel strategy in Bidder and Smith (2012) that shows how changes in the variability of the economy, combined with the uncertainty people have over how the world works, can generate a phenomenon like animal spirits and, thus, drive business cycles. ...

'Student Loan Delinquency Rate Defies Overall Downward Trend'

Many people cite education as the best way to combat inequality. It can't hurt, but we need to stop burdening those who do go to college with so much debt:

Just Released: Student Loan Delinquency Rate Defies Overall Downward Trend in Household Debt and Credit Report for Fourth Quarter 2014, by Meta Brown, Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw, Liberty Street Economics: Today, the New York Fed released the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for the fourth quarter of 2014. The report is based on data from the New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Panel, a nationally representative sample drawn from anonymized Equifax credit data. Overall, aggregate balances increased by $117 billion, or 1.0 percent, boosted by increases in all credit types except home equity lines of credit.

Delinquency rates improved overall, although the improvement was not across the board, as there were upticks in the delinquency rates for both student loans and auto loans. The chart below shows balance-weighted 90+ day delinquency rates by category of household debt.

The delinquency rates for mortgages, home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), auto loans, and credit cards peaked noticeably in the years following the recession, and have since fallen. In the case of mortgages, the ... Quarterly Report reveals that the flow into serious delinquency also remains somewhat high by historical standards.

Credit card delinquencies have been steadily improving, and are now at some of the lowest levels we’ve seen since the start of our data in 1999.

Auto loan delinquencies have followed a similar trajectory, although we should note that in the most recent quarter, there is an uptick in the 90+ day delinquency rate. This uptick is even more pronounced in our measures of flows into delinquency, and we’ll continue monitoring this going forward.

The 90+ day delinquency rate for student loans, however, is different from the others—the rate has increased substantially since our student loan data began in 2003, and has now reached 11.3 percent. Student loans have the highest delinquency rate of any form of household credit, having surpassed credit cards in 2012. There are several reasons for this. Student debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy like other types of debt; thus, delinquent or defaulted student loans can stagnate on borrowers’ credit reports, creating an ever-increasing pool of delinquent debt. Additionally, the measures of new delinquency in our Quarterly Report do reflect high inflows into delinquency.

Yet even these rather grim statistics don’t tell the whole story. This week, in a series of three blog posts, we will use our dataset to further investigate student loan balances and delinquencies. In the first post, we will update some descriptive statistics on student loan borrowers—we’ll look at who is borrowing, and how much they owe. In the second post, we’ll take a long look at how we calculate delinquency rates. We’ll use our data to approximate graduation cohorts, and use those cohorts to calculate default rates. In the third blog post, we’ll use the established cohorts to examine borrowers’ progress in paying down their balances. By the end of the week, readers will have a better understanding of student borrowing in the United States.

Inequality Has Actually Not Risen Since the Financial Crisis???

David Leonhardt reports on a study showing that income inequality has not increased since the Financial Crisis:

Inequality Has Actually Not Risen Since the Financial Crisis: The notion that income inequality has continued to rise over the past decade is part of the conventional wisdom. You’ve no doubt heard versions: The rich just keep getting richer. Inequality is higher than ever. Nearly all of the gains from the economic recovery have gone to the top 1 percent.

No question, inequality is extremely high from a historical perspective – worrisomely so. But a new analysis, by Stephen J. Rose of George Washington University, adds an important wrinkle to the story: Income inequality has not actually risen since the financial crisis began. ...

Amir Sufi , on Twitter, says not so fast, this study has flaws:

Amir Sufi @profsufi Who takes biggest income hit in recessions? @DLeonhardt takes a look at some research, but I don't think it's the best stuff out there.

Amir Sufi @profsufi The ideal thought experiment is to sort households ex ante on income (or wealth), and then track same households through recession.

Amir Sufi @profsufi The best study that actually does this uses SSA data and is here: fguvenendotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/guvene…

Amir Sufi @profsufi All the research typically cited looks at percentiles of distribution, not same households over time. This can lead to strange results

Amir Sufi @profsufi During recessions, poor see bigger decline in wages than rich through entire distribution except very top. Very richest see biggest decline.

Amir Sufi @profsufi A technical figure, but it is incredibly important so worth taking time to look at it. From: fguvenendotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/guvene…
pic.twitter.com/uyg3ZTFwjo

Amir Sufi @profsufi The poor see larger decline in wages during recessions across entire distribution except for very top: pic.twitter.com/hbh8gzH0NL

Amir Sufi @profsufi Again, ideal experiment is sort households by income in 2006, then track SAME households through recession. Don't use percentiles.

Amir Sufi @profsufi @JedKolko authors say because those recessions were much more severe, so more typical patterns of "severe" recessions

Amir Sufi @profsufi Want to understand income inequality during recessions? Read Section VI.B.1 of this study. Best stuff I've seen. fguvenendotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/guvene…

'Applying Keynes's Insights about Liquidity Preference to the Yield Curve'

Via email, a new paper from Josh R. Stillwagon, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Trinity College, appearing in  the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money. The paper "applies some of Keynes's insights about liquidity preference to understanding term structure premia. The following is an excerpt paraphrased from the conclusion":

"This work uses survey data on traders' interest rate forecasts to test the expectations hypothesis of the term structure and finds clear evidence of a time-varying risk premium in four markets... Further, it identifies two significant factors which impact the magnitude of the risk premium. The first is overall consumer sentiment analogous to Keynes's "animal spirits"... The second factor is the level of and/or changes in the interest rate, consistent with the imperfect knowledge economics gap model [applied now to term premia]; the intuition being that the increasing skew to potential bond price movements from a fall in the interest rate [leaving more to fear than to hope as Keynes put it] causes investors to demand a greater premium. This was primarily observed in the medium-run relations of the I(2) CVAR, indicating that these effects are transitory suggesting, as Keynes argued, that what matters is not merely how far the interest rate is from zero but rather how far it is from recent levels."

This link is free for 50 days: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1QYk23j1YpaN3o

Links for 02-17-15

• Triumph of the Chart - Paul Krugman
• Is the oil crash over? - Gavyn Davies
• Athenae Delenda Est - Paul Krugman
• Scarcity of Money? Or Time? - Credit Slips
• Honesty in groups: Gender matters - Vox EU
• No Time for Games in Europe - Yanis Varoufakis
• Innovation and creative cities: New evidence - Vox EU
• The Rising Price of Anti-Cancer Drugs - Tim Taylor
• Measuring Underground Economy Can Be Done - St. Louis Fed
• Why do Macroeconomists Think They Know Macro? - Robert Waldmann
• How Trade Deals Boost the Top 1% and Bust the Rest - Robert Reich
• Tracking GDP when long-run growth is uncertain - Vox EU
• New York Diversifies - Paul Krugman

Drug Prices are Bankrupting America

Jeff Sachs:

The Drug that is Bankrupting America: America is the land of breakthrough science ... in the case of the new hepatitis C virus (HCV) cure named sofosbuvir, sold under the brand name Solvadi by the drug company Gilead Sciences. There is no question that Solvadi is a godsend - a lifesaver for millions ... around the world ... Yet Solvadi is also the poster child of a US healthcare system that is being bankrupted by greed, lobbying and indefensible policies on drug pricing.

The basic facts are these. ... Gilead set the price for a twelve-week treatment course of Solvadi at $84,000... According to researchers at Liverpool University, the actual production costs of Solvadi for the twelve-week course is in the range $68-$136. ...

The standard defense by the drug companies ... is that drug discovery is costly and their high profits reimburse the R&D costs. Here is where the story of Solvadi gets even more interesting. The total private-sector outlays on R&D were ... almost surely under $500 million, meaning that the decade-long R&D outlays were likely recouped in a few weeks of drug sales.

Here is the background. Sofosbuvir was developed under the leadership of Prof. Raymond Schinazi, a brilliant professor of biochemistry at Emory University. The US Government heavily funded Prof. Schinazi's research...

Solvadi ... shows how publicly financed science easily turns into arbitrarily large private profits paid for by taxpayers. The challenge facing the US is to adopt a rational drug pricing system that continues to spur excellent scientific breakthroughs while keeping greed in check. Big Pharma and the US public are on a collision course when they should be partners for the advancement of health.

'The Congressional Reserve Board: A Really Bad Idea'

Cecchetti & Schoenholtz:

The Congressional Reserve Board: A Really Bad Idea: “We are – I’ll be blunt – audited out the wazoo. Every Federal Reserve Bank has a private auditor. We have our auditor of the system. We have our own inspector general. We are audited. What he’s talking about is politicizing monetary policy.” Richard Fisher, President, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas Morning News, February 9, 2015.

What would you think if you were to open your morning newspaper to find the following headline?

“Congress Closes Down Fed, Takes Over Monetary Policy”

If you’re like us, you’d panic. In short order, you’d think that long-term inflation expectations would rise, pushing bond yields higher. You’d anticipate an increase in the volatility of growth, employment and inflation. That more volatile environment would drive up the risk premium required on new investments, hindering long-term economic growth. Finally, you'd be very worried about how these Congressional policymakers would manage the next financial crisis.

This is not a pretty picture. Why would anyone want it to become a reality? Well, these are surely not the intended goals, but they are the likely outcomes should lawmakers ever replace the Federal Reserve Board with what we would call a Congressional Reserve Board.

While the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2015 – aka, the “Audit the Fed” Act – doesn’t shut down the Federal Reserve, it would go a long way to putting Congress directly in charge of monetary policy and to weakening the Fed’s effectiveness as a lender of last resort.

To explain our concerns, we will start by describing why it has become almost universally accepted practice to make the institution setting monetary (and regulatory) policy independent of political interference. That is, why most advanced and emerging market economies have opted to make their central banks “independent.” We will also explain why the “Transparency Act” is really about controlling monetary policy, not about making the Fed accountable (the short answer: it already is). And, finally, we will explain the bill’s impact on the Fed’s lender of last resort powers. ...