I have a new column:
The Republican Retreat From Market-Based Regulation: During the debate over the repeal of Obamacare, Republicans made frequent reference to their desire for a “free market” for health care. This is consistent with the GOP’s long-standing support of deregulation and free market principles.
But all well-functioning markets are regulated to one degree or another. ...
I have a new column:
Here’s Why We’re Not Prepared for the Next Recession: When will the next recession hit the economy? Nobody knows for sure, but we can be certain that sooner or later the economy will experience another downturn. When that happens, will monetary and fiscal policymakers have the ability to respond effectively?
The inevitability of another recession is evident in a graph of the unemployment rate. ...
I have a new column:
Trump’s Apprenticeships are Based upon a Problem That Doesn’t Exist: Last week the Trump administration announced “a workforce training initiative focused on skill-based apprenticeship education” with a goal of creating one million apprenticeships over the next two years. The motivation behind the initiative was explained by Ivanka Trump: “The reality is that there are still Americans seeking employment despite low unemployment rates, and companies are struggling to fill vacancies for positions that require varying levels of skills and training. So the Trump administration is committed to working very closely to close the skills gap."
But is a “skills gap” really a problem in the US? ...
I have a new column:
Why the Republican Health Care Plan Is Destined to Fail:
“It is the general social consensus, clearly, that the laissez-faire solution for medicine is intolerable.” – Kenneth Arrow, 1963.
As Republicans struggle to find an acceptable replacement for Obamacare, a task that does not yet appear to be complete given the growing opposition to their recent proposal, they would do well to remember the words of the person who invented healthcare economics, Kenneth Arrow.
Professor Arrow, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who recently passed away at the age of 95, argued that the market for healthcare is not like other markets for several reasons. ...
I have a new column:
The Real Test for the Republican Health Care Plan: The Republicans’ rallying cry on health care reform is that the marketplace – relying on the forces of supply and demand – is the best way to run our healthcare system. Government involvement in health care interferes with the magic of markets and makes us all worse off.
The problem with this argument is that markets for health insurance are subject to significant market failures. Without regulatory intervention to fix these problems the market system will not provide what the market systems promises, widely available health care at the lowest possible price. ...
Interestingly, despite their public rhetoric Republicans seem to recognize that these features will be needed in whatever health care reform package they put forward, assuming they can eventually agree on a plan. ... So far, however, although there has been evolution, the proposal is still bad news for those with low incomes and – surprise! – it is very beneficial to those with considerable means. ...
I have a new column:
The 'Carrier' of Crony Capitalism Is Evident in Trump’s Deal: When I first started teaching economics, one day a student came to my office to argue about how a multiple test question was graded. He believed his answer was correct and explained why, but I disagreed. However, the student would not give up; he kept arguing and began to get angry. Finally, to make it go away I took what seemed to be the simple route and gave him credit for the question.
That was a mistake. It turned out the student knew lots of other people in the course, and within three or four hours at least 20 students who had marked the same wrong answer showed up and demanded they be given credit as well. I had no choice but to give in. I then had to check all the answers for the 300+ students in the course to make sure everyone was treated the same, and in the end the question was essentially nullified. That was unfair to those who answered correctly. Once I made that first fateful choice to take the easy way out there was no way to be fair to everyone.
There is a lesson here regarding Trump’s announcement that he is essentially bribing Carrier with tax cuts to keep jobs in the US. ...
I have a new column:
The Anti-Trust Election of 2016: A report on the “Benefits of Competition and Indicators of Market Power” from the White House Council of Economic Advisors documents that monopoly power has been increasing the last few decades, and it argues persuasively “that consumers and workers would benefit from additional policy actions by the government to promote competition within a variety of industries.” The report is part of an initiative by the Obama administration last spring to promote a “fair, efficient, and competitive marketplace” through stricter enforcement of antitrust regulations, and through other measures such as patent reform and the reform of occupational licensing.
To those who believe more aggressive enforcement of antitrust laws is needed, and I am one of them, Hillary Clinton’s recent announcement of “A new commitment to promote competition, address excessive concentration and the abuse of economic power, and strengthen antitrust laws and enforcement” is an encouraging sign that if Clinton is elected the Obama administration’s initiative will not end when he leaves office.
The presence of monopoly power harms the economy in several ways. ...
Donald Trump has promised to make deregulation one of the focal points of his presidency. If Trump is elected, the trend toward rising market concentration and all of the problems that come with it are likely to continue. We’ll hear the usual arguments about ineffective government and the magic of markets to justify ignoring the problem. If Clinton is elected, it’s unlikely that her administration would be active enough in antitrust enforcement for my taste. But at least she acknowledges that something needs to be done about this growing problem, and any movement toward more aggressive enforcement of antitrust regulation would be more than welcome.
I have a new column:
4 Reasons Trump’s Economic Policies Would Be a Disaster: Donald Trump’s chances of becoming president are higher than I ever expected them to be, and there is a chance that he will be able to put his economic plans into place. He claims his economic policies will be good for the working class, but in reality his plans for high income tax cuts and deregulation adhere closely to standard Republican ideology that has favored the wealthy and powerful. Even his plans for international trade, an area where he claims populist support, would hurt far more people than it would help. Here are the four areas where Trump’s economic plans concern me the most...
[One of the four echoes what I wrote about yesterday at CBS.]
I have a new column:
Trump’s Taco Truck Fear Campaign Diverts Attention From the Real Issues: Donald Trump would like you to believe that immigration is largely responsible for the difficult economic conditions the working class has experienced in recent decades. But immigration is not the problem. The real culprits are globalization, technological change, and labor’s dwindling bargaining power in wage negotiations.
Let’s start with immigration. ...
I have a new column:
Why We Need a Fiscal Policy Commission: During the Great Recession, monetary policymakers were aggressive and creative in their attempts to revive the economy. I wish they had been even more aggressive, and at times they were a bit slow to react due to excessive fear of inflation and the tendency to see recovery just around the corner, but their overall response to the crisis was commendable. Unfortunately, monetary policy alone was far from enough to give the economy the help it needed. Fiscal policy was needed too.
But fiscal policymakers let us down. ...
New column:
The Failure of the Market for Presidential Candidates: Almost all economists believe in markets, and the tools economists use to analyze markets can be applied to a surprisingly large number of social interactions. Our attempts to use economics to examine questions that are traditionally the purview of sociology, psychology, and political science have not always been welcomed by those in other fields, and there’s no doubt that our methods are often applied naively without a full understanding of what researchers in other disciplines have learned. Nevertheless, I can’t help speculating on why the “market” for political candidates failed so spectacularly this year. ...
I have a new column:
How Slow Economic Growth Could Thwart a Clinton Presidency : Much has been written about the economic consequences of the slowdown in economic growth in recent years, but what about the political implications? If the slowdown continues, and there is reason to believe that it will, how will it affect the ability of the next president to implement his, or more likely her, economic agenda?
If Hillary Clinton wins in November and economic growth remains low, the call from Republicans for tax cuts will become louder than it already is. ...
If growth remains low we will also hear much more about how government regulation is stifling business activity. ...
And so on (it's already started, John Cochrane, calling for deregulation "While the current presidential front-runners are not championing economic growth, House Speaker Paul Ryan and other House members are.").
My latest column:
Reducing Long-Term Unemployment: Perfect is the Enemy of the Good: One of the most important economic challenges we face is reducing long-term unemployment. Presently, the percentage of people who have been searching for a job for more than 26 weeks is 26.7 percent. That’s down from the peak of 45.5 percent during the Great Recession, but long-term unemployment has been stuck around this percentage for the last 10 months and it is still higher than the previous post World War II peak of 24.9 percent in the early 1980s.
Long-term unemployment takes a considerable toll on individuals and their families, and it has broader social and economic consequences as well. Yet Congress has all but ignored this problem. Republican opposition to new initiatives of any sort is one reason for the inaction from Congress, but it’s also true that we do not know for sure which type of policy works best. That makes it difficult for those in Congress who do favor action to make a strong case in support of a particular program. ...
This brings up a more general problem with our willingness to try and solve important social problems. We seem to believe that every program the government tries must work with near perfection or it isn’t worth doing. If a social program helps a large number of people, but a few people take advantage of it, those people are used to undermine the program in the eyes of the public.
If we build a thousand bridges that serve important needs, but one of those is a “bridge to nowhere,” then infrastructure spending is a failure. If unemployment compensation and food stamps help a great number of people, but someone can be found who uses the programs as a way to avoid work, that becomes the focus. Of course we should try and fix the parts of any program that don’t work as intended, but we have to evaluate programs based upon their overall costs and benefits, not on isolated instances of failure.
The private sector would not meet the standard of perfection many people impose on the government. ...
I have a new column:
What Bernie Sanders Gets Right: A little over a year ago, Bernie Sanders expressed one of the themes of his presidential campaign in a speech at the Brookings Institution:
We are moving rapidly away from our democratic heritage into an oligarchic form of society… billionaire families are now able to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase the candidates of their choice. The billionaire class now owns the economy, and they are working day and night to make certain that they own the United States government.
This gets at the heart of the justification for our economic system. According to economic theory, one of the wonders of capitalism is that the pursuit of self-interest by individuals in society is guided, as if by an invisible hand, to maximize the collective social interest. Ruthless, cutthroat competition between individuals and businesses is magically transformed through the marketplace into a harmonious outcome that is best for society as a whole.
But there are important questions about the extent to which this describes how our economy actually works. ...
I have a new column:
Why We Need to Raise the Minimum Wage, by Mark Thoma: It would be nice if labor markets worked the way they do in economics textbooks. Market forces would cause workers to be paid an amount equal to the value of what they produce – what economists call the value of their marginal product – and wages would rise one to one with both changes in inflation and changes in productivity.
Of course, the real world doesn’t always work this way. ...
Worried my example is too simplistic.
New column:
Why the Working Class Is Choosing Trump and Sanders, by Mark Thoma: Donald Trump recently defended Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid:
“Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.”
An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal reflects the negative reaction to Trump’s remarks from many Republicans:
“Mr. Trump is a political harbinger here of a new strand of populist Republicanism, largely empowered by Obamacare, in which the ‘conservative’ position is to defend the existing entitlement programs from a perceived threat posed by a new-style Obama coalition of handout seekers that includes the chronically unemployed, students, immigrants, minorities and women … who typically vote Democrat.”
But is it true that our economic system redistributes substantial sums away from the middle class to “handout seekers”? ...
I have a new column:
Three Ways to Help the Working Class: ... In graduate school, I was once told that “people don’t have marginal products, jobs do.” What does this mean? ...
I wish I would have connected the last part to the Supreme Court case on public unions.
My latest column:
Do Economists Promote Ideology as Science?: Which is more important in determining the policy positions of economists, ideology or evidence? Is economics, as some assert, little more than a means of dressing up ideological arguments in scientific clothing?
This certainly happens, especially among economists connected to politically driven think tanks – places like the Heritage Foundation come to mind. Economists who work for businesses also have a tendency to present evidence more like a lawyer advocating a particular position than a scientist trying to find out how the economy really works. But what about academic economists who are supposed to be searching for the truth no matter the political implications? Can we detect the same degree of bias in their research and policy positions? ...
I have a new column:
The Lofty Promise and Humble Reality of International Trade: How should we feel about international trade? Should we applaud it for its ability to lift the world’s poor out of poverty, lower the price of goods, and increase the variety of products we can consume? Or should we be concerned about the effects it has on employment, inequality, and the availability of decent jobs within the US?
As we shall see, this is not an easy question to answer. ...
I have a new column:
The Fed Must Banish the 1970’s Inflation Devil: Will the Fed raise rates when it meets later this month? Inflation remains below the Fed’s two percent target, and that argues against a rate increase. But labor markets appear to be tightening and that is raising worries that higher inflation is just ahead. Should the Fed launch a preemptive strike against the possibility of wage-fueled inflationary pressure? ...
Hopefully there's at least one argument against raising rates that you have not heard before.
My editor suggested that I might want to write about an article in New Scientist, After the crash, can biologists fix economics?, so I did:
Macroeconomics: The Roads Not Yet Taken: Anyone who is even vaguely familiar with economics knows that modern macroeconomic models did not fare well before and during the Great Recession. For example, when the recession hit many of us reached into the policy response toolkit provided by modern macro models and came up mostly empty.
The problem was that modern models were built to explain periods of mild economic fluctuations, a period known as the Great Moderation, and while the models provided very good policy advice in that setting they had little to offer in response to major economic downturns. That changed to some extent as the recession dragged on and modern models were quickly amended to incorporate important missing elements, but even then the policy advice was far from satisfactory and mostly echoed what we already knew from the “old-fashioned” Keynesian model. (The Keynesian model was built to answer the important policy questions that come with major economic downturns, so it is not surprising that amended modern models reached many of the same conclusions.)
How can we fix modern models? ...
I have a new column:
Who Should Pay for Recessions?: Over the last several hundred years, financial panics have repeatedly caused severe economic turmoil. For example, there were financial panics every 10 to 20 years in the late 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s, many of which resulted in severe recessions.
To combat this instability, new rules and regulations were imposed on the financial sector after the Great Recession, and for approximately 50 years this seemed to be very successful. The bank panics that had caused so much trouble appeared to be over. But in recent years there has been a return of financial instability in the relatively unregulated shadow banking system, and a “Great Recession” associated with a financial meltdown.
The conclusion seems obvious. No matter what we do in terms of regulating the financial sector, the risk of a financial collapse and subsequent recession is always present. Given this, a question to ask is who should pay the costs of the inevitable meltdown? That is, when the financial sector gets into trouble, as it surely will at some point in the future, who should shoulder the burden? ...
I have a new column:
To Overcome Rising Inequality, Workers Need More Bargaining Power: There is widespread agreement that inequality increased over the last several decades, but why that has happened is the subject of considerable debate.
- Is it because technological change reduced the number of good, middle class jobs?
- Is it the result of downward pressure on wages due to globalization?
- Can the changes be traced to the rise of “winner take all” markets?
- Or is the decline of unions the main reason for the change in the distribution of income?
- What about the fall in the inflation-adjusted minimum wage, was that a factor?
- Did immigration have anything to do with it?
- How much of an impact did the reduction in income and inheritance taxes for those at the very top have on inequality?
- Should we focus mainly on differential educational opportunities between those at the top and those at the bottom, and the networking opportunities the top schools provide?
- What role did politics play in undermining unions, altering tax rates, resisting increases in the minimum wage, and failing to support educational initiatives that benefit the disadvantaged?
Some of these are easier to rule out than others based upon the empirical evidence. For example, there’s little evidence that immigration played a significant role in generating rising inequality. And it’s probably the case that there are multiple causes of rising inequality rather than a single factor, and that some of these factors interact. The decline in unions, for example, is related to the threat of offshoring in a globalized economy as well as political factors that undermined union authority.
But there is one factor, the presence of market power in both product and labor markets, that, in my view, does not get enough attention in this debate. ...[continue]...
I have a new column:
Restoring the Public’s Trust in Economists: The belief that economics has become politicized is a big reason the general public has lost faith in the ability of economists to give advice on important policy questions. For most issues, like raising the minimum wage, the effects of government spending, international trade, whether CEOs deserve their high compensation, etc., etc., it seems as though economists who also happen to be Republicans will mostly line up on one side of the issue, while economists who are Democrats mostly take the other. Members of the general public, not knowing who to believe and unable to rely upon the press to sort it out, either throw up their hands in frustration or follow the side that agrees with their preconceived notions and ideological beliefs.
But why is it so hard to sort out? Why can’t the press do a better job of avoiding “he said – she said” reporting and give the public direct and specific answers to these important policy questions? One reason is the “mathiness” that has infected our economic models, something economist Paul Romer recently identified as a big problem with economic theory. ...
I have a new column:
Supply-Side Social Insurance: David Brooks’ claim that “the federal government spent nearly $14,000 per poor person” in 2013 and his claim that “over the last 30 years the poverty rate has scarcely changed” have both been thoroughly debunked. The responses show very clearly that spending is nowhere near as large as Brooks claims, and that using a measure of poverty that overcomes some of the problems with the standard measure shows a decline in the poverty rate, though the decline has been slower than we’d prefer. ...
Even if the number had been calculated correctly, it would overstate the true cost of social insurance programs due to the failure to consider “dynamic effects.” That is, these programs don’t just provide income to struggling households in times of need, income that can have a valuable stimulative effect during economic downturns; social insurance programs are also an investment in our future. ...
Not sure why "Doesn't Work" was added to the title -- my point is that it does, if only Republicans would support it.
I tried to make this point long ago (see below):
Sometimes, Boosting Supply Requires More Demand, by Greg Ip, WSJ: The Federal Reserve, everyone agrees, can boost growth in the short run. But can it do it over the long run? This once heretical concept is the latest argument in favor of the Fed taking its time about raising interest rates.
Traditionally, economists treated supply and demand as separate matters. ... The Fed, in this traditional view, can affect how demand fluctuates around the long-run trend, but it can’t affect the long-run trend itself.
But in real life, supply and demand are not so easily separated. The labor force is a function not just of the number of people of working age (a supply-side factor), but also how long they’ve been unemployed and thus how useful their skills are (a demand-side factor). Business investment in new equipment isn’t just a function of the state of technology (a supply side factor), but what they anticipate sales to be in coming years (a demand side factor).
This means that policies that affect demand in the short run can, conceivably, affect supply in the long run, as well. ...
Jay Powell, a Fed governor, makes the point in a speech last week. ... Mr. Powell suggests, the Fed should not assume capacity is written in stone and immune to monetary policy: “Should we think of this supply-side damage as permanent or temporary?” he said in his speech last week. “It seems plausible that at least part of the damage can be reversed. ...
This means, Mr. Powell says, the Fed should be more skeptical than usual when superficial evidence suggests the economy is approaching capacity. While he dances around the implications for monetary policy a bit, the conclusion is obvious: the Fed should stay easier, for longer, which should “not only help restore some of our economy’s potential,” but get inflation back up to 2% faster.
Mr. Powell’s logic is quite compelling and provides an important reason why the Fed should err on the side of letting unemployment fall well below traditional measures of the “natural rate” of unemployment before tightening. ...
This post is from March, 2012 (see also David Beckworth's comments on endogenous labor supply):
The Gap In Monetary and Fiscal Policy, by Mark Thoma: One of the big questions for policymakers is how much of the current downturn represents of temporary cyclical fluctuation and how much of it is a permanent reduction in out productive capacity. If the downturn is mostly temporary, then we will eventually bounce back to the old output trend line. Something like this:
But if it's mostly permanent, i.e. if the trend has fallen to a lower value and will stay there, then the picture is different:
In the first case, highly stimulative policy is appropriate to help the economy get back to the long-run trend as soon as possible. There's still a lot of ground to cover, and policy can help. But in the second case the economy is already back to it's long-run trend at most points in time, or nearly so, and there is no need for policymakers to do much of anything at all. At least that's what we're told.
However, I think this misses part of the story. What it misses is that AS shocks themselves can be both permanent and temporary, and some people may be confusing one for the other. For example, when there as a large AD shock in the form of a change in preferences, say that people no longer like good A as it has gone out of fashion and have now decided B is the must have good, then there will be high unemployment in industry A and excess demand for labor and other resources in industry B. As workers and resources leave industry A, our productive capacity falls and it stays lower until the workers and other resources eventually find their way into industry B. When this process is complete, productive capacity returns to where it was before, or perhaps goes even higher. Thus, there is a short-run cycle in productive capacity that mirrors the business cycle.
A standard business cycle type AD shock will temporarily depress capacity and produce similar effects. Suppose that interest rates go up, taxes go up, government spending goes down, investment falls --pick your story -- causing aggregate demand to fall. When, as a result, businesses lay people off, idle equipment, etc., productive capacity will fall. It can be cranked up again, and will be when the economy recovers, but rehiring labor and taking equipment out of mothballs takes time. In the interim the natural rate of output falls and, just as with a change in the preference for good A versus good B, a negative aggregate demand shock can cause "frictions" on the supply side that temporarily increase the natural rate of unemployment. And there are many other ways this can happen as well.
The point is that there can be short-run cyclical AS effects, and failing to account for these can lead to policy errors. Consider the following diagram:
Up until the point where the line splits into three pieces, assume the economy is in long-run equilibrium with output at the natural rate (we can discuss whether the natural rate actually exists another time, I want to work in the standard model for the moment since that is where the policy discussion is centered). Then, for some reason, aggregate demand falls leading the economy into a recession. As AD falls, people are laid off, equipment is stored, factories are shuttered, and so on and the economy's capacity to produce falls in the short-run as shown by the blue line on the diagram.
But this is a temporary, not a permanent situation. Eventually people will be put back to work, trucks in parking lots will be back on the road, factories will reopen -- you get the picture -- and productive capacity will grow as the economy recovers. I believe many people are treating what is ultimately a temporary fall in capacity as a permanent change, and they are making the wrong policy recommendations as a result.
In fact, there's no reason to think productive capacity can't return to its long-run trend just as fast or faster than output can recover. If so, then it would be a mistake to do as many are doing presently and treat the blue short-run y* line as a constraint for policy, conclude that the gap is small and hence there's nothing for policy to do. Capacity will recover, and policymakers must take this into account when looking at whether additional policy can help the economy. If capacity can grow fast as the economy recovers, then it poses little constraint and policymakers should try to return us to the long-run trend as soon as possible. That is, aggressive policy is still called for even if productive capacity is presently relatively low. ...
One last point about the diagram. I drew the long-run line so there is a long-run decline in the trend of our productive capacity after the recession (i.e. a permanent shock). However, it's hard to see because, consistent with my beliefs, I do not think the change in our long-run capacity to produce goods and services will be as negative as many others. So the effect is not large in the diagram (I acknowledge I'm more optimistic on this point than many others that I respect). But even if the long-run trend had fallen by more than shown in the diagram, say by 50%, the points above would still hold. If the capacity to produce recovers as the economy recovers, and does so relatively fast, then policymakers should not be constrained by the belief that the natural rate of output is relatively low at the present time. Aggressive policy is still the best course of action.
If I were to do this today -- several years later -- I would draw the last graph so that the permanent fall in productive capacity is larger (i.e. the Y*LR line would be lower). But, as explained in the last paragraph, the main point still holds.
I have a new column:
Macro Wars: The Attack of the Anti-Keynesians, by Mark Thoma: The ongoing war between the Keynesians and the anti-Keynesians appears to be heating up again. The catalyst for this round of fighting is The Keynesian Illusion by David K. Levine, which elicited responses such as this and this from Brad DeLong and Nick Rowe.
The debate is about the source of economic fluctuations and the government’s ability to counteract them with monetary and fiscal policy. One of the issues is the use of “old fashioned” Keynesian models – models that have supposedly been rejected by macroeconomists in favor of modern macroeconomic models – to explain and understand the Great Recession and to make monetary and fiscal policy recommendations. As Levine says, “Robert Lucas, Edward Prescott, and Thomas Sargent … rejected Keynesianism because it doesn't work… As it happens we have developed much better theories…”
I believe the use of “old-fashioned” Keynesian models to analyze the Great Recession can be defended. ...
I have a new column:
Taxing the Wealthy Won't Hurt Economic Growth: I have no idea whether or not Mitt Romney will run for president, and if he does, if he will get the nomination. But many of the issues he ran on when he was a candidate in the last election are likely to reappear this time around no matter whom the candidates turn out to be.
One of the fiercely debated issues in the last presidential election was taxation of the wealthy, and Republican proposals similar to those Romney made when he ran against Obama –– lowering or eliminating the taxes on capital gains, interest, dividends, and inheritances –– will undoubtedly arise again. I expect Republicans will throw a few bones to the middle class in an attempt to get the support of this important constituency, but I also expect the thrust of the proposals to be the same old supply-side policies favoring the wealthy that we have seen in the past.
What I want to focus on, however, is the economic arguments that are made to support the ideological goal of low taxes. ...
I have a new column:
Full Employment Alone Won’t Solve Problem of Stagnating Wages: The most recent employment report brought mixed news. The unemployment rate continues its slow but steady downward path and now stands at 5.6 percent, but wages remain flat. In response, most analysts made two points. First, the lack of wage growth indicates that we are not yet close enough to full employment to generate upward pressure on wages, so policymakers should be patient in reversing attempts to stimulate the economy. Second, once we do get closer to full employment the picture for wages will change and the long awaited acceleration in labor compensation will finally materialize.
I fear this trust that market forces will eventually raise wages will lead to disappointment. ...
I have a new column:
How Fiscal Policy Failed During the Great Recession: Fiscal policy failed us during the Great Recession. We did get a fiscal stimulus package shortly after Obama took office, and it helped. But it wasn’t big enough and did not last long enough to make the kind of difference that was needed. Fear of deficits stood in the way, though all the dire predictions that were made about the debt associated with the stimulus package did not come to pass. We could have done so much more. ...
New column:
Marking Beliefs to Market: What I Got Wrong about the Great Recession: It’s the time of year when analysts and pundits begin “marking their beliefs to market” – telling us what they got right or wrong in the previous year. In that spirit, here are some of the things I got wrong about the Great Recession...
With everyone talking about what they got right about the Great Recession, thought I'd do the opposite. [Also, the title of the column is from an editor -- it doesn't fit very well...]
I have a new column:
What’s Next for the Fed?: Last week, the Federal Reserve announced an end to its quantitative easing program. This brings up the obvious question, what is next for the Fed? Before getting to that, here are a few notes on quantitative easing and what the Fed’s announcement means for the economy. ...
I have a new column:
What’s the Best Way to Overcome Rising Economic Inequality?: A debate over the use of progressive taxation and redistribution as a means of solving the problem of rising inequality erupted in the last week or so. The debate began with three publications, one from Edward Kleinbard, one from Nezih Guner, Martin Lopez-Daneri, and Gustavo Ventura, and one from Cathie Jo Martin and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez. They argue in turn that “progressive fiscal outcomes do not require particularly progressive tax systems,” “making taxes more progressive taxes won’t raise much revenue,” and “The way a tax system fights inequality isn't just redistribution. It's by generating enough revenue to fund programs and benefits that help middle class, working class, and poor people participate and succeed in the economy. While talk of taxing top earners may make for good political rhetoric on the left, relying on such taxes cannot pay the bills.” This brought responses from Jared Bernstein, Matt Bruenig, and Mike Konczal the three of whom, as Steve Waldman says in a nice summary of this debate, “offer responses that examine what ‘progressivity’ really means and offer support for taxing the rich more heavily than the poor.”
This debate brings up an important question: what is the best way to fight economic inequality? ...[continue]...
I have a new column:
Rethinking New Economic Thinking: Efforts such as Rethinking Economics and The Institute for New Economic Thinking are noteworthy attempts to, as INET says, “broaden and accelerate the development of new economic thinking that can lead to solutions for the great challenges of the 21st century. The havoc wrought by our recent global financial crisis has vividly demonstrated the deficiencies in our outdated current economic theories, and shown the need for new economic thinking – right now.
It is certainly true that mainstream, modern macroeconomic models failed us prior to and during the Great Recession. The models failed to give any warning at all about the crisis that was about to hit – if anything those using modern macro models resisted the idea that a bubble was inflating in housing markets – and the models failed to give us the guidance we needed to implement effective monetary and fiscal policy responses to our economic problems.
But amid the calls for change in macroeconomics there is far too much attention on the tools and techniques that macroeconomists use to answer questions, and far too little attention on what really matters... ...[continue reading]...
I have a new column:
Why Do Macroeconomists Disagree?, by Mark Thoma, The Fiscal Times: On August 9, 2007, the French Bank BNP Paribus halted redemptions to three investment funds active in US mortgage markets due to severe liquidity problems, an event that many mark as the beginning of the financial crisis. Now, just over seven years later, economists still can’t agree on what caused the crisis, why it was so severe, and why the recovery has been so slow. We can’t even agree on the extent to which modern macroeconomic models failed, or if they failed at all.
The lack of a consensus within the profession on the economics of the Great Recession, one of the most significant economic events in recent memory, provides a window into the state of macroeconomics as a science. ...
New column:
Are Calls for Income Redistribution Based on Envy or Justice?: The redistribution of income and wealth has come to the forefront of discussions about economics and capitalist systems thanks to Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Is rising inequality an inevitable feature of capitalist systems, or is it the result of the particular institutions that shape how capitalism expresses itself? What, if anything, should be done to reverse the trend toward rising inequality?
The answer depends upon whether the calls for redistribution are based upon envy as the political right often asserts, or the desire for the justice...
I have a new column:
The Latest Inflation Worry Is, As Usual, Overblown, by Mark Thoma: Worries about inflation have been pervasive ever since the Fed began trying to lift the economy out of recession. If the Fed does not tighten policy very soon we have been told repeatedly, an outbreak of inflation is inevitable. But so far, those worries have been unfounded.
The latest round of worries is tied to the belief that labor markets are tighter than it appears from standard statistics such as the unemployment rate. ...
New column:
Why Economists Can’t Always Trust Data, by Mark Thoma, The Fiscal Times: To make progress in economics, it is essential that theoretical models be subjected to empirical tests that determine how well they can explain actual data. The tests that are used must be able to draw a sharp distinction between competing theoretical models, and one of the most important factors is the quality of the data used in the tests. Unfortunately, the quality of the data that economists employ is less than ideal, and this gets in the way of the ability of economists to improve the models they use. There are several reasons for the poor quality of economic data...
New column:
Why the Fed Should Not Raise Interest Rates, by Mark Thoma: The Fed’s target interest rate has been at the zero lower bound since December of 2008, and Fed watchers are trying to predict when the Fed will begin reversing this policy. The consensus appears to be that the Fed will begin raising the target rate at the beginning of next year, but many economists believe the policy reversal should have already started. There are four main justifications for the call to raise interest rates sooner rather than later, all of which are misguided...
New column:
Who’s to Blame for the Power Shift at the Fed?, by Mark Thoma, The Fiscal Times: Federal Reserve Board governor Jeremy Stein announced that he is stepping down at the end of May. That could leave the Board of Governors severely short-handed. Presently, three of the seven positions on the Board are open. There are nominations for two of the open positions, and the nominees, Stanley Fischer and Lael Brainard, await Senate confirmation. However, President Obama has not yet nominated anyone to fill the third open seat, and if Senate confirmation for Fischer and Brainard does not occur before June, then only three of the seven Board positions will be filled.
That will alter the balance of power on the committee responsible for setting monetary policy, the all-important Federal Open Market Committee. ...
One problem in filling the open positions on the Federal Reserve Board is that nominations have been blocked in the Senate, and Republicans have been particularly obstructionist. What is the reason for this?
In addition to the desire to block whatever this president tries to do as a way of obtaining political advantage, there are two factors that have helped to motivate the obstructionist tendencies. ...
We are, as they say, live:
Keynesian Economics in Abnormally Slow Recoveries, by Mark Thoma: In theory, Keynesian stabilization policy should “shave the peaks and fill the valleys.” That is, when the economy falls into a recession the government should use deficit spending to lift the economy back towards the full employment level. It should then pay for the policy – increase revenues or reduce spending – during boom periods when the economy is overheated and needs to be slowed down. But what if, like now, there is no boom following the bust? How should we pay for the programs that were put into place during the recession in that case? ...
I have a new column on inequality:
Sharing the Gains from Economic Growth, by Mark Thoma: President Obama will make reducing inequality a major part of his State of the Union Address according to several reports. But to avoid being accused of waging class warfare, he will talk about creating “ladders of opportunity” instead of focusing directly on the inequality problem.
This shift in emphasis is a mistake because it misses a key part of the inequality problem. ...
The mechanism that distributes goods and services is broken.
New column:
Why is the Recovery so Agonizingly Slow?, by Mark Thoma: Friday’s employment report underscored just how slow the recovery from the Great Recession has been. When the recession officially ended in June of 2009 the unemployment rate stood at 9.5 percent, and it peaked at 10 percent a few months later. In the four and a half years that have passed since, the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.7 percent. That is still quite a bit above the full employment level, and the fall in unemployment over that time period has been driven in large part by people leaving the labor force rather than the creation of new jobs. When these discouraged workers are taken into account, the labor market is in poor shape even after more than four years of “recovery”.
Why has the recovery been so slow? ...
I have a new column:
How to Tell if Fiscal Policy Works: There is a raging debate in the econo-blogosphere concerning the effectiveness of fiscal policy when the economy is in a deep recession. This question is important because monetary policy loses much of its effectiveness in severe downturns. ...
It's about how to determine if fiscal policy is effective, and the importance of establishing defensible baselines.
I have a new column:
How Yellen Will Shape the Fed’s QE Exit Strategy: After Janet Yellen’s excellent performance before the Senate Banking Committee last Thursday, she will almost surely be confirmed as the next Fed chair.Once she’s confirmed, there are several important issues the Fed must address under her leadership such as improving the Fed’s communications with the public, ensuring that the financial sector is properly regulated, taking a stance on whether the Fed should pop bubbles, deciding whether to continue forward guidance in its present form, and so on. But the most important and most immediate problem Yellen will face during her term as chair is guiding the Fed to a smooth exit from its non-conventional policies. ...[continue]...
New column:
Do People Have Rational Expectations?, by Mark Thoma
Not always, and economic models need to take this into account.
Contractionary policy is contractionary:
Paper by EU Economist Backs Austerity’s Critics, by Matina Stevis, WSJ: Coordinated austerity in euro-area countries has stifled economic recovery and deepened the crisis across the currency bloc, according to a new technical paper prepared by an economist at the European Commission.
Spending cuts in Germany in particular have made things worse for the weaker members of the euro area through “spillovers” – the economic impact on economies connected to Germany’s– the paper says, adding that limited stimulus programs in richer countries could help the whole of the currency bloc.
The paper, which doesn’t necessarily represent the views of the powers-that-be at the Commission, presents some inconvenient conclusions for European authorities from one of their own economists. The European Union and national governments have come under fire from outside economists for pursuing austerity across the euro zone. These critics have argued that Germany in particular should be running bigger deficits to help drag the bloc’s weaker members out of their slumps.
The commission paper backs the critics. ...
I have a new column on how the internet is changing the practice of economics:
How the Internet is Changing What Economists Do
Or at least it should be.
New column:
Inexcusable Republican Tactics Endanger the Economy
A better title might have been "Makers, Takers, and the Real Immoral Behavior," or perhaps "Why are Republicans Putting Working Class Households at Risk?"
I have a new column:
Real and Bogus Reasons for the Slow Recovery from the Recession
The recovery didn't have to be so slow.
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March 6, 2005
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