Tag Archives: growth

Still waiting.

bored pugProgress is to the UK economy as words have been to my blog. Lacking. News on economic fundamentals, and the associated policy discourse, have consistently underwhelmed. Government concern remains fixed on the same, narrow goal of fiscal consolidation, with inadequate regard of how this consolidation is achieved. 2012 bears evidence to the claim that this concern is misdirected and that the derivative economic strategy is self-defeating. December has born witness to yet another downgrade in UK growth prospects and the rise of measured government debt has only been slowed by the inclusion of projected departmental underspends and the proceeds from the 4G license sales to projections. This post is a summary piece on the the state of the UK recovery and outlines the economics behind why the policies pursued to date have been unhelpful (at best).

The economy, …. 

The underlying picture remains much as it has been for the past two years: one of persistent weakness. Fifty shades of grey minus anything remotely stimulating if you will. The economy performed less strongly in 2012 than anticipated. The OBR cut its growth forecast to predict a 0.1% fall in output this year, followed by growth of 1.2% in 2013. Output is thus at roughly the same level as 2 years ago, 4% below that in 2008. This recession by now far exceeds the “Great Depression” in length. The graph below from the NIESR illustrates the point nicely.

Screen Shot 2012-12-17 at 18.27.43

It is unclear whether below par growth this year derives from “cyclical” (temporary) or “structural” (permanent) weaknesses. Cyclical weakness sits on the “demand side” of the economy– people and businesses just aren’t buying enough stuff–, whilst structural weakness is more pernicious and difficult to tackle, the result of a “supply side” contraction — we can’t make as much stuff. The two are related as cyclical weaknesses can be locked into structural ones via a process called “hysteresis” — see this post for more. There is disagreement as to how much of our current troubles to attribute to one or the other but, regardless, the OBR now forecasts systematically weaker economic growth for the coming years than it previously predicted in March.

Screen Shot 2012-12-18 at 11.00.08

Difficulties (understatement) in the Eurozone have continued to depress net exports and confidence. However, our lacklustre performance is by no means implied by the economic woes that plague Europe and other Western countries. Growth in the US and Germany has consistently dominated that achieved on these shores, and the UK pales in comparison to a host of countries in any ranking of capital investment.

And what of the lauded deficit reduction strategy? Despite (because of?) Plan A(usterity), good news isn’t forthcoming in this domain either. The size of the of the public finance hole is of a similar magnitude to that of 2011. However, even this underwhelming achievement is sullied by the knowledge that without the inclusion of funds from the one-off 4G licensing auction and the predicted “underspends” by certain government departments, the funding shortfall facing the government would have grown this year.

… stupid. 

In his Autumn statement, Osborne upped the dosage of existing prescriptions to cure the UK economy and added a few new measures to the mix. However, don’t expect a return to health soon. Policy remains inadequate and misdirected. There continues to be insufficient concern about the ends that sustainable public finances are supposed to advance. This has contributed to a lack of attention surrounding the composition of the policy mix conjured up on order to coax fiscal sustainability back to UK shores.

Just to remind ourselves, what is a budget deficit? When people talk about the deficit they are referring to the gap between what’s coming into the government coffers through taxes/other revenue sources (call this amount “T”) and what’s being spent (amount “G”).

Budget deficit = G – T

We care about the size of the budget deficit because of the impact that unsustainable public finances have on the economic prosperity of a country and the wellbeing of its citizens. It is not of value in and of itself to pursue low government borrowing (see this post for more on the cost of a deficit). Therefore, the obsession with fiscal consolidation is misguided and has resulted in a misdirected, overly narrow economic strategy. The size of the budget deficit is not the most salient economic ill plaguing the UK at present. If financial markets were overly concerned with the sustainability of the UK fiscal position, we would see interest rates rising with market risk. We have not witnessed this, the opposite in fact, suggesting that indebtedness is not the primary concern in financial markets (see this piece by Adam Posen, former MPC member, for more evidence on why reducing the debt should not be the top priority right now).

A blinding focus simply on the extent of the debt reduction required, without much regard to the how’s and why’s, has promoted a self-defeating economic strategy. The experience of the last 12 months is testament to this. Given that what we actually care about is general prosperity and wellbeing, we should aim for a deficit reduction strategy that protects these ends as far as possible. This demands a detailed analysis of the composition of spending and taxation changes, rather than just a pure focus on levels. This is because the austerity-growth dichotomy often presented in the media and by politicians is a false one. By reallocating government resources to activities with a high “fiscal multiplier” (to be explained!), growth can be supported whilst the budget deficit is reduced.

The Fiscal Multiplier

What does it mean to reallocate spending to activities with a “high multiplier”? The fiscal multiplier gives the impact that changes in government spending have on overall demand in the economy. With a multiplier of 1, an extra pound of government spending raises total demand in the economy just by a pound. However, we generally expect the size of the multiplier to be greater than 1. Imagine government spending is increased by £1. This additional £1 then represents income for someone that can be spent. Let households spend a fraction c of their income. c is defined as the “marginal propensity to consume”. This extra c of spending then represents income for someone else…..who spends c of it….and so on. Thus, one can think of the total increase in demand leading from the £1 of government spending as

1 + c + c+ c3 + …

Therefore, there can be a more than proportionate increase in demand for an increase in government spending.

The actual size of fiscal multipliers is difficult to measure but a moment’s thought suggests they will vary across government activities. The introduction above was clearly overly simplified; there is not one fiscal multiplier but a set of them associated with different government programmes. Resources should be shifted to high multiplier activities and the burden of cuts should be disproportionately concentrated on those with low propensities to consume. To illustrate, imagine a balanced budget policy, that simply takes income from one group in society and transfers it to another. Although fiscally neutral, the policy will boost growth if spending rises by more among the recipients than it falls among the funders. This will be the case if the marginal propensity to consume is higher among the recipients. This helps to highlight that through redesigning the austerity strategy to shift resources to high multiplier groups and activities, growth can be stimulated, and output protected, without a need to increase the debt burden.

The Autumn statement flirted with this principle by earmarking funds for capital spending and investment. These are potentially “high multiplier” activities given the employment and productive projects they facilitate. However, the scale of proposed new capital spending is insufficient. £5bn over the next two years. An amount that, at best, is expected to add 0.1% to GDP. Not exactly pushing the boat out… Secondly, and more importantly, the funding source for the proposed investments has the potential to undermine their (already small) impact. Cuts to welfare and tax credits will be used to fund these measures. However, such cuts will have a significant negative impact on demand in the economy given that they fall on those at the lower end of the income distribution. Such households tend to have a high marginal propensity to consume and little way of smoothing their spending. Therefore, the policy is largely funded by those who’s incomes the government should really be trying to protect if it is to be true to a multiplier guided philosophy. (Note that this is before any equity based arguments are even considered.)

A new voice

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language

And next year’s words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

— T. S. Eliot

In the next few weeks, I will write a number of more targeted posts on specific policy proposals and Eurozone developments. However, hopefully this post will have equipped you with some background knowledge on the economy and convinced you that a significant shift in economic strategy and dialogue is required in the UK. The singular focus on austerity has been self-defeating and has contributed to the prolonging the country’s economic woes. We’re long overdue a change in vision and vocabulary. The Autumn statement highlighted some appreciation of the arguments laid out here. In 2013, the government must go further to nurse the economy back to health.

Austerity v Growth: A False Dichotomy

Politicians’ commentary on the state of the UK economy remains frustratingly tendentious and unsophisticated. The rhetoric of both the “austerity”  and “growth” camps is overly simplified and needlessly polarized. Action is needed to stimulate growth. However, this fact doesn’t necessitate adding to the debt burden. The economics of the fiscal multiplier implies greater concern should be given to the composition of spending cuts and tax rises. By designing our austerity strategy to reallocate resources to “high multiplier” activities, growth can be initiated during fiscal consolidation. Elucidating this common ground between the camps is required to move the debate forward and set the stage for the development of a credible and equitable austerity strategy.

Recession? Depression?

More than two years since the UK entered recession, the much anticipated recovery is yet to make its appearance. This week the ONS confirmed that the economy contracted by 0.2% in the last quarter of 2011, a consequence of chronically weak business investment and manufacturing. GDP remains almost 4% below pre-crisis peak. Comparing the current recovery to those following past recessions is chilling. The graph below, taken from Jonathan Portes’ blog, shows that output has already been depressed for longer than that experienced during the Great Depression, and looks set to remain so for the foreseeable future.

The current malaise is the product of weak demand, causing the economy to operate approximately 3% below its potential, and of reduced potential supply. Households and the government are set on consolidating their balance sheets and the Eurozone crisis has effectively foreclosed an export led recovery. There is thus little incentive for investment. The latest negative growth figures therefore come as no surprise.

Ongoing weak demand and reductions in supply capacity are linked, a phenomenon economists call “hysteresis”. If demand for a firm’s output is depressed for a prolonged period, machinery is scrapped and planned investments go unimplemented. Workplace skills and the likelihood of returning to work altogether decline in the length of an unemployment spell, reducing the stock of “human capital” in the economy. Not only has unemployment continued to rise in the UK, but it is increasingly long term and concentrated among the young. Youth unemployment has especially pernicious consequences, affecting the individual and economy for far longer than the spell of joblessness itself. Those experiencing spells of unemployment while young face significant wage penalties and a higher risk of future joblessness compared to their peers for decades, even after controlling for a wide array of individual and family characteristics (see, for example, Gregg and Tominey (2005) and Mroz and Savage (2006)). Thus, the fact that 18% of 16-24year olds are ‘NEETs’ (Not in Employment, Education or Training) should be sending alarm bells ringing through Whitehall. Their current idleness is not just an awful waste of their talents at this particular moment but makes it more likely for them to become trapped in dead-end areas of the labour market for much of their adult life. This is unfair, they did not choose to be born at a time dictating they join the workforce during the worst post-war recession, as well as being highly damaging to the wider economy.

Poor growth prospects ultimately make it harder to finance those dreaded debts. Low economic activity implies lower tax revenues, acting to undermine the UK’s fiscal credibility. In November, the OBR announced that £15bn of tightening is required in addition to what was initially anticipated to meet the deficit reduction targets. Moody’s, the rating agency, put the UK’s AAA credit rating on negative outlook, citing weak growth prospects and Eurozone exposure as justification.

Austerity v. Growth: A False Dichotomy

It seems like an impossible situation. Low growth undermines our fiscal credibility but, so we are told, raising government spending is off the cards as it will add to the national debt, spooking the markets, creating financial turmoil. With both austerity and growth strategies, it seems to be a case of damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

However, all is not lost. First, the downside risks of slowing the pace of fiscal consolidation are overblown and small relative to the costs of continued deficient demand but, leaving this to one side, the situation is not as hopeless as presented. We are not, in fact, faced with the choice of austerity or growth. This dichotomy is false and damaging. Rather than seeing this as a one-or-the-other problem, we should focus on the design of austerity strategy and how fiscal consolidation can be achieved with the lowest impact on growth and demand. It isn’t just a case of “tighten or not” but also “how to tighten”. By reallocating government resources to activities with a high fiscal multiplier, growth can be supported while the budget deficit is reduced. Enacting this principle also implies equitable policy reforms, dictating a transfer of resources from the richest to the poorest in society.

The Fiscal Multiplier

The fiscal multiplier gives the impact that changes in government spending have on overall demand in the economy. With a multiplier of 1, an extra pound of government spending raises total demand in the economy just by a pound. However, we generally expect the size of the multiplier to be greater than 1. Imagine government spending is increased by 1. This additional £1 then represents income which is spent. Let households spend a fraction c of their income. c is defined as the “marginal propensity to consume”. This extra c of spending then represents income for someone else…..who spends c of it….and so on. Thus, one can think of the total increase in demand leading from the £1 of government spending as

1 + c + c2 + c3 + …

Therefore, there can be a more than proportionate increase in demand with increase in government spending.

The actual size of fiscal multipliers is difficult to measure but a moment’s thought suggests they will vary across government activities. Resources should be shifted to high multiplier activities and the burden of cuts should be disproportionately concentrated on those with low propensities to consume. Imagine a balanced budget policy, taking income from one group and transferring it to another. Although fiscally neutral, the policy will boost growth if spending rises by more among the recipients than it falls among the funders. This will be the case if the marginal propensity to consume is higher among the recipients. By redesigning our austerity strategy to shift resources to high multiplier groups and activities, growth can be stimulated without a need to increase the debt burden.

What could this look like?

The analysis above suggests that cuts should be targeted at those with a low marginal propensity to consume, while those with higher MPCs should be protected. We shall also see that enacting this thinking implies equitable policy changes, dictating transfers of wealth to low income groups in society.

Exploiting variation in fiscal multipliers lies behind the Social Market Foundation’s suggestion of cutting high rate income tax relief on pension savings and capping ISA contributions. Such a policy would extract more tax revenue from those in a relatively secure financial position, who are better able to smooth the impact of cuts and tax rises, thereby minimising the impact of consolidation on overall demand. The SMF calculates that halving higher rate tax relief on pension contributions would save £6.7bn annually, while an ISA cap of £15,000 would generate an additional £1bn each year. Tightening should also be done through greater targeting of benefits rather than a reduction in their general level. Families at the bottom of the income distribution, without a savings safety net, are likely to have much higher marginal propensities to consume. Their income levels should thus be protected as far as possible on efficiency, as well as equity, grounds. Therefore, greater means testing of benefits should be enacted. Making child benefit and subsidies such as winter fuel payments and bus passes only available to the most disadvantaged in society will save huge sums but protect those who need it most.

Funds from savings created by efficient, equitable redesigns of the welfare system should be used to instigate a public works programme to facilitate a transition to a new industrial economy and restore the productive capacity of the economy. There are plenty of private sector projects in the pipeline that could be quickly undertaken given government funding. For example, as mentioned by Gerald Holtham, there is a private consortium willing to build the Severn barrage, a multi-billion pound scheme to supply 5 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs, given some guarantee on electricity prices. Investment spending could be rapidly deployed on schemes such as toll roads, that produce a revenue stream, and to support the UK’s broken housing market. We face a chronic shortage of housing in this country. The number of people waiting for social housing rose by 4.5% in 2010/2011, with 1.84million on the list in April 2011. Supporting investment in the housing stock would have huge social value and give a boost to the construction industry.

Further, funds could provide an initial capital injection to a small business bank or increase the scale of the coalition’s green investment bank. A new small business bank could make use of existing agencies to allocate and dispense the loans, offering them to small businesses at low rates, potentially concentrating funds in areas of especially afflicted by unemployment. The focus on small businesses should prove especially affective at job creation given research funded by the Kauffman Foundation showing that all net new private-sector jobs in America were created by companies less than five years old.

A middle ground exists

We need to move beyond the unnecessarily polarised austerity-growth debate. Casting these aims as mutually exclusive is misleading and unhelpful, contributing to policy inertia and unnecessarily limiting debate on how we achieve fiscal consolidation. Action must be taken to improve the UK’s growth prospects. The fact that we simultaneously want to get the public finances under control does not imply nothing can be done. The government’s hands are not fully tied, it must use them.