TVHE

There has been an interesting discussion comparing the recession in three open economies, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.  It started with the Canadians, but a couple of New Zealanders then became involved.

The facts are that:

1. Headline inflation in all three countries is currently close to target (implying that we all made our inflation targets),
2. New Zealand experienced the largest declines in GDP – Australia the lowest,
3. The relative price of NZ housing declined, it was stable in Canada, it rose in Australia (all three countries were seen as “over-valued”)
4. Canada hit the “zero bound” on monetary policy, and it didn’t seem to matter.  New Zealand had room to move, but we stopped and got beaten around the head.

This list of facts suggests one of two things to me:

1. Demand management in NZ was poorer then in other countries
2. NZ faced a larger supply shock.

Now, I’m willing to rule out the first one – as we did keep inflation near the target band, and to be honest inflation expectations have held up a little too well …

So this implies that NZ had a larger supply shock.  Here are some reasons I think was the case:

1. New Zealand’s recession started with a drought, and the required restocking of agricultural breeding stock following the drought.  This was a pain.
2. New Zealand’s national net debt position is worse than the other two countries (Note:  In NZ when I say national debt I mean private debt + public debt).  With a lot of our debt on a relatively short maturity this was problematic for a few quarters there.
3. On that note NZ’s financial sector was more strongly hit than the other regions.  It started back in 2005/06 with the “finance company collapse” and got heavy just before our drought induced, striking in late-2007 (here and here).
4. Terms of trade:  New Zealand’s terms of trade fell to its lowest level since 2004, Australia’s fell to its 2007 levels.  I do not know about Canada – however, the decline in our terms of trade can be seen as a massive supply side shock.
5. Trade exposure:  Here I am conjecturing, as I am tight for time, but it is possible that NZ could be more trade exposed then the other countries.  If NZ is, it would only be a minor matter anyway I suspect.

Now while these factors explain why NZ declined more sharply than other countries, I don’t think they explain why we are still lagging behind.  Our TOT is recovering fast – it will be back at its peaks mid year.  The drought is over and restocking has been completed.  And our debt position is less of a hazard than it was 12 months ago.  Interesting.

If NZ doesn’t recover to trend (which is very much the consensus forecast out here), it is because New Zealand faced a permanent supply side shock BEFORE the global crisis – we were struggling before things hit the fan overseas, with only a strong lift in the TOT saying us.  When that flooded out at the closing stages of 2008 New Zealand dropped like a stone.

So for Australians and Canadians looking for a point of comparison with New Zealand, just remember that NZ faced a few other issues

In a recent post Paul Krugman raises the “paradox of toil” to explain why tax cuts are silly and government spending is good during a recession:

So what’s the paradox of toil? If you cut taxes on labor income, this expands labor supply — which puts downward pressure on wages and leads to expectations of deflation, which increases the real interest rate, which leads to lower output and employment.

However, this is completely misleading.  Cutting a tax doesn’t really “shift the supply curve” (which is what expanding the labour supply means) in this way.  Lets have a little think about wages and what cutting the tax probably does.

Read more…

In a recent post by Arnold Kling I see him hinting at the similarities between his recalculation view of the current recession and the corridor theory of Axel Leijonhufvud.  Now I agree with both these theories, and feel they add an important flavour to current debate – but I think the theories actually tell us about very separate elements of any large scale recession.

In order to get my head around my feelings I’ll have a brief talk about shocks, and the kind of shocks I think are being represented by the different theories.  Feel free to tell me where I am blatantly wrong.

Now, for the non-economist readers I guess this post is a little wonkish in nature – although there will be no maths sitting around this time.

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Bernard Hickey posted on the 10 reasons why Fitch should downgrade New Zealand’s credit rating, it is an interesting post that you should run off and read before looking at this

Now that you have read that I am, for the sake of argument, going to counter each of these points. I cannot provide a “slamdunk” against anything, but I can raise the other side of the argument so that we can really think about the issues that little bit more.

Note that in many ways I agree with Bernard Hickey about our current situation being slightly precarious. However, I feel that going through these factors on the other side is a useful exercise for understand exactly what we need to look at.

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I was raised as a microeconomist so I guess I have a bias, but all this discussion about our poor debt position being the fault of households makes me nervous.

It is easy to blame households, hell the RBNZ did that just today. As they point out, household savings is extremely low, and real consumption (the volume of consumption in 1995/96 prices) as a share of GDP has risen sharply in recent years. On Sunday Rod Oram did the same – blaming our debt position on households spending far too much.

However, I find that when economists start to agree we are usually wrong. Given that this argument doesn’t feel right to me in the first place I am being forced to disagree.

I have two “pieces of evidence” to suggest that households aren’t at fault here, and instead it is weird investment incentives and poor government policy that is likely to be at fault. These are:

1. My good friend Ricardian equivalence,
2. Nominal GDP shares.

This discussion is a slight expansion on my recent Dom Post article (secondary link), and I am hoping everyone here will be willing to attack me as much as possible

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Scott Fullwiler from New Economic Perspectives (ht Economists View) describes some issues he has with the “negative interest rate” idea being put forward by Willem Buiter , Greg Mankiw , and Scott Sumner

Now I have previously put my foot forward and said I agree with this idea (here and here) and I still feel the same, let me describe why with reference to Dr Fullwiler’s post.

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(Source GWS)

Remember, even during the Great Depression there were people that were better off than they would have been.  There are always winners and losers.

When prices are falling, and when relative prices change, there are people who benefit from that – as well as people that lose out.  During such an event we normally only hear one side of the story …

These are real investment bankers (who I may or may not know…). Laughed my ass off when this arrived in my inbox this morning.

The Herald are reporting that Tony Veitch has (once again) attempted to take his life. The story is very sad but did get me thinking about whether suicide is ever a rational response.

There is some literature (here, here and here) on this very topic. The most interesting thing for me was that an attempt at suicide can be rational so long as the attempt is not successful. A failed attempt tends to significantly increase income (by 20.3% on average, relative to those who consider suicide but do not make an attempt) as more resources, such as healthcare and affection, are made available to the person who made the attempt. The more serious the attempt, the greater is the impact on income (36.3% on average for so-called ‘hard-suicide’ attempts).

This economic approach to suicide runs counter to the traditional view that suicide occurs at a fragile point in time when someone is acting irrationally.

In the instance of Tony Veitch, it is difficult to see how a positive income effect would be gained from his numerous attempts at suicide, given his broadcasting career has been ruined by the case. However, this might be underplaying the positive, non-financial, effect that a ‘cry for help’ can have on an individual. On the other hand, Tony Veitch could simply be acting irrationally.

Whether Tony Veitch is acting rationally or irrationally, one thing is certain – the case is extremely tragic.

Ed Glaeser makes an important point about the current recession over at Economix:

it is important to recognize that in this recession, just as in every other recorded downturn, unemployment is overwhelmingly concentrated among those who started with less.
…
The overall unemployment rate for the more educated is only 4.3 percent. Individuals with a high school degree, but no college, have a 10 percent unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted). The unemployment rate for high school dropouts is 15.5 percent. Moreover, the unemployment rate gap between the most- and least-skilled is widening, not narrowing.

It’s easy for professionals to complain about the problems facing the finance system and the lack of work for finance professionals. Let’s not forget that they are actually very well off compared to the average person in this recession, as in others. Governments may be bailing out financial firms but, if we want to help the most people, we should think about how best to aid the less fortunate among us who are suffering far more.