The US labor market is not working.

In a recent post Paul Krugman looks at the dismal performance of US labor markets over the last decade. To make his point, he compares the employment to population ratio for all individuals aged 25-54 for the US and France. The punch line: even the French work harder than the Americans! And this is indeed a new phenomenon, it was not like that 13 years ago [Just to be clear, there are other dimensions where the French are not working as hard: they retire earlier, they take longer vacations,... but the behavior of the 25-54 year old population is indeed a strong indicator of how a society engages its citizens in the labor market. ]

So are the French the exception? Not quite. Among OECD economies, the US stands towards the bottom of the table when it comes to employment to population ratio for this cohort (#24 out of 34 countries).

What is interesting is that most of the countries of the top of the list are countries with a large welfare state and very high taxes (including on labor). So the negative correlation between the welfare state and taxes and the ability to motivate people to work (and create jobs) that some bring back all the time does not seem to be present in the data.

What is interesting is that the US looked much better 13 years ago (see numbers for 2000 below, the US was 10 out of 34).

The US has gone through a major crisis after 2008 with devastating effects on the labor market but so have other countries. In fact, most European countries have done much worse than the US in terms of GDP growth during the last 6 years. In fact, with the exception of Portugal, Greece and Ireland, the US is the country with the worst labor market record for this age group if we compare the 2012 to the 2000 figures.

Antonio Fatás

Groundhog day (ECB).

For the last months the press conferences of Mario Draghi at the ECB have felt very repetitive. The argument has always been the same: inflation is below target and this might be a risk. But there is uncertainty and there are other risks so let's wait for more data. But when more data arrives, confirming that inflation is below the target, there is no action being triggered and we simply start a new period of waiting for yet more data. Here is my quick search for this pattern in the speeches and Q&A from the last eight months press conferences.

October 2013:

... and are ready to consider all available instruments.

November 2013

... but there are a whole range of instruments that we can activate, if needed.

December 2013

... and are ready to consider all available instruments.

January 2014

... and to take further decisive action if required.

February 2014

... and to take further decisive action if required.

March 2014

... and to take further decisive action if required.

April 2014

... and act swiftly if required.

May 2014

... and act swiftly, if required.

So it was back in October when the ECB moved from the (forward guidance) statement of interest rates remaining low for a long period of time to explicitly mentioning the possibility of further actions where all available instruments would be considered. Since then, only the words have changed: notice that in the last two months they are willing to act swiftly while before they were willing to take further decisive actions (in both cases only if required).

It is hard to know how much the wait-and-see attitude of the ECB is a sign of a compromise to acknowledge the threat of low inflation even if there is no consensus on how to deal with it or a truly cautious approach to dealing with challenging economic times. In either case, the actions and even language of the ECB stand in sharp contrast with those of the US Fed.

Antonio Fatás

The UK makes the Euro area look good.

A quick chart-of-the-day post motivated by some articles I was reading today about differences in country performances during the global financial crisis. Which economic policies worked best? How bad (or good) membership in the Euro area was to fight back the crisis? These are important questions to understand the effectiveness of different economic policies (monetary, fiscal, exchange rate).

When comparing performance across countries it is quite common to use a variety of indicators: GDP growth, unemployment, productivity,... They all tend to move together but they can sometimes provide a quite different view of the economic performance during a number of years. I decided to look at GDP growth but adjusting is by changes in demographics: GDP divided by working-age population (between 15 and 64 years old, as it is measured by the OECD). What I do is to compare the 2013 number with the 2007 number (which I use as the beginning of the crisis). [Click on the chart for a larger image]

What I find interesting (and surprising) is the similarities across countries, despite the differences in policies. With the exception of Greece (and possibly Italy) all the other countries are very close to each other. The three countries that originally opted out of the Euro do not look too different from the Euro countries. Yes, Sweden has done great but so has Germany. The UK has grown less than the Euro area (of 18 countries), less than France or the Netherlands and at a rate which is very similar to that of Spain. Same for Denmark. Among the small countries that are still outside of the Euro area some have done quite well, others not so well and, surprisingly, some of these countries manage to do well with a currency pegged to the Euro (Bulgaria and Latvia).

[Note on data: let me stress that I am using GDP divided by working-age population and this makes a difference for some economies. For example, Latvia's GDP in 2013 is still lower than in 2007 but its working-age population has been declining sharply over these years. Dividing by working-age population allows us to remove potential demographic changes during these years.]

So despite the stubbornness of the ECB and the constraints of a common currency, economic performance in the Euro area has not been too different from those of the other European countries that are outside. This might not really be good news. It might simply be the case that the anti-inflation obsession of the Swedish central bank and the fiscal policy austerity of the UK government have helped to make the Euro-area performance look not too bad.

Antonio Fatás

When all asset prices are too damn high.

Increases in stock prices over the last years combined with bond prices that remain high (yields are low) have raised the possibility of mispricing in assets, potential bubbles and future crashes. Are all assets too expensive? Some think so and refer to the current situation as a "gigantic financial asset bubble" where all assets (bonds, stocks, commodities,...) are priced too high. Others see trouble just in stock markets where valuations seem to be growing much faster than the real economy. But there are also those who think the stock market still offers a good return.

Here are two perspectives that can hopefully help understand such diverging views on asset prices:

1. How can it be that all asset prices are overvalued? When all asset prices look too high, we are making a statement about the disappointing returns these assets offer. The key question is whether we are really taking about mispricing or simply about surprisingly low (equilibrium) returns that saving is offered these days? Martin Wolf in today's FT offers many arguments on why low interest rates are here to stay because in a world of abundant saving, returns will be low and asset prices will be very high (I have written about this before). So maybe all asset prices are not too high, it is just that returns are not as high as they used to be.

2. How do you define a bubble? Before answering the question, it is good to get a perspective on the data. Neil Irwin at the New York Times has a great summary of the US stock market in six charts. What do we learn? Stock prices compared to the current level or earnings are high by historical standards. In other words, if you buy the stock market today, you should expect returns that are lower than typical returns. Is this a bubble? Maybe not if those low returns are consistent with the low returns that are offered anywhere else in the economy (back to the argument that "all asset prices are high"). If you do that comparison (see Irwin's article) and calculate the difference between returns one would expect from current stock prices and the returns that bonds offer, the difference is still positive and consistent with historical values (this is the same point that Brad DeLong makes). So stock prices look high but so do every other asset price. Once again, get used to low returns in a world where everyone wants to save.

So does it mean that everything is fine? No, it all depends on what are the expectations of current investors. A bubble in the stock market is not about how high stock prices are or about how low expected returns are. A bubble is about expected returns that are inconsistent with the current stock prices and their relationship to the fundamentals of the economy. If investors are buying stocks today having as a reference the returns that we have witnessed in the last years, then we are in a bubble. But if investors are buying stocks today as an investment that offers a low but consistent return with any other form of saving, then we are fine. From Irwin's article at the New York Times:

"Add it all up, and and it leads you to a conclusion.. Stocks may not be wildly overvalued relative to fundamentals. But for them to rise much from here, a lot of things will have to go just right for investors."

Correct. Stock are not a bargain like they were two years ago (when risk aversion was very high). Their prices are back to levels that are consistent with fundamentals and those fundamentals can deliver returns that are reasonable given other investment opportunities. But if all your fellow investors are hoping for yet another great year in the stock market, then run, because there is no way fundamentals can justify another couple of years of very high returns.

Antonio Fatás

Refocusing economics education.

Via Mark Thoma I read an interesting article about how the mainstream economics curriculum needs to be revamped (Wren-Lewis also has some nice thoughts on this issue).

I am sympathetic to some of the arguments made in those posts and the need for some serious rethinking of the way economics is taught but I would put the emphasis on slightly different arguments. First, I  am not sure the recent global crisis should be the main reason to change the economics curriculum. Yes, economists failed to predict many aspects of the crisis but my view is that it was not because of the lack of tools or understanding. We have enough models in economics that explain most of the phenomena that caused and propagated the global financial crisis. There are plenty of models where individuals are not rational, where financial markets are driven by bubbles, with multiple equilbria,... that one can use to understand the last decade. We do have all these tools but as economics teachers (and researchers) we need to choose which ones to focus on. And here is where we failed. And we did it before and during the crisis but we also did it earlier. Why aren't we focusing on the right models or methodology? Here is my list of mistakes we do in our teaching, which might also reflect on our research:

#1 Too much theory, not enough emphasis on explaining empirical phenomena. Models are easy to teach. Answering questions like "what caused the 2008 crisis?" or "what are the effects of an increase in the minimum wage"? is so much harder. So not only we tend to avoid them but also criticize those who provide answers by saying that there is too much uncertainty and no one really knows the answer. This is just a bad excuse because policy makers need to make decisions regardless of uncertainty. Economics students should be aware of the uncertainty surrounding these questions but they should also be taught how to answer them.

#2 Too many counterintuitive results. Economists like to teach things that are surprising. Teaching that consumption increases when taxes go down is not too exciting. But teaching that under some very implausible assumptions, consumers will save all the tax rebates to pay for future taxes makes you feel that you added some value in your class. Yes, clearly teaching something that our students have not thought about before can potentially be of more value, but this is only true if what we teach is relevant. If it just introduces confusion and makes our students be cynical about every economic policy proposal then we failed.

#3 The need for a unified theory. The idea that economics is a rigorous science pushes economists to look for consistency via a unified framework when we teach the subject. We want to have one model to explain everything. The use of small and some times inconsistent partial equilibrium models to explain real-world phenomena is seeing as a sign of weakness. A unified theory that is consistent (even if it does not explain much of what we seen in the real world) is always the way to go. Yes, a unified theory would be great, but we need to be realistic. Small ad-hoc models can be a lot more effective to learn about economic issues than the insistence on using the same unrealistic model to explain everything. And in most economics courses we spend all our time building this model and once we are done there is very little time to answer relevant questions. And when asked, we simply argue that "this model cannot capture that" (so back to mistake #1, too much theory, not enough emphasis on understanding empirics).

#4 We teach what our audience wants to hear. We conform too often to social beliefs about how the economy works and we simply support those beliefs with our teaching. Here is one example: when we teach about governments, cracking a few jokes about government inefficiency, bureaucrats, politics is very easy. Using models where government spending plays no productive role feels natural. But when we look at the private sector, we start with the opposite view, one of efficiency and absence of rents given the competitive environment in which firms operate (the famous analogy of no $100 notes sitting on the sidewalk). If you want to argue that it is the other way around be ready to fight a difficult battle. An it is not that we have plenty of empirical evidence to back up these statements. There is very limited research and in some cases with very uncertain results on the role of rents, inequality, market power in modern economies (although this might be changing). But rather than teaching about this uncertainty we start with models that take a very strong stance on these very fundamental questions. So we are being inconsistent. While in some cases we use uncertainty to criticize certain economic policies, in other cases we use the same argument to support a certain view of the world because it matches either the status quo or the beliefs that most in the audience have.

Antonio Fatás

Honey, I blew up a few economies.

The International Comparison Program (hosted at the World Bank) just released its new estimates of Purchasing Power Parity that are used to compare GDP across countries. These estimates are released about every 5 years and they serve as the basis for the PPP-adjusted statistics used by most international organizations or statistical sources. These estimates get updated on an annual basis using inflation rates but it is the 5 year survey that produces the complete data that allows us to compare purchasing power across countries.

The release was picked up by all news outlets by emphasizing the fact that China looks bigger than what we thought before and it is likely to become the number one economy by the end of 2014 (e.g. Financial Times). The news on China makes for great headlines but the reality is that many countries saw significant changes in their PPP estimates, let's look at some magnitudes.

Before looking at magnitudes, a clarification on methodology: PPP estimates are done for a particular year (2011 in this case). The PPP adjusted figures released this week take the same GDP data that we already were using for that year and what they do is to publish a new set of PPP estimates that allows for a conversion of GDP to a purchasing-power basis just for that year (2011). Soon most databases will start using those PPP estimates (from 2011) to extrapolate and calculate the recent annual GDPs (2013). But this calculation will be done by adjusting 2011 PPP estimates with domestic inflation rates. To understand what has really changed with these new estimates and avoid the possible distortions that using inflation rates could cause let me do a simpler calculation: let's stick to 2011 GDP and ask the following question: How different is the size of economies as calculated using 2011 PPP compared to what we thought before these estimates were released? Before these estimates were released we were using PPP estimates calculated in 2005 updated using domestic inflation rates.

If you do that calculation, China increased its size by about 21%. But China is not alone. In fact there are 65 countries whose size increased even more than that. And there are about 30 countries where the increase was larger than 50%. Below are some examples:

Country	Increase in 2011 GDP PPP
UAE	109%
Myanmar	103%
Indonesia	85%
Saudi Arabia	65%
Egypt	64%
Pakistan	53%
Thailand	51%
Philippines	41%
Russia	36%
Iran	33%
Malaysia	32%
Romania	30%
India	28%
Nigeria	25%
Brazil	24%
Turkey	23%
China	21%

The UAE doubled its size and becomes a $500+ billion economy (larger than Belgium). Indonesia increased by 85% to pass $2 trillion and becomes the 10th largest economy in the world (larger than Italy and very close to the UK). All these are very large changes that clearly show that the most recent PPPs have introduced a completely different lens to compare price levels and living standards across countries. The pattern is that emerging markets tend to look a lot cheaper than what we thought earlier and therefore their GDP measured in purchasing power parity looks much larger.

What is interesting is that this has not always been the case. The previous release of PPP estimates (2005) caused a lot of controversy because they reduced the size of the Chinese economy by about 15%. 

One can argue that changes in the PPP-adjusted size of countries have very little practical impact, GDP has not really changed. It does have an impact on those who care about size and rankings of countries and think that PPP-adjusted series are better are capturing size (which is probably not correct, but I will leave this for another post). But it also has a large impact for those who care about comparisons of living standards (for which PPP correction is a must): these large movements in PPP estimates completely change our reading of living standards for many countries. if you are a researcher, get ready to update all your regressions!

Antonio Fatás