Using a hammer or a wrench to pop asset price bubbles?

In a recent speech Adam Posen (recently appointed a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee) argues that monetary policy should not be used to deal with asset price bubbles. His main argument, which has been expressed before by different central bankers, is that monetary policy is the tool to deal with price stability and it is not appropriate to deal with asset price bubbles. Quoting from his speech:

"Just because we want there to be a policy response to a problem does not mean that the problem can be solved with the tools at hand. Again, if I have a hammer, it can be useful for all sorts of household tasks, but useless for repairing a leaky shower head – in fact, if I take the hammer to the shower head, I will probably make matters worse. I need a wrench to fix a pipe leak, and no amount of wishing will make a hammer a wrench. This is the essential reason why central bankers are now looking around for what has been called a ‘macroprudential instrument’, that is a tool suited to the job – and a tool additional to the one that we already have in our toolkit."

I am very sympathetic to this argument, interest rate is probably not the right tool to deal with asset price bubbles and using regulation or a 'macroprudential instrument' is the right thing to do.

However, we still need to ask the question: What if those instruments are not available or are simply failing to do their job? Is there a role for monetary policy? He cites the example of Spain as a country where the central bank was stressing the importance of dynamic provisioning for banks and still went through a real estate bubble. It might be that the Bank of Spain was not aggressive enough, but how do we know that the systems that we are setting in place now will take care of the next bubble or financial imbalance?

One can argue that interest rates should not be used to deal with an imbalance in financial markets, because this is not part of their mandate, but I think this is a very narrow view of the role of central banks. There is no doubt that imbalances in financial markets spread to the real economy. In fact, there were many signs of a macroeconomic imbalance prior to the crisis such as excessive consumption, current account imbalances. Aren't interest rates the tool to deal with macroeconomic imbalances?

If we apply Adam Posen's logic to some of the previous recessions, we could come up with the conclusion that central banks should never use the interest rate as a stabilizing tool. We could always claim that previous recessions originated in a specific sector of the economy and it would be better to deal with these developments using 'sector-specific' tools. Adam Posen uses as an example a procyclical tax on real estate that might avoid real estate bubbles like the one we just went through. We could apply the same logic to the internet bubble of the 90s and argue that a tax on internet-related companies would have avoided that bubble. This might be true but how do we know where the next bubble will come from so that we set up the right 'procyclical tax' to avoid it? In my view, if the next bubble generates a macroeconomic imbalance, then it is the role of monetary and fiscal policy to deal with it. The next business cycle, the next bubble is likely to be different from the current one and we will learn from it and set up additional policies to make sure that it does not happen again, but until we figure out policies to avoid any potential bubble or imbalance that can cause a recession, monetary policy still has a role to play. And yes, using a hammer to fix a pipe leak will be a challenge...

Antonio Fatás

Central Bank Transparency

Here is an excerpt from an interview by Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the ECB with De Tijd and L'Echo (the full interview can be found at the ECB web site).

Q. For some financial assets, such as gold, we are seeing a return to risk-taking on the part of investors. Is this a parameter that the ECB takes into account in its strategy?

A. I will not make any specific comments regarding gold.

Generally speaking, one of the fundamental lessons of the crisis is that when we underestimate financial risks and focus only on the short term, we set the stage for a future catastrophe. The new principles for bank remuneration, which the international community have agreed within the framework of the Financial Stability Board, were established precisely in order to ensure that there is no incentive for operators and traders in particular to favour the most risky attitudes and decisions, leading to illusory profits in the short term at the expense of the long-term interests of the financial enterprises concerned and the stability of the financial system as a whole.

It is always interesting to see how central bankers tend to start their answers by saying that they will not make any specific comment on a market or an asset price and then make a broad statement about how financial markets need to be careful and not create bubbles. This reminds me of the famous question by Alan Greenspan back in December 1996: "How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?" Great question and I would like to know the answer!

Should central banks provide more guidance to help us answer our questions and doubts about asset prices (or other financial market developments)? Should they share their views and forecasts on the evolution of asset prices as they do for other financial variables, such as interest rates? I do not know what the right answer to these question is but I find the current communication style from central banks ("no specific comment on that question but...") unsatisfactory.

Antonio Fatás

The "investmentless" recovery

The behavior of U.S. employment at the end of the last two recessions (1991 and 2001) was different than in previous recessions. Employment did not grow fast and it took several years to reach the pre-recession levels. Because of this, the recovery years that followed both of these two recessions have been labelled "jobless recoveries". Below is a chart from Brad de Long that compares them to two other previous recessions (original posting is here).

Employment was flat in 1991 and 2001 instead of increasing fast as in 1975 and 1982. Because of the current high level of unemployment combined with what might be weak growth there is a fear that the current recovery will also be a jobless one and that the unemployment rate will take a long time to reach a normal level (here is Krugman on this issue).

The behavior of employment will depend on many factors (amount of labor hoarding, productivity) but at the end of the day, the major factor be remain the strength of the recovery and how fast GDP and demand can grow. If we look at different components of demand (or GDP) there is an interesting factor about the last two recessions: In both of them, investment played a weaker role during the recovery phase. Below is a chart comparing the behavior of investment (measured as a % of GDP) around the recovery time (0 is the quarter when the recovery started according to the NBER).

What is interesting in this chart is that the last two recoveries were also special when it comes to the behavior of investment. In fact, the behavior of investment seems to mimic what we see above in the employment chart. While during the 1975 and 1982 recoveries investment grew faster than GDP (so the ratio increased), during the 1991 and 2001 recessions, investment grew at the same pace as GDP (so the ratio is flat). And this is more of a surprise if we take into account the fact that real interest rates remained very low during these two recoveries (more so in 2001).

We know that investment is the most volatile component of GDP so the V-shape that we see in 1975 and 1982 is what we would normally expect. By definition, it has to be that other components of GDP played a stronger role (relative to previous recessions) in 1991 and 2001 (consumption, exports). What was the exact role of those components will (hopefully) be the subject of a future post in this blog. What is interesting so far is the similarity in the behavior of employment and investment across the most recent recessions.

Antonio Fatás

Inflation or Deflation?

There is an ongoing debate on whether we will see inflation or deflation during the coming years. Inflation could be a result of the expansionary monetary policies we have witnessed in many countries around the world. Deflation could be caused by the effects of the economic slowdown (asset price deflation, deleveraging, low growth) and its global nature.

Despite these concerns, inflation indicators remain very stable. After a period where they were pointing in the direction of deflation, they are now back to levels which are fairly consistent with inflation in recent years. The stability of inflation forecasts and how they seem to be ignoring some of the theories that suggest more radical changes ahead are a reflection of the strong anchoring of inflation expectations that has been achieved in recent decades. This anchoring of expectations is the result of very low and stable inflation in most economies since the mid 90s. Here is the evolution of World inflation since 1980 (source: IMF World Economic Outlook database October 2009).

It is remarkable how after 1996 inflation has remained almost constant. While it is true that this was a stable period of time from an economic point of view, there were several episodes (the Asian crisis, the recession in 2001/2002) that could have had an effect in inflation. The fact that inflation did not react and remained in a very narrow range (between 4-5%) is behind the strong anchoring of inflation expectations. And this is a virtuous cycle: the more anchored inflation expectations are, the more stable inflation will be.

What is also interesting is to see that the behavior of inflation has been very similar across developed and developing countries. In the case of advanced economies, inflation decreased very fast in the early 80s and came down even more in the mid-90s. In the case of emerging markets we witnessed a period of high inflation during the early 90s but after 1995 inflation has come down and remained stable for 13 years.

While 13 years of stable inflation cannot guarantee that we will not see large changes in the inflation rate in the coming years, there is no doubt that this is a reflection of the strong anchoring of inflation expectations, more so than in any other period in recent history and this stability is likely to keep inflation volatility low even in the presence of many uncertainties.

Antonio Fatás

It will continue to go up until it stops.

One of the best quotes I have recently seen in financial news sites. This is from CNBC Monday November 16th (link to the article and video here):

Dennis Gartman, founder of The Gartman Letter told CNBC Monday that the price of precious metal will "continue go go up until it stops." "It is a gold bubble, Gartman told CNBC. He called the trade on gold "mind boggling," but also said that he is currently long - or betting gold will go higher.

Well, I am sure he is right, the price of gold will continue to go up until it stops...

By the way, Willem Buiter has an interesting blog entry on the market for gold.

Antonio Fatas

The definition of strong (dollar)

Timothy Geithner said this week "I believe deeply that it is very important to the United States, to the economic health of the United States, that we maintain a strong dollar." It would be interesting to know what his definition of "strong" dollar is.

When John Snow was asked the same question back in 2003 (May 18) when he was Secretary of the Treasury he said: "You want people to have confidence in your currency (...) You want it hard to counterfeit, like our new $20 bill."

Antonio Fatás

9.5% productivity growth. How unusual?

As reported by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics yesterday, US labor productivity grew at a 9.5% in the third quarter of 2009. Fast productivity growth is normally a sign of economic strength, but in this case because it is the result of a combination of GDP growth and destruction in employment, this has raised further concerns about the possibility of a jobless recovery (see Brad DeLong, among others).

How unusual is to see productivity growing that fast during a recovery phase? No doubt that 9.5% is a very large number but we have seen similar patterns before. For example, the 1981Q3 recession showed a very similar pattern of productivity growth as seen in the picture below.

Six or seven quarters after the recession had started, productivity was growing at rates which are very similar to what we are seeing now. Interestingly, the 1981 recession was also a long recession, it lasted 16 months. It is possible that the current recession ended in the summer of 2009 which would make it very similar in length to the 1981 recession.

There is, however, a big difference between the two: in the 1981Q3 recession, we saw GDP growth rates close to 10% (quarter to quarter) seven quarters after the recession started - i.e. the last observation in the above chart. This time GDP is only growing at 3.5% and it is only because of the large decrease in employment that productivity growth is so high. This is not good news (unless we believe that this trend is about to reverse).

What did productivity growth look like in shorter recessions?

This second chart shows productivity growth in the previous two recessions (1990 and 2001). Both of these recessions were short, about 8 months. Productivity also increased in the quarters after the recession started. It started growing earlier (this is probably related to the short nature of the recession) and it did so in a smoother manner with peaks below the current levels.

Antonio Fatás