Policymakers around the world have used Gross Domestic Product as the main gauge of economic performance – and have often adopted policies that aim to maximise its rate of growth. Generation after generation of economists have committed significant time and effort to thinking about the factors that influence GDP growth, on the premise that an expanding and healthy economy is one that sees its GDP increasing every year at a sufficient rate.
But is economic output a good enough indicator of national economic wellbeing? Costanza et al (2014) (see link below) argue that, despite its merits, GDP can be a ‘misleading measure of national success’:
GDP measures mainly market transactions. It ignores social costs, environmental impacts and income inequality. If a business used GDP-style accounting, it would aim to maximize gross revenue — even at the expense of profitability, efficiency, sustainability or flexibility. That is hardly smart or sustainable (think Enron). Yet since the end of the Second World War, promoting GDP growth has remained the primary national policy goal in almost every country. Meanwhile, researchers have become much better at measuring what actually does make life worthwhile. The environmental and social effects of GDP growth is a misleading measure of national success. Countries should act now to embrace new metrics.
The limitations of GDP growth as a measure of economic wellbeing and national strength are becoming increasingly clear in today’s world. Some of the world’s wealthiest countries are plagued by discontent, with a growth in populism and social discontent – attitudes which are often fuelled by high rates of poverty and economic hardship. In a recent report titled ‘The Living Standards Audit 2018’ published by the Resolution Foundation, a UK economic thinktank (see link below), the authors found that child poverty rose in 2016–17 as a result of declining incomes of the poorest third of UK households:
While the economic profile of UK households has changed, living standards – with the exception of pensioner households – have mostly stagnated since the mid-2000s. Typical household incomes are not much higher than they were in 2003–04. This stagnation in living standards for many has brought with it a rise in poverty rates for low to middle income families. Over a third of low to middle income families with children are in poverty, up from a quarter in the mid-2000s, and nearly two-fifths say that they can’t afford a holiday away for their children once a year. On the other hand, the share of non-working families in poverty has fallen, though not by enough to prevent an overall rise in poverty since 2010.
Their projections also show that this rise in poverty was likely to have continued in 2017–18:
Although the increase in broad measures of inequality were relatively muted last year, our nowcast suggests that there was a pronounced rise in poverty (measured after housing costs[…]. The increase in overall poverty (from 22.1 to 23.2 per cent) was the largest since 1988. But this was dwarfed by the increase in child poverty, which rose from 30.3 per cent to 33.4 per cent. […]The fortunes of middle-income households diverged from those towards the bottom of the distribution and so a greater share of households, and children, found themselves below the poverty threshold.
A simple literature search on Scope (or even Google Scholar) shows that there has been a significant increase in the number of journal articles and reports in the last 10 years on this topic. We do talk more about the limitations of GDP, but we are still using it as the main measure of national economic performance.
Is it then time to stop focusing our attention on GDP growth exclusively and start considering broader metrics of social development? And what would such metrics look like? Both interesting questions that we will try to address in coming blogs.
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Hearing
Questions
- What are the main strengths and weakness of using GDP as measure of economic performance?
- Is high GDP growth alone enough to foster economic and social wellbeing? Explain your answer using examples.
- Write a list of alternative measures that could be used alongside GDP-based metrics to measure economic and social progress. Explain your answer.
Ten years ago, the financial crisis deepened and stock markets around the world plummeted. The trigger was the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest US investment bank. It filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. This was not the first bank failure around that time. In 2007, Northern Rock in the UK (Aug/Sept 2007) had collapsed and so too had Bear Stearns in the USA (Mar 2008).
Initially there was some hope that the US government would bail out Lehmans. But when Congress rejected the Bank Bailout Bill on September 29, the US stock market fell sharply, with the Dow Jones falling by 7% the same day. This was mirrored in other countries: the FTSE 100 fell by 15%.
At the core of the problem was excessive lending by banks with too little capital. What is more, much of the capital was of poor quality. Many of the banks held securitised assets containing ‘sub-prime mortgage debt’. The assets, known as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), were bundles of other assets, including mortgages. US homeowners had been lent money based on the assumption that their houses would increase in value. When house prices fell, homeowners were left in a position of negative equity – owing more than the value of their house. With many people forced to sell their houses, prices fell further. Mortgage debt held by banks could not be redeemed: it was ‘sub-prime’ or ‘toxic debt’.
Response to the crisis
The outcome of the financial crash was a series of bailouts of banks around the world. Banks cut back on lending and the world headed for a major recession.
Initially, the response of governments and central banks was to stimulate their economies through fiscal and monetary policies. Government spending was increased; taxes were cut; interest rates were cut to near zero. By 2010, the global economy seemed to be pulling out of recession.
However, the expansionary fiscal policy, plus the bailing out of banks, had led to large public-sector deficits and growing public-sector debt. Although a return of economic growth would help to increase revenues, many governments felt that the size of the public-sector deficits was too large to rely on economic growth.
As a result, many governments embarked on a period of austerity – tight fiscal policy, involving cutting government expenditure and raising taxes. Although this might slowly bring the deficit down, it slowed down growth and caused major hardships for people who relied on benefits and who saw their benefits cut. It also led to a cut in public services.
Expanding the economy was left to central banks, which kept monetary policy very loose. Rock-bottom interest rates were then accompanied by quantitative easing. This was the expansion of the money supply by central-bank purchases of assets, largely government bonds. A massive amount of extra liquidity was pumped into economies. But with confidence still low, much of this ended up in other asset purchases, such as stocks and shares, rather than being spent on goods and services. The effect was a limited stimulation of the economy, but a surge in stock market prices.
With wages rising slowly, or even falling in real terms, and with credit easy to obtain at record low interest rates, so consumer debt increased.
Lessons
So have the lessons of the financial crash been learned? Would we ever have a repeat of 2007–9?
On the positive side, financial regulators are more aware of the dangers of under capitalisation. Banks’ capital requirements have increased, overseen by the Bank for International Settlements. Under its Basel II and then Basel III regulations (see link below), banks are required to hold much more capital (‘capital buffers’). Some countries’ regulators (normally the central bank), depending on their specific conditions, exceed these the Basel requirements.
But substantial risks remain and many of the lessons have not been learnt from the financial crisis and its aftermath.
There has been a large expansion of household debt, fuelled by low interest rates. This constrains central banks’ ability to raise interest rates without causing financial distress to people with large debts. It also makes it more likely that there will be a Minsky moment, when a trigger, such as a trade war (e.g. between the USA and China), causes banks to curb lending and consumers to rein in debt. This can then lead to a fall in aggregate demand and a recession.
Total debt of the private and public sectors now amounts to $164 trillion, or 225% of world GDP – 12 percentage points higher than in 2009.
China poses a considerable risk, as well as being a driver of global growth. China has very high levels of consumer debt and many of its banks are undercapitalised.
It has already experienced one stock market crash. From mid-June 2015, there was a three-week fall in share prices, knocking about 30% off their value. Previously the Chinese stock market had soared, with many people borrowing to buy shares. But this was a classic bubble, with share prices reflecting exuberance, not economic fundamentals.
Although Chinese government purchases of shares and tighter regulation helped to stabilise the market, it is possible that there may be another crash, especially if the trade war with the USA escalates even further. The Chinese stock market has already lost 20% of its value this year.
Then there is the problem with shadow banking. This is the provision of loans by non-bank financial institutions, such as insurance companies or hedge funds. As the International Business Times article linked below states:
A mind-boggling study from the US last year, for example, found that the market share of shadow banking in residential mortgages had rocketed from 15% in 2007 to 38% in 2015. This also represents a staggering 75% of all loans to low-income borrowers and risky borrowers. China’s shadow banking is another major concern, amounting to US$15 trillion, or about 130% of GDP. Meanwhile, fears are mounting that many shadow banks around the world are relaxing their underwriting standards.
Another issue is whether emerging markets can sustain their continued growth, or whether troubles in the more vulnerable emerging-market economies could trigger contagion across the more exposed parts of the developing world and possibly across the whole global economy. The recent crises in Turkey and Argentina may be a portent of this.
Then there is a risk of a cyber-attack by a rogue government or criminals on key financial insitutions, such as central banks or major international banks. Despite investing large amounts of money in cyber-security, financial institutions worry about their vulnerability to an attack.
Any of these triggers could cause a crisis of confidence, which, in turn, could lead to a fall in stock markets, a fall in aggregate demand and a recession.
Finally there is the question of the deep and prolonged crisis in capitalism itself – a crisis that manifests itself, not in a sudden recession, but in a long-term stagnation of the living standards of the poor and ‘just about managing’. Average real weekly earnings in many countries today are still below those in 2008, before the crash. In Great Britain, real weekly earnings in July 2018 were still some 6% lower than in early 2008.
Articles
- The Lehman Brothers Crash And The Chaos That Followed – Everything You Need To Know
HuffPost, Isabel Togoh (15/9/18)
- Ten years after the crash: have the lessons of Lehman been learned?
The Guardian, Yanis Varoufakis, Ann Pettifor, Mark Littlewood, David Blanchflower, Olli Rehn, Nicky Morgan and Micah White (14/9/18)
- Financial crisis 10 years on: Who are the winners and losers?
Independent, Kate Hughes (14/9/18)
- Investment winners and losers 10 years after the crash
Financial Times, Kate Beioley (14/9/18)
- Nine Lessons From the Global Financial Crisis
Bloomberg, Mohamed A. El-Erian (13/9/18)
- Lehman — why we need a change of mindset
Deutsche Welle, Thomas Straubhaar (14/9/18)
- ‘The world is sleepwalking into a financial crisis’ – Gordon Brown
The Guardian, Larry Elliott (12/9/18)
Economists warn of new financial crisis on anniversary of 2008 crashChannel 4 news, Helia Ebrahimi (15/9/18)
- Financial crisis 2008: Five biggest risks of a new crash
International Business Times, Nafis Alam (14/9/18)
- Carney warns against complacency on 10th anniversary of financial crisis
BBC News, Kamal Ahmed (12/9/18)
- A cyberattack could trigger the next financial crisis, new report says
CNBC, Bob Pisani (13/9/18)
Information and data
Questions
- Explain the major causes of the financial market crash in 2008.
- Would it have been a good idea to have continued with expansionary fiscal policy beyond 2009?
- Summarise the Basel III banking regulations.
- How could quantitative easing have been differently designed so as to have injected more money into the real sector of the economy?
- What are the main threats to the global economy at the current time? Are any of these a ‘hangover’ from the 2007–8 financial crisis?
- What is meant by ‘shadow banking’ and how might this be a threat to the future stability of the global economy?
- Find data on household debt in two developed countries from 2000 to the present day. Chart the figures. Explain the pattern that emerges and discuss whether there are any dangers for the two economies from the levels of debt.
I admit it, the title of my blog today is a little bit misleading – but at the same time very appropriate for today’s topic. Nancy Sinatra certainly wasn’t thinking about emigration when she was singing this song – it had nothing to do with it, after all. It is, however, very relevant to economists: Indeed, there are many economics papers discussing the effects of skilled immigration on host and source economies and regions.
Economists often use the term ‘brain drain’ to describe the migration of highly skilled workers from poor/developing to rich/developed economies. Such flows are anything but unusual. As The Economist points out in a recent article, ‘[I]n the decade to 2010–11 the number of university-educated migrants in the G20, a group of large economies that hosts two-thirds of the world’s migrants, grew by 60% to 32m according to the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries.’.
The effects of international migration are found to be overwhelmingly positive for both skilled migrant workers and their hosts. This is particularly true for highly skilled workers (such as academics, physicians and other professionals), who, through emigration, get the opportunity to earn a significantly higher return on their skills that what they might have had in their home country. Very often their home country is saturated and oversupplied with skilled workers competing for a very limited number of jobs. Also, they get the opportunity to practise their profession – which they might not have had otherwise.
But what about their home countries? Are they worse off for such emigration?
There are different views when it comes to answering this question. One argument is that the prospect of international migration incentivises people in developing countries to accumulate skills (brain gain) – which they might not choose to do otherwise, if the expected return to skills was not high enough to warrant the effort and opportunity cost that comes with it. Beine et al (2011) find that:
Our empirical analysis predicts conditional convergence of human capital indicators. Our findings also reveal that skilled migration prospects foster human capital accumulation in low-income countries. In these countries, a net brain gain can be obtained if the skilled emigration rate is not too large (i.e. it does not exceed 20–30% depending on other country characteristics). In contrast, we find no evidence of a significant incentive mechanism in middle-income, and not surprisingly, high-income countries.
Other researchers find that emigration can have a significant negative effect on source economies (countries or regions) – especially if it affects a large share of the local workforce within a short time period. Ha et al (2016), analyse the effect of emigration on human capital formation and economic growth of Chinese provinces:
First, we find that permanent emigration is conducive to the improvement of both middle and high school enrollment. In contrast, while temporary emigration has a significantly positive effect on middle school enrollment it does not affect high school enrollment. Moreover, the different educational attainments of temporary emigrants have different effects on school enrollment. Specifically, the proportion of temporary emigrants with high school education positively affects middle school enrollment, while the proportion of temporary emigrants with middle school education negatively affects high school enrollment. Finally, we find that both permanent and temporary emigration has a detrimental effect on the economic growth of source regions.
So yes or no? Good or bad? As everything else in economics, the answer quite often is ‘it depends’.
Articles
- Open future: What educated people from poor countries make of the “brain drain” argument
The Economist, R.S. (27/8/18)
- Brain drain, brain gain, and economic growth in China
China Economic Review, Wei Ha, Junjian Yi and Junsen Zhang (April 2016)
- A Panel Data Analysis of the Brain Gain
World Development, Michel Beine, Ric Docquier and Cecily Oden-Defoort (Vol 39, No 4, pp 523–532, 2011)
Questions
- ‘The brain drain makes a bad situation worse, by stripping developing economies of their most valuable assets: skilled workers’. Discuss.
- Using Google, find data on the inflows and outflows of skilled labour for a developing country of your choice. Explain your results.
- ‘Brain drain’ or ‘brain gain’? What is your personal view on this debate? Explain your opinion by using anecdotal evidence, personal experience and examples.
- Referring to the previous question, write a critique of your answer.
The IMF has just published its six-monthly World Economic Outlook. This provides an assessment of trends in the global economy and gives forecasts for a range of macroeconomic indicators by country, by groups of countries and for the whole world.
This latest report is upbeat for the short term. Global economic growth is expected to be around 3.9% this year and next. This represents 2.3% this year and 2.5% next for advanced countries and 4.8% this year and 4.9% next for emerging and developing countries. For large advanced countries such rates are above potential economic growth rates of around 1.6% and thus represent a rise in the positive output gap or fall in the negative one.
But while the near future for economic growth seems positive, the IMF is less optimistic beyond that for advanced countries, where growth rates are forecast to decline to 2.2% in 2019, 1.7% in 2020 and 1.5% by 2023. Emerging and developing countries, however, are expected to see growth rates of around 5% being maintained.
For most countries, current favorable growth rates will not last. Policymakers should seize this opportunity to bolster growth, make it more durable, and equip their governments better to counter the next downturn.
By comparison with other countries, the UK’s growth prospects look poor. The IMF forecasts that its growth rate will slow from 1.8% in 2017 to 1.6% in 2018 and 1.5% in 2019, eventually rising to around 1.6% by 2023. 
The short-term figures are lower than in the USA, France and Germany and reflect ‘the anticipated higher barriers to trade and lower foreign direct investment following Brexit’.
The report sounds some alarm bells for the global economy.
The first is a possible growth in trade barriers as a trade war looms between the USA and China and as Russia faces growing trade sanctions. As Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF told an audience in Hong Kong:
Governments need to steer clear of protectionism in all its forms. …Remember: the multilateral trade system has transformed our world over the past generation. It helped reduce by half the proportion of the global population living in extreme poverty. It has reduced the cost of living, and has created millions of new jobs with higher wages. …But that system of rules and shared responsibility is now in danger of being torn apart. This would be an inexcusable, collective policy failure. So let us redouble our efforts to reduce trade barriers and resolve disagreements without using exceptional measures.
The second danger is a growth in world government and private debt levels, which at 225% of global GDP are now higher than before the financial crisis of 2007–9. With Trump’s policies of tax cuts and increased government expenditure, the resulting rise in US government debt levels could see some fiscal tightening ahead, which could act as a brake on the world economy. As Maurice Obstfeld , Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department, said at the Press Conference launching the latest World Economic Outlook:
Debts throughout the world are very high, and a lot of debts are denominated in dollars. And if dollar funding costs rise, this could be a strain on countries’ sovereign financial institutions.
In China, there has been a massive rise in corporate debt, which may become unsustainable if the Chinese economy slows. Other countries too have seen a surge in private-sector debt. If optimism is replaced by pessimism, there could be a ‘Minsky moment’, where people start to claw down on debt and banks become less generous in lending. This could lead to another crisis and a global recession. A trigger could be rising interest rates, with people finding it hard to service their debts and so cut down on spending.
The third danger is the slow growth in labour productivity combined with aging populations in developed countries. This acts as a brake on growth. The rise in AI and robotics (see the post Rage against the machine) could help to increase potential growth rates, but this could cost jobs in the short term and the benefits could be very unevenly distributed.
This brings us to a final issue and this is the long-term trend to greater inequality, especially in developed economies. Growth has been skewed to the top end of the income distribution. As the April 2017 WEO reported, “technological advances have contributed the most to the recent rise in inequality, but increased financial globalization – and foreign direct investment in particular – has also played a role.”
And the policy of quantitative easing has also tended to benefit the rich, as its main effect has been to push up asset prices, such as share and house prices. Although this has indirectly stimulated the economy, it has mainly benefited asset owners, many of whom have seen their wealth soar. People further down the income scale have seen little or no growth in their real incomes since the financial crisis.
Articles
- Clouds gather over global economy, casting long shadow on Europe
Politico, Pierre Briançon (18/4/18)
- IMF warns rising trade tensions threaten to derail global growth
Reuters, David Lawder (17/4/18)
- IMF outlook contains cause for celebration but a horrendous hangover is looming
The Guardian, Greg Jericho (18/4/18)
- World trade system in danger of being torn apart, warns IMF
The Guardian, Larry Elliott (17/4/18)
- IMF Warns of Rising Threats to Global Financial System
Bloomberg, Andrew Mayeda (18/4/18)
- IMF issues warning on global debt
BBC News, Andrew Walker (18/4/18)
- The IMF has a simple message: the global recovery will peter out
The Guardian, Larry Elliott (17/4/18)
- Global growth is built, alas, on shaky foundations
The Irish Times, Martin Wolf (18/4/18)
- Government debt
The Economist (19/4/18)
- This Is How Much Money the World Owes
Fortune (19/4/18)
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Questions
- For what reasons may the IMF forecasts turn out to be incorrect?
- Why are emerging and developing countries likely to experience faster rates of economic growth than advanced countries?
- What are meant by a ‘positive output gap’ and a ‘negative output gap’? What are the consequences of each for various macroeconomic indicators?
- Explain what is meant by a ‘Minsky moment’. When are such moments likely to occur? Explain why or why not such a moment is likely to occur in the next two or three years?
- For every debt owed, someone is owed that debt. So does it matter if global public and/or private debts rise? Explain.
- What have been the positive and negative effects of the policy of quantitative easing?
- What are the arguments for and against using tariffs and other forms of trade restrictions as a means of boosting a country’s domestic economy?
The last two weeks have been quite busy for macroeconomists, HM Treasury staff and statisticians in the UK. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Phillip Hammond, delivered his (fairly upbeat) Spring Budget Statement on 13 March, highlighting among other things the ‘stellar performance’ of UK labour markets. According to a Treasury Press Release:
Employment has increased by 3 million since 2010, which is the equivalent of 1,000 people finding work every day. The unemployment rate is close to a 40-year low. There is also a joint record number of women in work – 15.1 million. The OBR predict there will be over 500,000 more people in work by 2022.
To put these figures in perspective, according to recent ONS estimates, in January 2018 the rate of UK unemployment was 4.3 per cent – down from 4.4 per cent in December 2017. This is the lowest it has been since 1975. This is of course good news: a thriving labour market is a prerequisite for a healthy economy and a good sign that the UK is on track to full recovery from its 2008 woes.
The Bank of England welcomed the news with a mixture of optimism and relief, and signalled that the time for the next interest rate hike is nigh: most likely at the next MPC meeting in May.
But what is the practical implication of all this for UK consumers and workers?
For workers it means it’s a ‘sellers’ market’: as more people get into employment, it becomes increasingly difficult for certain sectors to fill new vacancies. This is pushing nominal wages up. Indeed, UK wages increased on average by 2.6 per cent year-to-year.
In real terms, however, wage growth has not been high enough to outpace inflation: real wages have fallen by 0.2 per cent compared to last year. Britain has received a pay rise, but not high enough to compensate for rising prices. To quote Matt Hughes, a senior ONS statistician:
Employment and unemployment levels were both up on the quarter, with the employment rate returning to its joint highest ever. ‘Economically inactive’ people — those who are neither working nor looking for a job — fell by their largest amount in almost five and a half years, however. Total earnings growth continues to nudge upwards in cash terms. However, earnings are still failing to outpace inflation.
An increase in interest rates is likely to put further pressure on indebted households. Even more so as it coincides with the end of the five-year grace period since the launch of the 2013 Help-to-Buy scheme, which means that many new homeowners who come to the end of their five year fixed rate deals, will soon find themselves paying more for their mortgage, while also starting to pay interest on their Help-to-buy government loan.
Will wages grow fast enough in 2018 to outpace inflation (and despite Brexit, which is now only 12 months away)? We shall see.
Articles
Data, Reports and Analysis
Questions
- What is monetary policy, and how is it used to fine tune the economy?
- What is the effect of an increase in interest rates on aggregate demand?
- How optimistic (or pessimistic) are you about the UK’s economic outlook in 2018? Explain your reasoning.