Most people, when asked, would like to earn more and many people are prepared to make sacrifices to do so. They may devote considerable time to obtaining qualifications; work much harder in order to gain promotion; work longer hours. What is more, when people do earn more, they take on extra commitments: a bigger house with a bigger mortgage; sending their kids to a private school; getting used to a more luxurious lifestyle. In fact, many people have to spend more on things such as home help, convenience foods and all sorts of labour-saving devices in order to cope with their longer hours.
Some people get so fed up with this pressurised lifestyle that they say ‘enough is enough; let me off this merry-go-round’. They may be happy to take a cut in income to live a simpler life and have more leisure time. Others, however, find that the merry-go-round just keeps going faster and faster and that they cannot get off; except, perhaps, if they make themselves ill, or worse still, die!
Now, if you are struggling as a student to make ends meet and find your debts are inexorably mounting, you may have little sympathy for people earning six-figure salaries! But are you in danger of trying to achieve this lifestyle for yourself? Do you see the main goal of your degree as getting you a better-paid job? What would count as ‘rational behaviour’ here and what would an economist advise you to do?
Then there is the question of whether the high paid are worth their high salaries. Are these salaries a reflection of the value of their output and the sacrifices they make? Or do they reflect economic power, custom and practice or asymmetry of information? And what do we mean by ‘worth’?
The following articles look at some of the highest paid people in the public sector. Some 38,000 public-sector employees earn more than £100,000. In the private sector the figures are much higher: some 545,000 people.
Articles
The perils of earning a £100,000 salary BBC News Magazine, Jon Kelly (22/9/10)
Ranking the pay packets of the public sector’s top dogs BBC Panorama programme, Vivian White (19/9/10)
Public Sector pay: The numbers BBC News (20/9/10)
Over 9,000 in public sector earn more than David Cameron, survey claims Guardian, Nicholas Watt (19/9/10)
On the inequality myth The Economist blogs (20/9/10)
Data
Portal to Annual survey of hours and earnings (ASHE) Office for national Statistics
Family Spending – A report on the 2008 Living Costs and Food Survey (see Chapter 3) Office for national Statistics
Income inequality Office for national Statistics (10/6/10)
The effects of taxes and benefits on household income, 2008/09 Statistical Bulletin (ONS) (10/6/10)
Data: The effects of taxes and benefits on household income, 2008/09 Office for national Statistics
Questions
- Use Gini coefficients to examine what has happened to income distribution in the UK in recent years.
- Are high-paid earners ‘worth’ what they are paid? How would set about establishing what they are worth?
- Is it rational to seek a higher paid job if it involves longer hours and more stress? Why may it be difficult to make a ‘rational’ decision?
- Should the Prime Minister be the highest paid public-sector employee? Explain your answer.
- What factors will you take into account when deciding what jobs to apply for?
- To what extent can imperfect information explain people’s choices about work-life balance?
- To what extent can marginal productivity explain the huge salaries and bonuses paid to top executives in both the public and the private sectors?
Under the Basel II arrangements, banks were required to maintain particular capital adequacy ratios (CARs). These were to ensure that banks had sufficient capital to allow them to meet all demands from depositors and to cover losses if a borrower defaulted on payment. Basel II, it was (wrongly) thought would ensure that the banking system could not collapse.
There were three key ratios. The first was an overall minimum CAR of 8%, measured as Tier 1 capital plus Tier 2 capital as a percentage of total risk-weighted assets. As Economics 7th edition page 509 explains:
Tier 1 capital includes bank reserves (from retained profits) and ordinary share capital, where dividends to shareholders vary with the amount of profit the bank makes. Such capital thus places no burden on banks in times of losses as no dividend need be paid. What is more, unlike depositors, shareholders cannot ask for their money back. Tier 2 capital consists largely of preference shares. These pay a fixed rate of interest and thus do continue to place a burden on the bank even when losses are made (unless the bank goes out of business).
Risk-weighted assets are the value of assets, where each type of asset is multiplied by a risk factor. Under the internationally agreed Basel II accord, cash and government bonds have a risk factor of zero and are thus not included. Inter-bank lending between the major banks has a risk factor of 0.2 and is thus included at only 20 per cent of its value; residential mortgages have a risk factor of 0.35; personal loans, credit-card debt and overdrafts have a risk factor of 1; loans to companies carry a risk factor of 0.2, 0.5, 1 or 1.5, depending on the credit rating of the company. Thus the greater the average risk factor of a bank’s assets, the greater will be the value of its risk weighted assets, and the lower will be its CAR.
The second CAR was that Tier 1 capital should be at least 4% of risk weighted assets.
The third CAR was that equity capital (i.e. money raised from the issue of ordinary shares) should be at least 2% of risk weighted assets. This is known as the ‘core capital ratio’.
Before 2008, it was thought by most commentators that these capital adequacy ratios were sufficiently high. But then the banking crisis erupted. Banks were too exposed to sub-prime debt (i.e. debt that was excessively risky, such as mortgages on property at a time when property prices were rapidly declining). Much of this debt was disguised by being bundled up with other securities in what were known as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs). On 15 September 2008, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy: the largest bankruptcy in history, with Lehmans owing $613 billion. Although its assets had a book value of $639, these were insufficiently liquid to enable Lehmans to meet the demands of its creditors.
The collapse of Lehmans sent shock waves around the world. Banks across the globe came under tremendous pressure. Many held too much sub-prime debt and had insufficient capital to meet creditors’ demands. As a result, they had to be bailed out by their governments. Clearly the Basel II regulations were too lax.
For several months there have been discussions about new tighter regulations and, on 12 September 2010, central bankers from the major countries met in Basel, Switzerland, and agreed the Basel III regulations. Although the overall CAR (Tier 1 and 2) was kept at 8%, the Tier 1 ratio was raised from 4% to 6% and the core Tier 1 ratio was raised from 2% to 4.5%, to be phased in by 2015. In addition there were two ‘buffers’ introduced.
As well as having to maintain a core Tier 1 ratio of 4.5%, banks would also have to hold a ‘conservation buffer’ of 2.5%. “The purpose of the conservation buffer is to ensure that banks maintain a buffer of capital that can be used to absorb losses during periods of financial and economic stress. While banks are allowed to draw on the buffer during such periods of stress, the closer their regulatory capital ratios approach the minimum requirement, the greater the constraints on earnings distributions.” In effect, then, the core Tier 1 ratio will rise from 2% to 7% (i.e. 4.5% minimum plus a buffer of 2.5%).
The other buffer is a ‘countercyclical buffer’. This will be “within a range of 0% – 2.5% of common equity or other fully loss absorbing capital and will be implemented according to national circumstances.” The idea of this buffer is to allow banks to withstand volatility in the global economy. It will be phased in between 2016 and 2019.
The Basel III agreement will still need to be ratified by the G20 countries meeting at Seoul on 10 and 11 November this year. That meeting will also consider other elements of bank regulation.
So will these extra capital requirements be sufficient to allow banks to withstand any future crisis? The following articles discuss this question.
Articles
Global bankers agree new capital reserve rules BBC News (12/9/10)
Q&A: Basel rules on bank capital – who cares? BBC News, Laurence Knight (13/9/10)
Basel III and Sound Banking New American, Charles Scaliger (17/9/10)
Wishy-washy rules might come back to haunt regulators Financial Times, Patrick Jenkins (18/9/10)
Basel III proposal released Newsweek, Joel Schectman (17/9/10)
New Bank Rules May Not Prevent More Meltdowns FXstreet, Henrik Arnt (16/9/10)
Basel III CBS Money Watch, Mark Thoma (14/9/10)
Basel III: To lend or not to lend Investment Week, Martin Morris (16/9/10)
Taming the banks The Economist (16/9/10)
Basel’s buttress The Economist (16/9/10)
Do new bank-capital requirements pose a risk to growth? The Economist, guest contributions
Myners: New rules ‘ignore bank liquidity’ BBC Today Programme, Robert Peston and Lord Myners (18/9/10)
Official press releases and documents
Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision announces higher global minimum capital standards Bank for International Settlements Press Release (12/9/10)
The Basel iii Accord Basel iii Compliance Professionals Association (BiiiCPA)
Details of the new capital requirements Bank for International Settlements
Details of the phase-in arrangements Bank for International Settlements
Questions
- What impact will a higher capital adequacy ratio have on banks’ behaviour?
- For what reasons may the Basel III regulations be considered too lax?
- When there is an increase in deposits into the banking sector, banks can increase loans by a multiple of this. This bank deposits multiplier is the inverse of the liquidity ratio. Is there a similar bank capital multiplier and, if so, what determines its size?
- Why will Basel III be phased in over a number of years? Is this too long?
According to the Budget 2010 Report, public sector current receipts in 2010-11 will be £541 billion. With expected public sector expenditure of £704 billion this leaves a deficit of £163 billion. Of these receipts, £146 billion or 27% is expected to come from income taxation. Several notable developments in the income tax system for 2010/11 include: the freezing of personal allowances, an income limit for personal allowances for those under 65, and the introduction of an additional income tax band.
Personal allowances are amounts of income that can be earned without being liable to income tax. This amount is to be frozen in 2010/11 at the level of 2009/10 so that for an individual under 65, this limit will remain at £6,475. Allowances are typically raised each year in accordance with the rate of price inflation. This then helps to reduce, in part, what is called fiscal drag. Fiscal drag occurs when there is an increase in the proportion of income taken in income tax as a result of allowances not being adjusted for inflation or for the rate of growth in earnings. In other words, by not increasing the amount of income exempt from taxation in 2010/11, any individual whose earnings rise will pay a higher proportion of their earnings in income taxation.
Another change in 2010-11 is the introduction of an income limit on personal allowances for those earning over £100,000. For every £1 earned above this limit, 50 pence will be taken from the allowance. Hence, given the allowance of £6,475 an individual earning £112,950 or more (i.e. £12,950 over the limit) will, in effect, no longer receive any personal allowance.
Now consider changes to the tax brackets. In 2009/10, an individual with an income tax liability of up to £37,400 (i.e. earnings of up to £43,875, once the personal allowance has been taken into account) pays income tax at 20%. This is the ‘basic rate’ band. With a liability of over £37,400, the excess (i.e. the amount over £37,400) is subject to tax at 40%. This is known as the ‘high rate band’. From the 1st April 2010, there is to be an ‘additional rate’ of 50%. The 50% rate will apply to taxable income over £150,000, while taxable income up to £37,400 will continue to be taxed at 20% and that between £37,401 and £150,000 will be taxed at 40%.
Now, an illustration of how the changes for 2010/11 will affect two individuals. Firstly, consider somebody on £110,000. Their tax allowance is ‘reduced’ by £5,000 to £1,475 and so they have a tax liability of £108,525. Of this, they will pay £7,480 at the basic rate (20% of £37,400) and £28,450 at the higher rate (40% of £71,125). With a tax bill of £35,930, their average rate of income tax in 2010-11 will be 32.66%. In 2009/10, the total tax bill will have been £33,930 (20% of £37,400 plus 40% of £66,125) and so an average rate of tax 30.85%
Finally, consider an individual on £200,000. Their income tax bill in 2010/11 will be £77,520 (20% of £37,400 plus 40% of £112,600 plus 50% of £50,000) and so they will face an average rate of tax income tax of 38.76%. In 2009/10 the tax bill would have been £69,930 (20% of £37,400 plus 40% of`£156,125), an average rate of income tax of 34.97%
Articles
The £20 billion tax raid about to hit The Times, Lauren Thompson (27/3/10)
How to beat the new 50% top rate of tax The Times , Mark Atherton (27/3/10)
Budget 2010: Darling draws election battle lines BBC News (24/3/10)
High earners will feel like they have taken a pummelling The Scotsman, Jeff Salway (27/3/10)
Further information
For the full Budget Report, see Budget 2010: Complete Report HM Treasury, March 2010
(The above consists of the two elements, Economic and Fiscal Strategy Report and Financial Statement and Budget Report. It’s a fairly large pdf file and may take a few seconds to download.)
For the particular measures and their impact on government expenditure and/or revenue, see Annex A: Budget policy decisions of the Financial Statement and Budget Report.
See also Rates and allowances – Income taxation HM Revenue and Customs
(Note: from here you can also link to other tax rates.)
Questions
- Consider the efficiency and equity arguments for and against the income tax changes in 2010/11.
- What do you understand by the terms the marginal rate of tax and the average rate of tax?
- How will the changes to the income tax system in 2010/11 affect the marginal and average income tax rates? You could perhaps try plotting these in a chart for different gross incomes.
- How can fiscal drag occur even if personal allowances are raised by the rate of inflation?
The happiness literature has established that, in the developed countries, increasing affluence has not increased well-being in recent decades. We seek an explanation for this in terms of conspicuous consumption, a phenomenon originally identified by Veblen.
This is from the abstract of an article in the Economic Journal, ‘Well-being and Affluence in the Presence of a Veblen Good’ by B. Curtis Eaton and Mukesh Eswaran. The authors argue that while increased affluence of the rich may bring a small amount of extra benefit to them, it actually reduces the well-being of others who crave after things that they cannot afford. As the first article below states:
[The authors] believe their work shows that as a nation becomes wealthier, consumption shifts increasingly to buying status symbols with no intrinsic value – such as lavish jewellery, designer clothes and luxury cars. But they warn: “These goods represent a ‘zero-sum game’ for society: they satisfy the owners, making them appear wealthy, but everyone else is left feeling worse off.”
… There is another downside. As people yearn for more status symbols they have less time or inclination for helping others. This, the authors argue, damages “community and trust”, which are vital to an economy because they ensure the smooth running of society.
But do the super wealthy generate more jobs and more prosperity? Do we need to pay vast salaries and bonuses as incentives for executives to take risks: to invest in new products and processes, and drive technological advance and productivity increases? According to the second article, ‘Too few of the world’s billionaires can claim to be honest-to-God productive entrepreneurs who have enlarged the economic pie by dint of hard work, imagination, risk taking and innovation – although thankfully a useful proportion do populate the list.’
So is the ever widening gap between rich and poor necessary if the economy is to grow? Or is it something of very little value to society, except, perhaps, for the super rich themselves?
Articles
More money makes society miserable, warns report The Observer, Jamie Doward (14/3/10)
Don’t celebrate these billionaires, be horrified by their existence The Observer, Will Hutton (14/3/10)
Data
For the latest Guardian survey of executive pay, see: Executive pay survey, 2009
For data on UK incomes and income distribution, see: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) Office for National Statistics
For data on the distribution of wealth in the UK, see Distribution of Personal Wealth HM Revenue and Customs
Questions
- Explain what is meant by a ‘Veblen good’.
- What is meant by the diminishing marginal utility of income? What implications does this have for the effects of income distribution and redistribution on social well-being?
- Why may a rise in GDP make society worse off if it is accompanied by growing inequality?
- To what extent can marginal productivity theory explain the salaries and other rewards of the wealthy?
- Using the data below, examine the extent to which the gap between rich and poor is growing.
- Explain why increasing conspicuous consumption by the wealthy might be a zero-sum game for society or even a negative-sum game.
- What factors cause a rise in productivity?
- How might greater entrepreneurship be encouraged in the UK?
In 2008, the UK government set up a National Equality Panel to investigate inequality. “The Panel was asked to investigate the relationships between the distributions of various kinds of economic outcome on the one hand and people’s characteristics and circumstances on the other.” The panel delivered its report, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, in January 2010. It “addresses questions such as how far up or down do people from different backgrounds typically come in the distributions of earnings, income or wealth?”
The aspects of inequality examined include: educational outcomes, employment status, wages and other sources of income (such as benefits) both for the individual and the household, and wealth. “In our main report, we present information on the distributions of these outcomes for the population as a whole. Where possible we indicate how they have changed in the last decade or more, and how the UK compares with other industrialised countries. But our main focus is on the position of different social groups within the distributions of each outcome.”
A major influence on people’s income was the income, wealth and class of their parents since these affected education, peer groups and a whole range of other life chances. This made it virtually impossible to achieve equality of opportunity.
The report also looks at policy implications. These include not just the redistribution of incomes, but also the more fundamental issue of how to create equality of opportunity. “The challenge that our report puts down to all political parties is how do you create a level playing field when there are such large differences between the resources that different people have available to them.”
So what has happened to inequality? What explanations can be offered? And what can be done to lessen inequality? The following articles look at the findings of the report and offer their own judgements and analysis.
Rich-poor divide ‘wider than 40 years ago’ BBC News (27/1/10)
The Big Question: Why has the equality gap widened even through the years of plenty? Independent, Sarah Cassidy (28/1/10)
UK is one of world’s most ‘unequal’ societies Irish Times, Mark Hennessy (28/1/10)
Unequal Britain: richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest Guardian, Amelia Gentleman and Hélène Mulholland (27/1/10)
No equality in opportunity Guardian, Phillip Blond and John Milbank (27/1/10)
Has the wealth gap really widened? Guardian, Tom Clark (27/1/10)
Inequality in a meritocracy Financial Times, Christopher Caldwell (29/1/10)
Who wants equality if it means equal poverty? (including video) Times Online, Antonia Senior (29/1/10)
A Major miracle on equality Public Finance, Richard Reeves (29/1/10)
UK one of the worlds most unequal societies; report says The Sikh Times (29/1/10)
Only policies, not posturing, will bring down inequality Independent (28/1/10)
The Report
The full 457-page report can be accessed here.
A 44-page summary of the report can be accessed here.
A 6-page executive summary can be accessed here.
Click here for the charts and tables from the report.
Another good source of information on the distribution of income is the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings published by the Office for National Statistics.
Questions
- How can we measure inequality?
- Outline the findings of the report.
- Why is inequality so high in the UK and why has it continued to deepen?
- Have tax credits helped to reduce inequality?
- To what extent are greater equality and faster economic growth compatible economic objectives? How are incentives relevant to your answer?
- What specific policies could be adopted to give greater equality of opportunity? Identify the opportunity costs of such policies.