Tag: aggregate supply

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Deeper in debt

On 25 November, the UK government published its Spending Review 2020. This gives details of estimated government expenditure for the current financial year, 2020/21, and plans for government expenditure and the likely totals for 2021/22.

The focus of the Review is specifically on the effects of and responses to the coronavirus pandemic. It does not consider the effects of Brexit, with or without a trade deal, or plans for taxation. The Review is based on forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Because of the high degree of uncertainty over the spread of the disease and the timing and efficacy of vaccines, the OBR gives three forecast values for most variables – pessimistic, central and optimistic.

According to the central forecast, real GDP is set to decline by 11.3% in 2020, the largest one-year fall since the Great Frost of 1709. The economy is then set to ‘bounce back’ (somewhat), with GDP rising by 5.2% in 2021.

Unemployment will rise from 3.9% in 2019 to a peak of 7.5% in mid-2021, after the furlough scheme and other support for employers is withdrawn.

This blog focuses at the impact on government borrowing and debt and the implications for the future – both the funding of the debt and ways of reducing it.

Soaring government deficits and debt


Government expenditure during the pandemic has risen sharply through measures such as the furlough scheme, the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme and various business loans. This, combined with falling tax revenue, as incomes and consumer expenditure have declined, has led to a rise in public-sector net borrowing (PSNB) from 2.5% of GDP in 2019/20 to a central forecast of 19% for 2020/21 – the largest since World War II. By 2025/26 it is still forecast to be 3.9% of GDP. The figure has also been pushed up by a fall in nominal GDP for 2020/21 (the denominator) by nearly 7%. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the above chart.)

The high levels of PSNB are pushing up public-sector net debt (PSNB). This is forecast to rise from 85.5% of GDP in 2019/20 to 105.2% in 2020/21, peaking at 109.4% in 2023/24.

The exceptionally high deficit and debt levels will mean that the government misses by a very large margin its three borrowing and debt targets set out in the latest (Autumn 2016) ‘Charter for Budget Responsibility‘. These are:

  • to reduce cyclically-adjusted public-sector net borrowing to below 2% of GDP by 2020/21;
  • for public-sector net debt as a percentage of GDP to be falling in 2020/21;
  • for overall borrowing to be zero or in surplus by 2025/26.

But, as the Chancellor said in presenting the Review:

Our health emergency is not yet over. And our economic emergency has only just begun. So our immediate priority is to protect people’s lives and livelihoods.

Putting the public finances on a sustainable footing

Running a large budget deficit in an emergency is an essential policy for dealing with the massive decline in aggregate demand and for supporting those who have, or otherwise would have, lost their jobs. But what of the longer-term implications? What are the options for dealing with the high levels of debt?

1. Raising taxes. This tends to be the preferred approach of those on the left, who want to protect or improve public services. For them, the use of higher progressive taxes, such as income tax, or corporation tax or capital gains tax, are a means of funding such services and of providing support for those on lower incomes. There has been much discussion of the possibility of finding a way of taxing large tech companies, which are able to avoid taxes by declaring very low profits by diverting them to tax havens.

2. Cutting government expenditure. This is the traditional preference of those on the right, who prefer to cut the overall size of the state and thus allow for lower taxes. However, this is difficult to do without cutting vital services. Indeed, there is pressure to have higher government expenditure over the longer term to finance infrastructure investment – something supported by the Conservative government.

A downside of either of the above is that they squeeze aggregate demand and hence may slow the recovery. There was much discussion after the financial crisis over whether ‘austerity policies’ hindered the recovery and whether they created negative supply-side effects by dampening investment.

3. Accepting higher levels of debt into the longer term. This is a possible response as long as interest rates remain at record low levels. With depressed demand, loose monetary policy may be sustainable over a number of years. Quantitative easing depresses bond yields and makes it cheaper for governments to finance borrowing. Servicing high levels of debt may be quite affordable.

The problem is if inflation begins to rise. Even with lower aggregate demand, if aggregate supply has fallen faster because of bankruptcies and lack of investment, there may be upward pressure on prices. The Bank of England may have to raise interest rates, making it more expensive for the government to service its debts.

Another problem with not reducing the debt is that if another emergency occurs in the future, there will be less scope for further borrowing to support the economy.

4. Higher growth ‘deals’ with the deficit and reduces debt. In this scenario, austerity would be unnecessary. This is the ‘golden’ scenario – for the country to grow its way out of the problem. Higher output and incomes leads to higher tax revenues, and lower unemployment leads to lower expenditure on unemployment benefits. The crucial question is the relationship between aggregate demand and supply. For growth to be sustainable and shrink the debt/GDP ratio, aggregate demand must expand steadily in line with the growth in aggregate supply. The faster aggregate supply can grow, the faster can aggregate demand. In other words, the faster the growth in potential GDP, the faster can be the sustainable rate of growth of actual GDP and the faster can the debt/GDP ratio shrink.

One of the key issues is the degree of economic ‘scarring’ from the pandemic and the associated restrictions on economic activity. The bigger the decline in potential output from the closure of firms and the greater the deskilling of workers who have been laid off, the harder it will be for the economy to recover and the longer high deficits are likely to persist.

Another issue is the lack of labour productivity growth in the UK in recent years. If labour productivity does not increase, this will severely restrict the growth in potential output. Focusing on training and examining incentives, work practices and pay structures are necessary if productivity is to rise significantly. So too is finding ways to encourage firms to increase investment in new technologies.

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OBR Data

Questions

  1. What is the significance of the relationship between the rate of economic growth and the rate of interest for financing public-sector debt over the longer term?
  2. What can the government do to encourage investment in the economy?
  3. Using OBR data, find out what has happened to the output gap over the past few years and what is forecast to happen to it over the next five years. Explain the significance of the figures.
  4. Distinguish between demand-side and supply-side policies. How would you characterise the policies to tackle public-sector net debt in terms of this distinction? Do the policies have a mixture of demand- and supply-side effects?
  5. Choose two other developed countries. Examine how their their public finances have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic and the policies they are adopting to tackle the economic effects of the pandemic.
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The macroeconomic outlook over the next few years: a Covid hangover

Back in June, we examined the macroeconomic forecasts of the three agencies, the IMF, the OECD and the European Commission, all of which publish forecasts every six months. The IMF has recently published its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) and its accompanying database. Unlike the April WEO, which, given the huge uncertainty surrounding the pandemic and its economic effects, only forecast as far as 2021, the latest version forecasts as far ahead as 2025.

In essence the picture is similar to that painted in April. The IMF predicts a large-scale fall in GDP and rise in unemployment, government borrowing and government debt for 2020 (compared with 2019) across virtually all countries.

World real GDP is predicted to fall by 4.4%. For many countries the fall will be much steeper. In the UK, GDP is predicted to fall by 9.8%; in the eurozone, by 8.3%; in India, by 10.3%; in Italy, by 10.8%; in Spain, by 12.8%. There will then be somewhat of a ‘bounce back’ in GDP in 2021, but not to the levels of 2019. World real GDP is predicted to rise by 5.2% in 2021. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the growth chart.)

Unemployment will peak in some countries in 2020 and in others in 2021 depending on the speed of recovery from recession and the mobility of labour. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the unemployment chart.)

Inflation is set to fall from already low levels. Several countries are expected to see falling prices.

Government deficits (negative net lending) will be sharply higher in 2020 as a result of government measures to support workers and firms affected by lockdowns and falling demand. Governments will also receive reduced tax revenues. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the general government net lending chart.)

Government debt will consequently rise more rapidly. Deficits are predicted to fall in 2021 as economies recover and hence the rise in debt will slow down or in some cases, such as Germany, even fall. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the general government gross debt chart.)

After the rebound in 2021, global growth is then expected to slow to around 3.5% by 2025. This compares with an average of 3.8% from 2000 to 2019. Growth of advanced economies is expected to slow to 1.7%. It averaged 1.9% from 2000 to 2019. For emerging market and developing countries it is expected to slow to 4.7% from an average of 5.7% from 2000 to 2019. These figures suggest some longer-term scarring effects from the pandemic.

Uncertainties

In the short term, the greatest uncertainty concerns the extent of the second wave, the measures put in place to contain the spread of the virus and the compensation provided by governments to businesses and workers. The WEO report was prepared when the second wave was only just beginning. It could well be that countries will experience a deeper recession in 2000 and into 2021 than predicted by the IMF.

This is recognised in the forecast.

The persistence of the shock remains uncertain and relates to factors inherently difficult to predict, including the path of the pandemic, the adjustment costs it imposes on the economy, the effectiveness of the economic policy response, and the evolution of financial sentiment.

With some businesses forced to close, others operating at reduced capacity because of social distancing in the workplace and with dampened demand, many countries may find output falling again. The extent will to a large extent depend on the levels of government support.

In the medium term, it is assumed that there will be a vaccine and that economies can begin functioning normally again. However, the report does recognise the long-term scarring effects caused by low levels of investment, deskilling and demotivation of the parts of the workforce, loss of capacity and disruptions to various supply chains.

The deep downturn this year will damage supply potential to varying degrees across economies. The impact will depend on various factors … including the extent of firm closures, exit of discouraged workers from the labour force, and resource mismatches (sectoral, occupational and geographic).

One of the greatest uncertainties in the medium term concerns the stance of fiscal and monetary policies. Will governments continue to run large deficits to support demand or will they attempt to reduce deficits by raising taxes and/or reducing benefits and/or cutting government current or capital expenditure?

Will central banks continue with large-scale quantitative easing and ultra-low or even negative interest rates? Will they use novel forms of monetary policy, such as directly funding government deficits with new money or providing money directly to citizens through a ‘helicopter’ scheme (see the 2016 blog, New UK monetary policy measures – somewhat short of the kitchen sink)?

Forecasting at the current time is fraught with uncertainty. However, reports such as the WEO are useful in identifying the various factors influencing the economy and how seriously they may impact on variables such as growth, unemployment and government deficits.

Report, speeches and data

Articles

Questions

  1. Explain what is meant by ‘scarring effects’. Identify various ways in which the pandemic is likely to affect aggregate supply over the longer term.
  2. Consider the arguments for and against governments continuing to run large budget deficits over the next few years.
  3. What are the arguments for and against using ‘helicopter money’ in the current circumstances?
  4. On purely economic grounds, what are the arguments for imposing much stricter lockdowns when Covid-19 rates are rising rapidly?
  5. Chose two countries other than the UK, one industrialised and one developing. Consider what policies they are pursuing to achieve an optimal balance between limiting the spread of the virus and protecting the economy.
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MMT – a Magic Money Tree or Modern Monetary Theory?

Is there a ‘magic money tree’? Is it desirable for central banks to create money to finance government deficits?

The standard thinking of conservative governments around the world is that creating money to finance deficits will be inflationary. Rather, governments should attempt to reduce deficits. This will reduce the problem of government expenditure crowding out private expenditure and reduce the burden placed on future generations of having to finance higher government debt.

If deficits rise because of government response to an emergency, such as supporting people and businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, then, as soon as the problem begins to wane, governments should attempt to reduce the higher deficits by raising taxes or cutting government expenditure. This was the approach of many governments, including the Coalition and Conservative governments in the UK from 2010, as econommies began to recover from the 2007/8 financial crisis.

‘Modern Monetary Theory‘ challenges these arguments. Advocates of the theory support the use of higher deficits financed by monetary expansion if the money is spent on things that increase potential output as well as actual output. Examples include spending on R&D, education, infrastructure, health and housing.

Modern monetary theorists still accept that excess demand will lead to inflation. Governments should therefore avoid excessive deficits and central banks should avoid creating excessive amounts of money. But, they argue that inflation caused by excess demand has not been a problem for many years in most countries. Instead, we have a problem of too little investment and too little spending generally. There is plenty of scope, they maintain, for expanding demand. This, if carefully directed, can lead to productivity growth and an expansion of aggregate supply to match the rise in aggregate demand.

Government deficits, they argue, are not intrinsically bad. Government debt is someone else’s assets, whether in the form of government bonds, savings certificates, Treasury bills or other instruments. Provided the debt can be serviced at low interest rates, there is no problem for the government and the spending it generates can be managed to allow economies to function at near full capacity.

The following videos and articles look at modern monetary theory and assess its relevance. Not surprisingly, they differ in their support of the theory!

Videos

Articles

Questions

  1. Compare traditional Keynesian economics and modern monetary theory.
  2. Using the equation of exchange, MV = PY, what would a modern monetary theorist say about the effect of an expansion of M on the other variables?
  3. What is the role of fiscal policy in modern monetary theory?
  4. What evidence might suggest that money supply has been unduly restricted?
  5. When, according to modern monetary theory, is a rising government deficit (a) not a problem; (b) a problem?
  6. Is there any truth in the saying, ‘There’s no such thing as a magic money tree’?
  7. Provide a critique of modern monetary theory.
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A Keynesian route to recovery in output and employment?

Boris Johnson gave a speech on 30 June outlining his government’s approach to recovery from the sharpest recession on record. With the slogan ‘Build, build, build’, he said that infrastructure projects were the key to stimulating the economy. Infrastructure spending is a classic Keynesian response to recession as it stimulates aggregate demand allowing slack to be taken up, while also boosting aggregate supply, thereby allowing recovery in output while increasing potential national income.

A new ‘New deal’

He likened his approach to that of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. This was a huge stimulus between 1933 and 1939 in an attempt to lift the US economy out of the Great Depression. There was a massive programme of government spending on construction projects, such as hospitals, schools, roads, bridges and dams, including the Hoover Dam and completing the 113-mile Overseas Highway connecting mainland Florida to the Florida Keys. Altogether, there were 34 599 projects, many large-scale. In addition, support was provided for people on low incomes, the unemployed, the elderly and farmers. Money supply was expanded, made possible by leaving the Gold Standard in 1934.

There was some debate as to whether the New Deal could be classed as ‘Keynesian’. Officially, the administration was concerned to achieve a balanced budget. However, it had a separate ’emergency budget’, from which New Deal spending was financed. According to estimates by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, the total extra spending amounted to nearly 40% of US GDP as it was in 1929.

By comparison with the New Deal, the proposals of the Johnson government are extremely modest. Mostly it amounts to bringing forward spending already committed. The total of £5 billion is just 0.2% of current UK GDP.

Focusing on jobs

A recent report published by the Resolution Foundation, titled ‘The Full Monty‘, argues that as the Job Retention Scheme, under which people have been furloughed on 80% pay, is withdrawn, so unemployment is set to rise dramatically. The claimant count has already risen from 1.2m to 2.8m between March and May with the furlough scheme in place.

Policy should thus focus on job creation, especially in those sectors likely to experience the largest rise in unemployment. Such sectors include non-food retail, hospitality (pubs, restaurants, hotels, etc.), public transport, the arts, entertainment and leisure and a range of industries servicing these sectors. What is more, many of the people working in these sectors are young and low paid. Many will find it difficult to move to jobs elsewhere – partly because of a lack of qualifications and partly because of a lack of alternative jobs. The rising unemployment will raise inequality.

The Resolution Foundation report argues that policy should be focused specifically on job creation.

Policy makers should act now to minimise outflows from the hard-hit sectors – a wage subsidy scheme or a National Insurance cut in those sectors would reduce labour costs and discourage redundancies. Alongside this, the Government must pursue radical action to create jobs across the country, such as in social care and housing retrofitting, and ramp up support for the unemployed.

Dealing with hyteresis

The economy is set to recover somewhat as the lockdown is eased, but it is not expected to return to the situation before the pandemic. Many jobs will be lost permanently unless government support continues.

Even then, many firms will have closed and others will have reassessed how many workers they need to employ and whether less labour-intensive methods would be more profitable. They may take the opportunity to consider whether technology, such as AI, can replace labour; or they may prefer to employ cheap telecommuters from India or the Philippines rather than workers coming into the office.

Policies to stimulate recovery will need to take these hysteresis effects into account if unemployment is to fall back to pre-Covid rates.

Videos

Articles

Report

Questions

  1. What are the arguments for and against substantial increased government expenditure on infrastructure projects?
  2. Should the UK government spend more or less on such projects than the amount already pledged? Justify your answer.
  3. What are the arguments for and against directing all extra government expenditure towards green projects?
  4. Look through the Resolution Foundation report and summarise the findings of each of its sections.
  5. What are the arguments for and against directing all extra government expenditure towards those sectors where there is the highest rate of job losses?
  6. What form could policies to protect employment take?
  7. How should the success of policies to generate employment be measured?
  8. What form does hysteresis play on the post-Covid-19 labour market? What four shocks mean that employment will not simply return to the pre-Covid situation?
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A global supply-side shock: the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

The global economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak is uncertain but potentially very large. There has already been a massive effect on China, with large parts of the Chinese economy shut down. As the disease spreads to other countries, they too will experience supply shocks as schools and workplaces close down and travel restrictions are imposed. This has already happened in South Korea, Japan and Italy. The size of these effects is still unknown and will depend on the effectiveness of the containment measures that countries are putting in place and on the behaviour of people in self isolating if they have any symptoms or even possible exposure.

The OECD in its March 2020 interim Economic Assessment: Coronavirus: The world economy at risk estimates that global economic growth will be around half a percentage point lower than previously forecast – down from 2.9% to 2.4%. But this is based on the assumption that ‘the epidemic peaks in China in the first quarter of 2020 and outbreaks in other countries prove mild and contained.’ If the disease develops into a pandemic, as many health officials are predicting, the global economic effect could be much larger. In such cases, the OECD predicts a halving of global economic growth to 1.5%. But even this may be overoptimistic, with growing talk of a global recession.

Governments and central banks around the world are already planning measures to boost aggregate demand. The Federal Reserve, as an emergency measure on 3 March, reduced the Federal Funds rate by half a percentage point from the range of 1.5–1.75% to 1.0–1.25%. This was the first emergency rate cut since 2008.

Economic uncertainty

With considerable uncertainty about the spread of the disease and how effective containment measures will be, stock markets have fallen dramatically. The FTSE 100 fell by nearly 14% in the second half of February, before recovering slightly at the beginning of March. It then fell by a further 7.7% on 9 March – the biggest one-day fall since the 2008 financial crisis. This was specifically in response to a plunge in oil prices as Russia and Saudi Arabia engaged in a price war. But it also reflected growing pessimism about the economic impact of the coronavirus as the global spread of the epidemic accelerated and countries were contemplating more draconian lock-down measures.

Firms have been drawing up contingency plans to respond to panic buying of essential items and falling demand for other goods. Supply-chain managers are working out how to respond to these changes and to disruptions to supplies from China and other affected countries.

Firms are also having to plan for disruptions to labour supply. Large numbers of employees may fall sick or be advised/required to stay at home. Or they may have to stay at home to look after children whose schools are closed. For some firms, having their staff working from home will be easy; for others it will be impossible.

Some industries will be particularly badly hit, such as airlines, cruise lines and travel companies. Budget airlines have cancelled several flights and travel companies are beginning to offer substantial discounts. Manufacturing firms which are dependent on supplies from affected countries have also been badly hit. This is reflected in their share prices, which have seen large falls.

Longer-term effects

Uncertainty could have longer-term impacts on aggregate supply if firms decide to put investment on hold. This would also impact on the capital goods industries which supply machinery and equipment to investing firms. For the UK, already having suffered from Brexit uncertainty, this further uncertainty could prove very damaging for economic growth.

While aggregate supply is likely to fall, or at least to grow less quickly, what will happen to the balance of aggregate demand and supply is less clear. A temporary rise in demand, as people stock up, could see a surge in prices, unless supermarkets and other firms are keen to demonstrate that they are not profiting from the disease. In the longer term, if aggregate demand continues to grow at past rates, it will probably outstrip the growth in aggregate supply and result in rising inflation. If, however, demand is subdued, as uncertainty about their own economic situation leads people to cut back on spending, inflation and even the price level may fall.

How quickly the global economy will ‘bounce back’ depends on how long the outbreak lasts and whether it becomes a serious pandemic and on how much investment has been affected. At the current time, it is impossible to predict with any accuracy the timing and scale of any such bounce back.

Articles

eBook

Questions

  1. Using a supply and demand diagram, illustrate the fall in stock market prices caused by concerns over the effects of the coronavirus.
  2. Using either (i) an aggregate demand and supply diagram or (ii) a DAD/DAS diagram, illustrate how a fall in aggregate supply as a result of the economic effects of the coronavirus would lead to (a) a fall in real income and (i) a fall in the price level or (ii) a fall in inflation; (b) a fall in real income and (i) a rise in the price level or (ii) a rise in inflation.
  3. What would be the likely effects of central banks (a) cutting interest rates; (b) engaging in further quantitative easing?
  4. What would be the likely effects of governments running a larger budget deficit as a means of boosting the economy?
  5. Distinguish between stabilising and destabilising speculation. How would you characterise the speculation that has taken place on stock markets in response to the coronavirus?
  6. What are the implications of people being paid on zero-hour contracts of the government requiring workplaces to close?
  7. What long-term changes to working practices and government policy could result from short-term adjustments to the epidemic?
  8. Is the long-term macroeconomic impact of the coronavirus likely to be zero, as economies bounce back? Explain.