LARS P. SYLL

Europa är inte USA

Martin Feldstein påminner oss om fundamentala skillnader och varför en valuta fungerar over there och inte alls här:

The key argument made by European officials and other defenders of the euro has been that, because a single currency works well in the United States, it should also work well in Europe. After all, both are large, continental, and diverse economies. But that argument overlooks three important differences between the US and Europe.

First, the US is effectively a single labor market, with workers moving from areas of high and rising unemployment to places where jobs are more plentiful. In Europe, national labor markets are effectively separated by barriers of language, culture, religion, union membership, and social-insurance systems …

A second important difference is that the US has a centralized fiscal system. Individuals and businesses pay the majority of their taxes to the federal government in Washington, rather than to their state (or local) authorities … There is no comparable offset in Europe, where taxes are almost exclusively paid to, and transfers received from, national governments …

The third important difference is that all US states are required by their constitutions to balance their annual operating budgets. While “rainy day” funds that accumulate in boom years are used to deal with temporary revenue shortfalls, the states’ “general obligation” borrowing is limited to capital projects like roads and schools …

None of these features of the US economy would develop in Europe even if the eurozone evolved into a more explicitly political union …

The most likely effect of strengthening political union in the eurozone would be to give Germany the power to control the other members’ budgets and prescribe changes in their taxes and spending. This formal transfer of sovereignty would only increase the tensions and conflicts that already exist between Germany and other EU countries

En tidsinställd bomb

Der Spiegel ger oss den här bilden (och glöm inte att man kan klicka på bilden för att göra den större) av storleken på statslån som förfaller till betalning i några euroländer:

Bleak prospects for the future

The prospects for the future do indeed look bleak according to the OECD:

Decisive policies must be urgently put in place to stop the euro area sovereign debt crisis from spreading and to put weakening global activity back on track, says the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook.

The euro area crisis remains the key risk to the world economy, the Outlook says. Concerns about sovereign debt sustainability are becoming increasingly widespread. If not addressed, recent contagion to countries thought to have relatively solid public finances could massively escalate economic disruption. Pressures on bank funding and balance sheets increase the risk of a credit crunch.

Another serious downside risk is that no action would be agreed to offset the large degree of fiscal tightening implied by current law in the United States. This could tip the economy into a recession that monetary policy could do little to counter.

Better late than never – or as Paul Krugman has it:

That’s all perfectly sensible. But how did we get here? In large part, by listening to people like … the OECD, which demanded both fiscal austerity and interest rate hikes back in early 2010. And yes, it was the same people now running scared of the consequences of those spending cuts and rate hikes.

Oj så fel det kan bli trots alla dessa “rigorösa” och “precisa” modeller!

Neoklassiska nationalekonomer brukar ofta – i linje med Milton Friedmans metodologiska instrumentalism  – säga att det inte har någon betydelse hur realistiska de antaganden modellerna man laborerar med  är. Huvudsaken är  att prediktionerna blir riktiga.

Om det nu är så kan vi bara dra en enda slutsats – kasta skiten på soptippen! För oj vad fel de har haft!

Simon Potter har analyserat de prediktioner Federal Reserve Bank of New York gjort över utvecklingen av real BNP och arbetslöshet under åren 2007-2010. Det visar sig att prediktionerna slog fel med respektive 5.9% och 4.4% (vilket motsvarar 6 miljoner arbetslösa):

Economic forecasters never expect to predict precisely. One way of measuring the accuracy of their forecasts is against previous forecast errors. When judged by forecast error performance metrics from the macroeconomic quiescent period that many economists have labeled the Great Moderation, the New York Fed research staff forecasts, as well as most private sector forecasts for real activity before the Great Recession, look unusually far off the mark.

    One source for such metrics is a paper by Reifschneider and Tulip (2007). They analyzed the forecast error performance of a range of public and private forecasters over 1986 to 2006 (that is, roughly the period that most economists associate with the Great Moderation in the United States).

    On the basis of their analysis, one could have expected that an October 2007 forecast of real GDP growth for 2008 would be within 1.3 percentage points of the actual outcome 70 percent of the time. The New York Fed staff forecast at that time was for growth of 2.6 percent in 2008. Based on the forecast of 2.6 percent and the size of forecast errors over the Great Moderation period, one would have expected that 70 percent of the time, actual growth would be within the 1.3 to 3.9 percent range. The current estimate of actual growth in 2008 is -3.3 percent, indicating that our forecast was off by 5.9 percentage points.

    Using a similar approach to Reifschneider and Tulip but including forecast errors for 2007, one would have expected that 70 percent of the time the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2009 should have been within 0.7 percentage point of a forecast made in April 2008. The actual forecast error was 4.4 percentage points, equivalent to an unexpected increase of over 6 million in the number of unemployed workers. Under the erroneous assumption that the 70 percent projection error band was based on a normal distribution, this would have been a 6 standard deviation error, a very unlikely occurrence indeed.

Med andra ord – dessa tvärsäkra mainstream-ekonomer med sina rigorösa, precisa och matematiska modeller, hade fel. Och vi andra får betala för det. 

Eurofördel? I’ll be dipped!

Frågan om Sverige ska ansluta sig till EMU dyker då och då upp i debatten. I Tillämpad makroekonomi (SNS, 4 uppl 2011) har exempelvis ekonomiprofessorn Harry Flam ett kapitel som diskuterar huruvida Sverige skulle förlora eller vinna på att gå med i EMU. Här radas de vanliga argumenten för (ökad utrikeshandel och investeringar, minskad valutaväxling, mer integrerade finansiella marknader m m) och mot (dålig penningpolitisk anpassning till enskilda länders behov, premiering av kortsiktig och oansvarig finanspolitik m m) upp. Efter att ha vägt dessa för- och nackdelar mot varandra kommer sedan Flam fram till bedömningen att

det är oklart om de makroekonomiska kostnaderna av att vara med i den monetära unionen kan förväntas vara större eller mindre än de makroekonomiska kostnaderna av att stå utanför, och att de mikroekonomiska vinsterna – i form av ökad handel med varor, ökade investeringar och ökad finansiell integration – överväger.

Jo man tackar! Fördelar med finansiell integration? Låt oss titta lite på hur det ser ut där ute i verkligheten och inte bara hänge oss åt lek med tankemodeller:

    Källa: Der Spiegel