LARS P. SYLL

Paul Krugman — finally — admits he was wrong!

In a recent essay titled “What Economists (Including Me) Got Wrong About Globalization,” adapted from a forthcoming book on inequality, Krugman writes that he and other mainstream economists “missed a crucial part of the story” in failing to realize that globalization would lead to “hyperglobalization” and huge economic and social upheaval, particularly of the industrial middle class in America. And many of these working-class communities have been hit hard by Chinese competition, which economists made a “major mistake” in underestimating, Krugman says.

It was quite a “whoops” moment, considering all the ruined American communities and displaced millions of workers we’ve seen in the interim. And a newly humbled Krugman must consider an even more disturbing idea: Did he and other mainstream economists help put a protectionist populist, Donald Trump, in the White House with a lot of bad advice about free markets?

Michael Hirsh

Yours truly has for years been complaining about Krugman on this issue, so of course, it’s great that he finally admits he was wrong!

Another issue on which I’m having a beef with Krugman is his view that his hobbyhorse IS-LM interpretation of Keynes is fruitful and relevant for understanding monetary economies. It is time for Krugman to come out on this also and admit he has been wrong.

My own view is that IS-LM is not fruitful and relevant and that it does not adequately reflect the width and depth of Keynes’s insights on the workings of monetary economies:

1  Almost nothing in the post-General Theory writings of Keynes suggests he considered Hicks’s IS-LM anywhere near a faithful rendering of his thought. In Keynes’s canonical statement of the essence of his theory — in the famous 1937 Quarterly Journal of Economics article — there is nothing to even suggest that Keynes would have thought the existence of a Keynes-Hicks-IS-LM-theory anything but pure nonsense. John Hicks, the man who invented IS-LM in his 1937 Econometrica review of Keynes’ General Theory — “Mr. Keynes and the ‘Classics’. A Suggested Interpretation” — returned to it in an article in 1980 — “IS-LM: an explanation” — in Journal of Post Keynesian Economics. Self-critically he wrote that ”the only way in which IS-LM analysis usefully survives — as anything more than a classroom gadget, to be superseded, later on, by something better — is in application to a particular kind of causal analysis, where the use of equilibrium methods, even a drastic use of equilibrium methods, is not inappropriate.” What Hicks acknowledges in 1980 is basically that his original IS-LM model ignored significant parts of Keynes’ theory. IS-LM is inherently a temporary general equilibrium model. However — much of the discussions we have in macroeconomics are about timing and the speed of relative adjustments of quantities, commodity prices and wages — on which IS-LM doesn’t have much to say.

2  IS-LM forces to a large extent the analysis into a static comparative equilibrium setting that doesn’t in any substantial way reflect the processual nature of what takes place in historical time. To me, Keynes’s analysis is in fact inherently dynamic — at least in the sense that it was based on real historical time and not the logical-ergodic-non-entropic time concept used in most neoclassical model building. And as Niels Bohr used to say — thinking is not the same as just being logical …

3  IS-LM reduces interaction between real and nominal entities to a rather constrained interest mechanism which is far too simplistic for analyzing complex financialised modern market economies.

4  IS-LM gives no place for real money but rather trivializes the role that money and finance play in modern market economies. As Hicks, commenting on his IS-LM construct, had it in 1980 — “one did not have to bother about the market for loanable funds.” From the perspective of modern monetary theory, it’s obvious that IS-LM to a large extent ignores the fact that money in modern market economies is created in the process of financing — and not as IS-LM depicts it, something that central banks determine.

5  IS-LM is typically set in a current values numéraire framework that definitely downgrades the importance of expectations and uncertainty — and a fortiori gives too large a role for interests as ruling the roost when it comes to investments and liquidity preferences. In this regard, it is actually as bad as all the modern microfounded Neo-Walrasian-New-Keynesian models where Keynesian genuine uncertainty and expectations aren’t really modelled. Especially the two-dimensionality of Keynesian uncertainty — both a question of probability and “confidence” — has been impossible to incorporate into this framework, which basically presupposes people following the dictates of expected utility theory (high probability may mean nothing if the agent has low “confidence” in it). Reducing uncertainty to risk — implicit in most analyses building on IS-LM models — is nothing but hand waving. According to Keynes, we live in a world permeated by unmeasurable uncertainty — not quantifiable stochastic risk — which often forces us to make decisions based on anything but “rational expectations.” Keynes rather thinks that we base our expectations on the “confidence” or “weight” we put on different events and alternatives. To Keynes, expectations are a question of weighing probabilities by “degrees of belief,” beliefs that often have preciously little to do with the kind of stochastic probabilistic calculations made by the rational agents as modelled by “modern” social sciences. And often we “simply do not know.”

6  IS-LM not only ignores genuine uncertainty, but also the essentially complex and cyclical character of economies and investment activities, speculation, endogenous money, labour market conditions, and the importance of income distribution. And as Axel Leijonhufvud so eloquently notes on IS-LM economics — “one doesn’t find many inklings of the adaptive dynamics behind the explicit statics.” Most of the insights on dynamic coordination problems that made Keynes write General Theory are lost in the translation into the IS-LM framework.

The IS-LM approach is not fruitful or relevant for understanding modern monetary economies. And it does not capture Keynes’ approach to the economy other than in name. If macroeconomic models — no matter of what ilk — make assumptions, and we know that real people and markets cannot be expected to obey these assumptions, the warrants for supposing that conclusions or hypotheses of causally relevant mechanisms or regularities can be bridged, are obviously non-justifiable. A gadget is just a gadget — and brilliantly silly simple models — IS-LM included — do not help us work with the fundamental issues of modern economies any more than brilliantly silly complicated models — calibrated DSGE and RBC models included.

MMT — Krugman still does not get it!

Krugman complains that Lerner was too “cavalier” in his discussion of monetary policy since he called for the interest rate to be set at the level that produces “the most desirable level of investment” without saying exactly what that rate should be.

It’s an odd critique, since Krugman himself subscribes to the idea that monetary policy should target an invisible “neutral rate,” a so-called r-star that exists when the economy is neither depressed nor overheating. For what it’s worth, research suggests the neutral rate “may be flat-out wrong” …

But Lerner wasn’t trying to use interest rates to optimize the economy. That was a job for fiscal policy. He argued that the government should be prepared to spend whatever is necessary to sustain full employment without raising taxes or borrowing …

Krugman’s other objection is that Lerner “didn’t fully address the limitations, both technical and political, on tax hikes/or spending cuts” as a means of fighting inflation.

In fact, Lerner actually had quite a lot to say about this. Here’s the opening sentence to an entire chapter on the subject in his 1951 book “The Economics of Employment”: “We have now concluded our treatment of the economics of employment, but a word or two must be added on the politics and the administration of employment policies in general and of Functional Finance in particular” (emphasis in original) …

Krugman believes there are inherent tradeoffs between fiscal and monetary policy. Outside of the so-called liquidity trap, Krugman adopts the standard line that budget deficits crowd out private investment because deficits compete with private borrowing for a limited supply of savings.

The MMT framework rejects this, since government deficits are shown to be a source (not a use!) of private savings. Some careful studies show that crowding-out can occur, but that it tends to happen in countries where the government is not a currency issuer with its own central bank.

This seems like a disagreement we should be able to resolve either empirically or intuitively. But who knows? As Lerner wrote, “a man convinced against his will retains the same opinion still.”

Stephanie Kelton

Few issues in politics and economics are nowadays more discussed — and less understood — than public debt. Many raise their voices to urge for reducing the debt, but few explain why and in what way reducing the debt would be conducive to a better economy or a fairer society. And there are no limits to all the — especially macroeconomic — calamities and evils a large public debt is supposed to result in — unemployment, inflation, higher interest rates, lower productivity growth, increased burdens for subsequent generations, etc., etc.

But the truth is that public debt is normally nothing to fear, especially if it is financed within the country itself (but even foreign loans can be beneficent for the economy if invested in the right way). Some members of society hold bonds and earn interest on them, while others have to pay the taxes that ultimately pay the interest on the debt. The debt is not a net burden for society as a whole since the debt cancels itself out between the two groups. If the state issues bonds at a low-interest rate, unemployment can be reduced without necessarily resulting in strong inflationary pressure. And the inter-generational burden is also not a real burden since — if used in a suitable way — the debt, through its effects on investments and employment, actually makes future generations net winners. There can, of course, be unwanted negative distributional side effects for the future generation, but that is mostly a minor problem since when our children and grandchildren repay the national debt these payments will be made to our children and grandchildren.

To both Keynes and Lerner, it was evident that the state has the ability to promote full employment and a stable price level – and that it should use its powers to do so. If that means that it has to take on debt and (more or less temporarily) underbalance its budget — so let it be! Public debt is neither good nor bad. It is a means to achieve two over-arching macroeconomic goals – full employment and price stability. What is sacred is not to have a balanced budget or run down public debt per se, regardless of the effects on the macroeconomic goals. If ‘sound finance,’ austerity, and balanced budgets mean increased unemployment and destabilizing prices, they have to be abandoned.

Sadeness

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