Why Negative Interest Rate Policy (NIRP) is Ineffective and Dangerous

By Thomas Palley

NIRP is quickly becoming a consensus policy within the economics establishment. This paper argues that consensus is dangerously wrong, resting on flawed theory and flawed policy assessment. Regarding theory, NIRP draws on fallacious pre-Keynesian economic logic that asserts interest rate adjustment can ensure full employment. That fallacious logic has been augmented by ZLB economics which claims times of severe demand shortage may require negative interest rates, which policy must deliver since the market cannot. Regarding policy assessment, NIRP turns a blind eye to the possibility that negative interest rates may reduce AD, cause financial fragility, create a macroeconomics of whiplash owing to contradictions between policy today and tomorrow, promote currency wars that undermine the international economy, and foster a political economy that spawns toxic politics. Worst of all, NIRP maintains and encourages the flawed model of growth, based on debt and asset price inflation, which has already done such harm.

Read more here.

Trading Up: A Critical Perspective on Jobs, Governance and Security in US Trade Policy

This Tuesday June 28, 2016, the AFL-CIO is holding a conference titled “Trading Up: A Critical Perspective on Jobs, Governance & Security in U.S. Trade Policy,” from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in Washington, DC. The full program is here. Participants include Joseph Stiglitz, Dean Baker, Tom Palley, Rob Scott, Jeff Faux, among others.

You can join online for what should be an lively and insightful debate—especially given recent developments around the Brexit and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

You can watch the conference here and join in the discussion online using #BetterTrade. Please tweet any questions for panelists to conference organizer Celeste Drake (@cdrakefairtrade).

Tom Palley on Inequality and Growth

New paper published by PERI. From the abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between inequality and growth in the neo-Kaleckian and Cambridge growth models. The paper explores the channels whereby functional and personal income distribution impact growth. The growth – inequality relationship can be negative or positive, depending on the economy’s characteristics. Contrary to widespread claims, inequality per se does not impact growth through macroeconomic channels. Instead, both growth and inequality are impacted by changes in the underlying forms and pattern of income payments. However, inequality is critical at the microeconomic level as it explains differences in household propensities to consume which are at the foundation of neo-Kaleckian and Cambridge growth theory.

Read full paper here.

Tom Palley on Inequality, the financial crisis and stagnation

From the abstract:

This paper examines several mainstream explanations of the financial crisis and stagnation and the role they attribute to income inequality. Those explanations are contrasted with a structural Keynesian explanation. The role of income inequality differs substantially, giving rise to different policy recommendations. That highlights the critical importance of economic theory. Theory shapes the way we understand the world, thereby shaping how we respond to it. The theoretical narrative we adopt therefore implicitly shapes policy. That observation applies forcefully to the issue of income inequality, the financial crisis a nd stagnation, making it critical we get the story right.

Read full paper here.

Tom Palley on Paul Krugman and Free Trade

Tom's new post titled 'Self-Protectionist Moment: Paul Krugman Protects Himself and the Establishment' criticizes Krugman's role as an establishment economist and defender of free trade. He says:

Paul Krugman has a new op-ed ('A Protectionist Moment?') in which he tries to walk away from his own contribution as an elite trade economist to the damage done by globalization, while also lending his political support to Hillary Clinton and the neoliberal globalization wing of the Democratic Party. 

His article inadvertently spotlights all that is wrong with the economics profession through the lens of the trade debate. 

On one hand, Krugman writes 'So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam, which voters probably sense even if they don’t know exactly what form it’s taking. On the other hand, he writes 'In this, as in many other things, Sanders currently benefits from the luxury of irresponsibility: he’s never been anywhere close to the levers of power, so he could take principled-sounding but arguably feckless stances in a way that Clinton couldn’t and can’t.'

Krugman has been a booster of trade and globalization for thirty years: marginally more restrained than other elite economists, but still a booster."

Read full post here.

PS: I had discussed recently Krugman's history as a free trader turned 'protectionist' (note that I personally don't like the terms free trader or protectionist; t's all about managed trade, and how and for what purpose to manage it) here. As I noted, behind the veneer of change "Krugman remains as conventional as he can be. He avoids telling you that trade has negative distributive effects, and that it might negatively affect industrial employment, and potential growth."

Tom Palley on Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) Economics

From the abstract:

This paper explores zero lower bound (ZLB) economics. The ZLB is widely invoked to explain stagnation and it fits with the long tradition that argues Keynesian economics is a special case based on nominal rigidities. The ZLB represents the newest rigidity. Contrary to ZLB economics, not only does a laissez-faire monetary economy lack a mechanism for delivering the natural rate of interest, it may also lack such an interest rate. Moreover, the ZLB can be a stabilizing rigidity that prevents negative nominal interest rates exacerbating excess supply conditions.

Read full paper here.

What Tom Palley Got Right: 10 year edition

By Tom Palley

Ten years ago (September 2005) I launched my website. To mark this anniversary, here are ten postings that I think got it right. Many of them are included in my book, The Economic Crisis: Notes From The Underground (2012).

1. Keynesianism: what it is and why it still matters (September 18, 2005). My first post. What was intellectually unfashionable back then is now in.

2. The Questionable Legacy of Alan Greenspan (October 16, 2005). Raining on the Maestro’s parade was not popular.

3. Winner’s curse: The Torment of Chairman-designate Bernanke (November 4, 2005). I suspect Mrs. Bernanke wishes Mr. Bernanke read this before accepting the job.

Read rest here.

Palley on economic stagnation

Tom's new paper titled "The US Economy: Explaining Stagnation and Why It Will Persist." It's a policy problem, not a structural phenomenon. The abstract:

This paper examines the major competing interpretations of the economic crisis in the US and explains the rebound of neoliberal orthodoxy. It shows how US policymakers acted to stabilize and save the economy, but failed to change the underlying neoliberal economic policy model. That failure explains the emergence of stagnation, which is likely to endure. Current economic conditions in the US smack of the mid-1990s. The 1990s expansion proved unsustainable and so will the current modest expansion. However, this time it is unlikely to be followed by financial crisis because of the balance sheet cleaning that took place during the last crisis.

Read full paper here.

Inequality, the Financial Crisis and Stagnation

By Thomas Palley

This paper examines several mainstream explanations of the financial crisis and stagnation and the role they attribute to income inequality. Those explanations are contrasted with a structural Keynesian explanation. The role of income inequality differs substantially, giving rise to different policy recommendations. That highlights the critical importance of economic theory. Theory shapes the way we understand the world, thereby shaping how we respond to it. The theoretical narrative we adopt therefore implicitly shapes policy. That observation applies forcefully to the issue of income inequality, the financial crisis and stagnation, making it critical we get the story right.

Read rest here.

More Jobs, Flat Wages: Trade and the Trade Deficit Continue to Hurt Us

By Thomas Palley

April’s Employment Report showed a gain of 223,000 jobs and a further one-tenth percent decline in the unemployment rate to 5.4 percent. The good news is the report shows the economy continues to nudge forward and create jobs for newcomers into the labor force. The bad news is the economy is not growing fast enough to raise wages.

Average hourly earnings for production & non-supervisory workers, who are eighty percent of the workforce, are up just 1.85 percent over the past year. In April, the rate of wage increase actually declined.

The broad (U-6) measure of unemployment stands at 10.8 percent, which is far above the level of past economic cycles. Furthermore, unemployment is widespread across all business sectors. The labor force participation rate also remains at a historically low level, indicating that many workers stand ready to re-enter the work force when jobs become available. Together, these conditions show labor supply is plentiful and there is no threat of inflationary shortages.

Read rest here.

More Jobs, Still Weak Wage Growth: The Federal Reserve Must Wait

By Thomas Palley

February’s employment report showed a gain of 295,000 jobs and a decline in the unemployment rate to 5.5%. The report is another in a string of strong employment reports, but it also contains depressingly familiar news about weak wage growth and millions of workers still short of work.

Job gains were spread widely across all sectors, with particularly strong gains in the service sector. Construction added another 29,000 jobs despite bad weather, and manufacturing added 8,000 jobs. The only significant weaknesses were in mining (down 8,000) and petroleum and coal products (down 6,000), reflecting lower energy commodity prices.

On the other side of the ledger, there continues to be abundant labor supply. Though the unemployment rate ticked down to 5.5%, there are still 8.7 million unemployed workers, another 6.6 million workers who are working part-time but want full-time work, and a further 6.5 million workers who would enter the labor force if a job were available. That totals 21.8 million workers who would like more work, which provides clear evidence we are still far from full employment.

Read rest here.

The U.S. Federal Reserve and Shared Prosperity

By Thomas Palley

The Federal Reserve is a hugely powerful institution whose policies have an enormous effect throughout the economy. For that reason, it is doubtful the United States can achieve shared prosperity without the policy cooperation of the Fed.

Now, with the economy stronger, there is debate over whether the Federal Reserve should raise interest rates. That conversation is important, but it is also too narrow.

It keeps policy locked into a failed status quo which has seen the Fed consistently take care of Wall Street first, while placing the concerns of Main Street a distant second. Though the Great Recession has triggered some policy shift toward helping ordinary Americans, much more is needed.

Read rest here.

Economists Without Borders (Economistes Sans Frontières)

By Thomas Palley

Inspired by the work of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), I have recently started a project called Economists Without Borders (Economistes Sans Frontières). Its purpose is to inoculate the global economy against the virus of neoliberalism. Last week, I had two difficult “missions” to Vienna and Warsaw.

In Vienna, I confronted an outbreak of the neoliberal globalization – free trade strain of the virus. Without doubt, this is the most virulent and dangerous of all strains. People who get infected become blind to all evidence, deaf to all argument and prone to intellectual condescension. Massachusetts Avenue in Washington DC is a hot zone of infection. The bad news is that if you are over forty and infected it is doubtful you can be cured. However, younger patients have a chance of recovery. Here is the anti-viral I prescribed titled “The Theory of Global Imbalances: Mainstream Economics vs. Structural Keynesianism”.

In Warsaw, I confronted an outbreak of Milton Friedmanism which is one of the oldest strains of neoliberal virus. Friedmanism is a gateway virus that weakens defenses against other neoliberal strains and younger minds are particularly susceptible to it. The good news is that if diagnosed early there is a good chance of recovery. However, if treatment is delayed, intellectual ossification and closed-mindedness sets in. This ossification is almost always associated with inflation obsessive compulsive disorder and austerity fever. Here is the treatment I recommend titled “Milton Friedman’s Economics and Political Economy: An Old Keynesian Critique”.

Restoring Shared Prosperity: A Policy Agenda From Leading Keynesian Economists, December 2013, PDF available at www.thomaspalley.com, book available at Amazon.com.

Rethinking wage vs. profit-led growth theory with implications for policy analysis

By Thomas Palley

The distinction between wage-led and profit-led growth is a major feature of Post-Keynesian economics and it has triggered an extensive econometric literature aimed at identifying whether economies are wage or profit-led. That literature treats the economy’s character as exogenously given. This paper questions that assumption and shows an economy’s character is endogenous and subject to policy influence. This generates a Post-Keynesian analogue of the Lucas critique whereby the econometrically identified character of the economy depends on policy rather than being a natural characteristic. Over the past twenty years, policy has made economies appear more profit-led by lowering workers’ share of the wage bill and tax rates on shareholder income. Increasing workers’ wage bill share increases growth and capacity utilization regardless of whether the economy is wage-led, profit-led or conflictive. That speaks to making it the primary focus of policy efforts.

Read rest here.

PS: Tom's paper is in the standard Kaleckian approach in which investment is a function of capacity utilization and some measure of profit (rate or share; both are related). The so-called Kaleckian model suggests that investment is to some extent autonomous (independent of income) and not simply derived demand. With Esteban Pérez we have criticized the Kaleckian (not Kalecki, which did not develop these family of models, which are in effect a result of Joan Robinson's model) here. In our view, the distinction between profit and wage-led in a model with an independent investment function is problematic. In a sense, although we have a different (Kaldorian, based on the supermultiplier) modelling strategy, we agree with Tom's conclusion, namely: the system only appears to be profit-led, since "increasing workers’ wage bill share increases growth and capacity utilization." That's unambiguous, and should be a policy goal.

More on the IMF and fiscal policy and Blanchard's rethinking of macroeconomics

I wrote a few days ago on the IMF's persistent views on fiscal policy, and how these views are rooted in an unchanged perception of how the macroeconomy works.  The new Fiscal Monitor tends to support my previous position. The policy recommendations, in the case of advanced economies, suggest that:

"Fiscal efforts in the last five years have stabilized the average debt-to-GDP ratio. Nevertheless, it is still expected to exceed 100 percent of GDP at the end of the decade. It is important to continue to reduce debt to safer levels and rebuild fiscal buffers.

Further fiscal adjustment is needed in most advanced economies to bring down debt ratios to safer levels... reining in age-related Debt (percent of GDP) spending could reduce longer-term fiscal risks."

Why debt ratios have to fall is an incognita, given that we now know that there is no evidence for a 100 percent, or any other for that matter, threshold that leads to lower growth. And it's really annoying that they still want to cut spending on pensions, and perhaps push for privatization (even Chile's famous case now is not an example anymore). For developing economies:

"the time has come to rebuild the fiscal buffers used during the crisis, and to strengthen the institutional fiscal policy framework."

In this case, the notion is that inflation is around the corner, and, hence, that 'emerging' markets are close to full employment. In sum:

"Fiscal consolidation is called for in many economies, advanced and emerging, to reduce high public debt ratios and rebuild fiscal buffers used during the crisis."

More importantly the IMF warns that the higher rates of interest in advanced economies might lead to a crisis in the developing world. They say:

"The historical record indicates that the unwinding of monetary policy support in advanced economies can have a material impact on emerging market public debt costs and on the incidence of fiscal stress episodes."

This suggests that emerging markets have to make an additional effort to promote fiscal adjustment, since the interests costs will go up soon. I'm not only very skeptical about the idea that developing economies are close to their potential output levels, but also about the risk that interest rates will grow substantially in advanced economies. Just check the IMF growth forecasts for the developed world, and you'll see that the probability of higher rates of interest anytime soon are exaggerated.

In addition, Blanchard, the IMF counselor, has published a new paper in line with his previous effort to re-think and evaluate macroeconomics. The interesting thing is that now he suggest more openly that there is a certain consensus between Rational Expectations authors like Lucas and New Keynesians like him and say Krugman. He tells us that:

"the old fresh water/salt water distinction has become largely irrelevant... Fifty years ago, Samuelson (1955) wrote: 

'In recent years, 90 per cent of American economists have stopped being 'Keynesian economists' or 'Anti-Keynesian economists.' Instead, they have worked toward a synthesis of whatever is valuable in older economics and in modern theories of income determination. The result might be called neo-classical economics and is accepted, in its broad outlines, by all but about five per cent of extreme left-wing and right-wing writers.'

I would guess we are not yet at such a corresponding stage today. But we may be getting there."

The consensus is the New Keynesian (NK) model as represented by Clarida et al (1999) and Woodford (2003), neo-Wicksellian really, but that's another story. Funny thing though. According to him: "One striking (and unpleasant) characteristic of the basic NK model is that there is no unemployment!" He explains that this can be circumvented by assuming that:

"unemployment arises from the fact that the labor market is a decentralized market, where, at any time, some workers are looking for jobs, while some jobs are looking for workers... this implies that the wage—and by implication, the cost of labor, employment, and unemployment—depends on the nature of bargaining... It allows one to think about the effects of labor market institutions on the natural rate of unemployment."

Doesn't matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it's still a pig. The search model proposed basically suggests that unemployment results from frictions, and it would still be true that to solve it, eliminating frictions and reducing wages would lead to the ubiquitous natural rate. Truly Gattopardo Economics, as Tom Palley has called it.

PS: The comic strip above, Mafalda, got it right back in the 1960s. Her mom asks her to pick up her knitted sweater she left on the floor, and she says that she doesn't need to obey, since in her playdate with her friends she was a president. Her mom, astutely as Mafalda perceives, tells her she is the World Bank, the Paris Club and the IMF. Even kids in the periphery know who is really in charge.

The theory of global imbalances: mainstream economics vs. structural Keynesianism

By Tom Palley

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis there was much debate about global trade imbalances. Prima facie, the imbalances seem a significant problem. However, acknowledging that would question mainstream economics’ celebratory stance toward globalization. That tension prompted an array of explanations which explained the imbalances while retaining the claim that globalization is economically beneficial. This paper surveys those new theories. It contrasts them with the structural Keynesian explanation that views the imbalances as an inevitable consequence of neoliberal globalization. The paper also describes how globalization created a political economy that supported the system despite its proclivity to generate trade imbalances.

Read more here.

Tom Palley on New Keynesianism as a Club

Tom Palley discusses the fact that New Keynesian have 'rediscovered' several of the ideas that other Keynesians, in particular the more heterodox sort (but not only, he includes James Tobin too), without properly acknowledging them. In his words:

"For almost thirty years, New Keynesians have dismissed other Keynesians and not bothered to stay acquainted with their research. But now that the economic crisis has forced awareness, the right thing is to acknowledge and incorporate that research."

Read rest here. By the way, Tobin, in his little book Asset Accumulation and Economic Activity, discusses why even with price flexibility the system does not have a tendency to full employment, being the closest to the alternative Keynesian ideas, or arguably to Keynes' own views. For Minsky's review of that book, in which he also criticizes Tobin for dismissing the research of post-Keynesians, go here.

A debate on Endogenous Money and Effective Demand: Keen, Fiebiger, Lavoie and Palley

The last issue of the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) has a debate between Steve Keen with Brett Fiebiger, Marc Lavoie and Tom Palley. Two papers are available for download (Keen and Lavoie's). Tom's paper is available as a working paper here.

The basis for Steve's defense of endogenous money is based on the works of Schumpeter, as developed by the latter's student Hyman Minsky. In his words:

"The proposition that effective demand exceeds income is not a new one: it can be found in both Schumpeter and Minsky (and arguably in Keynes's writings after The General Theory, though not in as definitive a form – see Keynes 1937*, p. 247). A difference between income and expenditure, with the gap filled by the endogenous creation of money, was a foundation of Schumpeter's vision of the entrepreneurial role in capitalism. Minsky's attempt to reconcile endogenous money and sectoral balances is the closest antecedent to the argument I make, but I will start in chronological order with Schumpeter's analysis."

I have noted before that the idea of endogenous money is NOT central for heterodox approaches, since Wicksell and the whole modern New Keynesian consensus adopts it. And perfectly conventional authors like Irving Fisher had introduced debt in their models too. I also noted that Schumpeter is essentially a Real Business Cycle (innovations are nothing but exogenous productivity shocks) author, which thought that both short-run output and employment and long-run growth were determined by supply-side factors. So in general I'm not a great fan of having Schumpeter as a staring point, or the notion that to introduce debt and endogenous money is per se a critique of the mainstream.

In that respect, I tend to agree with Tom's point that it is the way in which endogenous money and debt are introduced in the model that matters. Keen's use of a variation of Fisher's equation of exchange, as pointed out by Tom, is troublesome. In Tom's words:

"The Fisher equation constitutes the monetarist framework for macroeconomics. Income-expenditure accounting constitutes the Keynesian framework and it offers an alternative approach to understanding the AD, credit, endogenous money nexus."

In fact, in the equation of exchange framework the presumption is that demand would adjust (in Steve's approach with endogenous money) up to the point that it meets supply at the optimal level (also something that would be perfectly in line with  Schumpeter). The whole point of the income-expenditure framework is that it puts demand in charge of the level of activity.

At any rate, a good debate that it's worth checking out. Enjoy!

* J.M. Keynes (1937), "Alternative Theories of the Rate of Interest," 47, Economic Journal, pp. 241-252. Available here (subscription required).

Tom Palley on the Phillips Curve

Tom has written a short note titled “The Phillips Curve: Missing the Obvious and Looking in All the Wrong Places.” From the intro:

There is an old story about a policeman who sees a drunk looking for something under a streetlight and asks what he is looking for. The drunk replies he has lost his car keys and the policeman joins in the search. A few minutes later the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here and the drunk replies “No, I lost them in the park.” The policeman then asks “So why are you looking here?” to which the drunk replies “Because this is where the light is.”That story has much relevance for the economics profession’s approach to the Phillips curve.

Read more here.

Tom Palley on Milton Friedman’s economics and political economy

By Thomas Palley

Milton Friedman’s influence on the economics profession has been enormous. In part, his success was due to political forces that have made neoliberalism the dominant global ideology, but Friedman also rode those forces and contributed to them. Friedman’s professional triumph is testament to the weak intellectual foundations of the economics profession which accepted ideas that are conceptually and empirically flawed. His success has taken economics back in a pre-Keynesian direction and squeezed Keynesianism out of the academy. Friedman’s thinking also frames so-called new Keynesian economics which is simply new classical macroeconomics with the addition of imperfect competition and nominal rigidities. By enabling the claim that macroeconomics is fully characterized by a divide between new Keynesian and new classical macroeconomics, new Keynesianism closes the pincer that excludes old Keynesianism. As long as that pincer holds, economics will remain under Friedman’s shadow.

Read paper here.