Economists Are Economissed

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Published on Tuesday, June 15, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

Surprises in Store for Economists

Some analysts are shocked that US retail sales have declined. Have they lost their grasp of basic economic concepts?

by Dean Baker

The commerce department reported that retail sales in May were down by 1.2% from April. This surprised most economists who had expected a modest increase. The media were filled with accounts of economists trying to explain why consumers were still reluctant to open up their wallets and spend in a big way. It would have been much more interesting to hear accounts of why economists were surprised.There is always a large random element in month-to-month movements in retail sales or any other economic variable. Therefore no one is ever going to be able to explain these changes with any precision. (The data are also subject to large revisions, so it is entirely possible that revised data will look very different from the report released last week (pdf).)
Nonetheless, there is little basis for the surprise shown by so many economic analysts. With few exceptions these analysts failed to see the $8tn housing bubble, the collapse of which sank the economy. Remarkably, even now they apparently cannot understand its importance.
To put it as simply as possible (so even an economist can understand it), the housing bubble was driving the economy in the period prior to its collapse, beginning in 2007. It drove the economy in two ways. The run up in house prices led to a building boom. Residential construction, which is typically less than 4% of GDP, rose to more than 6%, creating more than $300bn in additional annual demand. A bubble in non-residential real estate added perhaps another $150bn to annual demand.
The bubble also drove the economy through the effect of housing wealth on consumption. Economists usually estimate that $1 of additional housing wealth increases annual consumption by between 5-7 cents. This implies that the $8tn of housing bubble wealth would lead increase consumption by $400bn to $560bn a year.
With most of the bubble wealth eliminated by the collapse of house prices over the last three years, we should expect a sharp drop in consumption. Furthermore, stock prices have lost a bit less than a third of their value (around $6tn), which we should expect to cause a further decline in consumption. With the stock wealth effect estimated at 3-4 cents on the dollar, the decline in stock prices should have reduced annual consumption by $180bn to $240bn. In total we should expect to see annual consumption have dropped by between $600bn and $900bn as a result of the loss of housing and stock wealth.
This is all very simple arithmetic and basic economics. Consumption had been driven by the housing bubble prior to the recession. Now that the bubble has collapsed and trillions of dollars of wealth has disappeared we should expect much lower levels of consumption. To flip this around, the savings rate, which had averaged more than 8% in the decades prior to the 90s, fell to near zero in the years leading up to the recession. Now that the bubble has collapsed, we should expect consumption to fall and saving to return back to its normal level. In fact, it might even go higher since the huge cohort of baby boomers is now mostly in their 50s and most have almost nothing saved for retirement. This might lead savings rates to go above their long-term average.
There seems very little room for argument in this story. The existence and housing and stock wealth effects are among the least questioned propositions in economics. Nor is there too much dispute about their size. How could any economist see the collapse of an $8tn housing bubble and the destruction of more than $6tn in stock wealth and not expect to see a substantial decline in consumption?
Yet, we have dozens of economists being cited in newspapers and broadcast news, all saying that they are surprised by weak consumption. If anything the surprise should be that consumption is still as strong as it is. The saving rate is still near 4%, far below its historic average. Why on earth would any economist expect it to go still lower?
The reason that consumers are not spending more money has nothing to do with attitudes. The reason that most consumers aren't spending is the same reason that homeless people don't spend much money: they don't have any.
Economists used to be able to understand basic economic concepts. Apparently, most have lost this ability. As a result we are likely to see many more surprised economists and much proposed in the way of very bad economic policy.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

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Deficit Reduction Doesn't Solve Unemployment

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Published on Monday, June 7, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
Robbed of Jobs by the Deficit Cultists
The latest US jobs report shows how feeble this recovery is. Yet those managing the economy are set on a low-employment path

by Dean Baker
Friday's US jobs report caught most economic analysts by surprise. After touting the strength of the recovery for months, they had to come to grips with the fact that the economy just is not creating very many jobs.

If the temporary jobs generated by the census are pulled out of the count, the economy created just 20,000 jobs in May. The average rate of growth of non-census jobs over the last three months has been just 130,000 a month, only slightly faster than the growth of the workforce. At this rate of job growth, it will take decades, not years, to get back to normal levels of unemployment. It's time that we stop the happy talk about recovery and get serious about the country's economic problems.

Once again, the reason for this downturn is very simple, even if most of the country's top economists were (and are) unable to see it. We saw an $8tn housing bubble and a somewhat smaller bubble in non-residential real estate collapse. This bubble had been driving the economy prior to the recession.

The bubbles directly generated close to $500bn in annual demand by stimulating construction. The housing wealth created by the bubble indirectly spurred another $500bn in demand by lifting consumption. With the destruction of this wealth consumption has now been drastically curtailed. The question is not one of consumer sentiments. Consumers are not spending for the same reason that homeless people don't spend: they lack the money.

The $1tn plus in lost demand is the cause of the downturn and there is no obvious basis for replacing it. The stimulus package pushed a bit more than $300 billion a year into the economy, but close to half of this was offset by cutbacks and tax increases at the state and local level. The negative impact of the state and local actions will intensify after 1 July when most new fiscal years begin.

There will be additional downward pressure on consumption coming from further drops in house prices. The first-time buyer tax credit, along with other supports for the housing market, temporarily reversed the drop in prices. However, with the end of the initial credit, and now the expiration of the extended credit on 30 April, house prices are again falling and are likely to drop at an accelerating rate in the second half of 2010. Purchase mortgage applications fell to their lowest level since April 1997 last week, suggesting that the falloff in demand is likely to be substantial.

The crisis in Europe is another drag on the economy. As countries across Europe are forced to adopt contractionary fiscal policies, growth in the region will weaken as will imports from the United States. The decline in the euro relative to the dollar will further reduce exports, as US goods become more expensive in the eurozone countries.

Even the end of the census jobs will be a drag on the economy. The census is currently employing more than 500,000 workers. The wages of these workers are helping to sustain demand in the economy. When the census lays off most of these workers in June and July, another source of demand will be eliminated.

All of these factors dampening demand should have been evident even before last Friday, but May's weak job report should make the recovery's weakness so evident that even an economist can't miss it. At this point, we are presented with the option of taking steps to further stimulate the economy such as an extensive jobs programme, or facing years of unnecessarily high unemployment. (Work-sharing is another option that should be considered, especially if we can't get the political support for more stimulus. As a result of an effective work-sharing policy, Germany's unemployment rate has actually fallen slightly even though it has had a steeper downturn than the US.)

Unfortunately, the deficit cultists are making it likely that the country will follow the path of high unemployment. This will mean an enormous amount of unnecessary pain for millions of workers and their families. These people will be out of work not because they lack the necessary skills or don't have a willingness to work – they were working just two years ago.

No, today's unemployed are out of work because the people who are managing the economy don't have the skills necessary to do their job. And the incompetents who are managing the economy are all getting very well paid for their work. That is not good economic policy.
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

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Dean Baker Suggests Solution to Unemployment Crisis

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Published on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
Nice Work If You Can Share It
If Congress is serious about addressing unemployment, it will act on bills that aim to strengthen work-sharing programmes

by Dean Baker

The housing bubble and subsequent crash were the result of extreme incompetence on the part of the country's top economic policymakers. Somehow these people could not see, or did not care about, the dangers of an $8tn housing bubble.

Unfortunately, economic policymaking is not like most jobs where workers get fired when they make serious mistakes. In economics, they just keep getting promoted. Therefore, the people who sank the economy are for the most part the same group of people still designing policy today. Now this group of incompetent economists is telling the rest of us that we are going to have to endure five more years of high unemployment.

However, the rest of the country should not be forced to suffer even more just because those determining economic policy cannot do their jobs. We know how to get the unemployment rate down. Keynes taught us more than 70 years ago that we just have to spend money to eliminate mass unemployment. People work for money, if the government spends, people will work. It's pretty straightforward.

But, the deficit hawks seems to have largely closed this route. Members of Congress somehow think that they are helping our children by putting their parents out of work.

Fortunately, we can even find a way to create jobs that can keep the deficit hawks happy. It's called "work-sharing". The basic point is so simple that even an economist can understand it.

Instead of paying workers to be unemployed - in the form of unemployment benefits - we pay workers to stay employed, but work fewer hours. In effect, to avoid one worker from being laid off, several workers put in somewhat less time on the job and take a small cut in pay. Germany and the Netherlands have used this path to keep their unemployment rates from rising even though they have experienced steeper downturns than the US.

The way the system works in Germany, a firm will cut back the hours of its workers by 20%. The government then replaces 60% of the lost pay (12% of total pay). The firm is expected to kick in 20% of the lost pay (4% of total pay) and the worker ends up taking home 4% less pay.

In this scenario the worker ends up working 20% fewer hours for 4% less pay. This can mean, for example, that the worker ends up working a four-day week instead of a five-day week. Given the savings on work-related expenses, like transportation and childcare, most workers would almost certainly end up better off under a work-sharing arrangement than they are now.

While the economy is past its period of rapid job loss, a huge number of workers still lose their jobs each month through the economy's normal job churning. Each month, companies lay off or fire close to 2 million workers. These job losses are largely offset by hiring by other firms, so that the net change in jobs has been a small negative in recent months. However, if we could just reduce the rate of job loss by 10%, then it would be equivalent to creating an additional 200,000 jobs a month or 2.4 million jobs a year. This would get us back to full employment in two years, rather than five or six, as is currently projected.

There are other potential benefits from work sharing. The reduction in work time could give companies an opportunity to adopt more family friendly work practices. For example, they could adopt a policy of paid family leave or paid sick days on a trial basis during the downturn.

There would also be environmental benefits to reducing work hours. Suppose everyone worked a four-day week so that we reduced the number of commutes by 20%. This would substantially reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with getting to and from work. The fact that Europeans tend to work far fewer hours than we do is undoubtedly one of the main reasons that their per person carbon emissions are about half of the US level.

There are already 17 states that have work-sharing programmes in place. There are bills in both the House and Senate that would strengthen these programmes and give support to other states to set up their own programmes. If Congress is serious about addressing unemployment, it will act on these bills.
© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer ( www.conservativenannystate.org) and the more recently published Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of The Bubble Economy. He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues. You can find it at the American Prospect's web site.

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