Sergio Cesaratto’s Debate With Marc Lavoie On Whether The Euro Area Crisis Is A Balance-Of-Payments Crisis

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Sergio Cesaratto has a new paper Balance Of Payments Or Monetary Sovereignty? In Search Of The EMU’s Original Sin – A Reply To Lavoie. (html link, pdf link)

I obviously agree with Sergio Cesaratto.

As long as there is no supranational fiscal authority, a Euro Area nation’s economic success is more restricted by its exports than otherwise as there is no mechanism for fiscal transfers. The European Central bank can of course backstop and to some extent it has done so, but it cannot let fiscal policy of nations become independent of balance of payments beyond a certain extent. If it does so, nations’ public debt will rise together with net indebtedness to foreigners relative to output and this will become unsustainable. The European Central Bank (the Eurosystem less the domestic National Central Bank) will become a huge creditor and this will not be acceptable to the rest of the Euro Area. (There is of course the question whether this would be morally right but I do not think it is immoral beyond a limit).

To some extent, Mario Draghi has acted the opposite and pushed austerity, but one cannot assume unlimited power for the ECB (Eurosystem to be precise).

The other way to check that it is indeed a balance-of-payments crisis is to simply see the net international investment position of nations. This chart is from 2011 (intentionally chosen to be old).

ea17-2011-niip-reused

 

The nations troubled most had huge net indebtedness to foreigners. If it is not a balance-of-payments crisis, how does one explain that countries such Germany and Luxembourg had far less troubles than Greece and Portugal?

Abstract of the paper:

In a recent paper Marc Lavoie (2014) has criticized my interpretation of the Eurozone (EZ) crisis as a balance of payments crisis (BoP view for short). He rather identified the original sin “in the setup and self-imposed constraint of the European Central Bank”. This is defined here as the monetary sovereignty view. This view belongs to a more general view that see the source of the EZ troubles in its imperfect institutional design. According to the (prevailing) BoP view, supported with different shades by a variety of economists from the conservative Sinn to the progressive Frenkel, the original sin is in the current account (CA) imbalances brought about by the abandonment of exchange rate adjustments and in the inducement to peripheral countries to get indebted with core countries. An increasing number of economists would add the German neo-mercantilist policies as an aggravating factor. While the BoP crisis appears as a fact, a better institutional design would perhaps have avoided the worse aspects of the current crisis and permitted a more effective action by the ECB. Leaving aside the political unfeasibility of a more progressive institutional set up, it is doubtful that this would fix the structural unbalances exacerbated by the euro. Be this as it may, one can, of course, blame the flawed institutional set up and the lack an ultimate action by the ECB as the culprit of the crisis, as Lavoie seems to argue. Yet, since this institutional set up is not there, the EZ crisis manifests itself as a balance of payment crisis.

Excerpt from the conclusion:

… To conclude, since the EZ is closer to a fixed exchange rate regime rather than to a viable, U.S.-style CU, the euro-crisis is akin to a classical BoP crisis. True, the existence of T2 and the possibility of some ECB backing to troubled local sovereign debts make some difference. However, the limits to an ultimate action by the ECB in connection to the absence of other institutions that compose a viable CU render its action necessarily restricted. One can, of course, blame the lack of these institutions and of an ultimate action by the ECB as the culprit of the crisis, as Lavoie and De Grauwe seem to maintain. Yet, since those institutions are not there, the EZ crisis manifests itself as a balance of payment crisis …

Finally, remember the balance-of-payments constraint manifests itself as lower domestic demand and output as much as financial crises.

In general — in other institutional setups, the importance of the government’s power to make drafts at its central bank is exaggerated. It is highly important of course, but problems of balance-of-payments restrain the power of governments in having a fiscal policy independent of what is happening in international trade. In the Euro Area, the lack of critique of the “Common Market” is striking. One can however see these discussions in the works of Nicholas Kaldor.

Unlimited TARGET2 power?

An important point in the current discussion is around the issue of limits of TARGET2. It is true that the TARGET2 system has large powers to absorb imbalances. The intra-Eurosystem debts need not be collateralized. However, when there is capital flight from a nation, banks become more indebted to their NCB. This process can go on for a long time but ultimately it is restricted by collateral banks can provide to their NCB for replenishing lost settlement balances. There is of course the ELA, Emergency Loan Assistance, but this too is limited beyond a point. There is a lot of politics involved here with some nations complaining unfairly on debtor nations’ use of the ELA, but beyond a certain point, their complaints may be fair.

To summarize, TARGET2 is a big shock absorber: beyond what any economist may have expected, but it cannot absorb shocks beyond a limit.

John McCombie Reviews Marc Lavoie’s Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations

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John McCombie is one of my favourite economists. He is the co-author of the book Economic Growth And The Balance-Of-Payments Constraint, one of the most supremely insightful books.

McCombie has written a review of Marc Lavoie’s book Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations, which is the second edition of his book titled Foundations of Post-Keynesian Economic Analysis.

He says:

… the greatest significance of this work is that it clearly demonstrates that there is a coherent and interrelated body of economic theory that stands in marked contrast to the neoclassical framework. Indeed, with the deficiencies of the prevailing orthodoxy exposed by the subprime crisis the publication of this book could not have come at a more propitious time. Some post-Keynesians have concentrated on attacking the foundations of the neoclassical paradigm … to such an extent that it could (and has been) unfairly accused of nihilism.

But as Kuhn has pointed out, a paradigm can only be overthrown by the development of a  new paradigm and Marc‘s book shows that there is a substantial corpus of Post Keynesian that meets this criterion. Criticisms of a paradigm is not enough to cause a change in the world view of the practioners …

… It is worth re-emphasizing that one of the great successes of this book is that it takes many important contributions of the Post Keynesians which may otherwise have been lost buried in the journals and integrates them into a coherent story; in a very real sense the sum of this work is greater than the parts.

Marc Lavoie - Post-Keynesian Economics - New Foundations

Read the full review here.

Strong Assertions: Reply To A Comment [Update 2]

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I don’t generally publish comments and reply offline via email but this one needed one on the blog.

Winterspeak commented on my previous post Strong Assertions:

Deliberate obtuseness ramanan?

A 15% interest rate will certainly reduce borrowing as a first order effect, but it will also have another first order effect which will move AD in another direction. You know what this is, why not address it directly? And then why not respond to Mosler’s primary point directly as well?

I don’t think warren’s problem is that his writing is too simple.

My response below:

Deliberate obtuseness? My post was clear that the assertion that economists have it backward is quite wrong and misleading. I do in fact mention the effect of higher interest rates because of interest payment on government debt. In my post, I said

Finally the point about interest income on government bonds: it is true that if interest rates are higher, the private sector is receiving more income from the government and this is one factor to consider among all factors which affect aggregate demand. But there is no reason to assume that this effect is always higher.

In stock-flow consistent models, one sees the long run output depend positively on interest rates. But short term, this effect isn’t always positive except in simple pedagogic models.

My example of 15% was not really purely academic. Such an experiment happened in the UK in the 70s where interest rates were raised sharply and it led to a contraction of output. Several firms had to close down because of a rise in debt burden. The full story is in Nicholas Kaldor’s book The Scourge of Monetarism. I suppose Winterspeak thinks Monetarism cannot be a scourge. There were additional effects as well. The exchange rate appreciated  and led to a rise in imports contracting domestic demand even more than via other factors.

One cannot simply say that a rise in interest rates will lead to a rise in interest payments on government debt and that hence domestic demand and output will rise because of this. Suppose the government debt is 60% and let us say the average interest rate on government debt rises by 2% initially. This will lead to an additional interest payment of 1.2% to the private sector. This does not increase output by 1.2% automatically. It depends on the interest receivers’ propensity to consume. If this is say 0.2, the first order effect is a rise in output by 0.24% only. (Higher order effects are via income/expenditure multiplier process). However, borrowing also depends on the interest rate. Suppose fixed capital formation by firms and households reduces by more than 0.24%, the latter has had a bigger negative effect than the positive effect of the former.

So the effect depends on interest elasticity for borrowing and propensity to consume from interest income. But that is not all. A rise in interest rates may also lead to a fall in asset prices and which has wealth effects on economic activity. There are other complications as well which I do not need to go into in detail because my point is made. In many countries, a lot of households took various kinds of mortgages which have amortization schedule highly sensitive on interest rates. If interest rates are raised, their monthly payments will increase leading to a lower consumption. Of course, it can be argued that the interest paid is income to some other economic unit, but one needs to look into who the interest receiver is, how their behaviour and so on.

Update

After I posted this, I received a comment again from Winterspeak:

Please.

A 15% FFR will impact more than income from the Government. And the only people assuming that a “rise in interest rates will only have one effect” are you and Monetarists. Talk about being overly simplistic.

I recommend leaving strawmen out of it and focusing on the meat of the argument.

Puhleeze!

Winterspeak tells me of being overly simplistic and attacking a strawman.

But look who is overly simplistic here. Winterspeak simply announces that a 15% rise in interest rates will have more impact than the income from the government. Clearly he has not understood much. My post talked of the propensity to consume of the interest earners and also the mutliplier effects of this. There is no reason that the effect of this (including multiplier effects) is greater than 1.

Plus Winterspeak seems to completely  ignore the negative effects on borrowing: proving my point. Ignoring intermediate consumption, the gross domestic product is the same as output which is (in a simple closed economy model):

C + I + G

where C is household consumption, I is private fixed capital formation and G is “pure” government expenditure (which doesn’t include interest payments on government debt) i.e., government consumption and fixed capital formation.

While C may rise because of higher interest earned by households because of higher interest income. I can fall more because of high interest rates. It is also not clear if C will necessarily rise. This is because if households have large liabilities (such as mortgages), their disposable income will fall due to a rise in interest rates (and hence interest payments) and hence consumption as well.

Update 2

After I wrote the above, I received a patronizing comment by Winterspeak:

Great — you’re slowly getting closer.

So what did Warren actually say and why? Or, in other words, what is the logical next step from your (third) post?

Let me argue again. Let us use subscripts 1 and 2 for time periods.

Initially the GDP is

C1 + I1 + G1

Now interest rates are raised to 15%. The GDP is

C2 + I2 + G2

With pure government expenditure remaining the same,

G2 = G1

Interest expenditure of the government is not counted in production. G stands for government consumption expenditure and expenditure on fixed capital formation, not total government expenditure. (Ignoring changes in inventories for simplicity, both for firms and the government). Of course, the interest income should appear somewhere, and it will make an appearance in the consumption function.

Fixed capital formation is assumed to depend on interest rates, so

I2 < I1

Consumption depends on income, holding gains and previously accumulated wealth and propensities to consume. Propensities can depend on the type of income (compensation of employees, interest income, income via dividends) and so on.

Less fixed capital formation implies firms hire less. This means compensation paid to employees is lesser than before and also since fixed capital formation of firms is also an income flow for firms as a whole, a reduction implies less profits and dividends paid to households.

Hence, despite households receiving higher interest income on government debt, their total income is likely less than before with interest rate at 15% and hence,

C2 < C1

This implies:

C2 + I2 + G2 < C1 + I1 + G1

Which was I intended to show.

Funnily, Winterspeak puts me in the same position of Monetarists but it is him who is being a Neo-Fisherite here. (Referring to Krugman’s terminology is not an endorsement to his monetary economics.)

Strong Assertions

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In a recent article (from last month), Warren Mosler makes strong claims. He says:

I reject the belief that economy is strong and operating anywhere near full employment. I also reject the belief that a zero-rate policy is inflationary, supports aggregate demand, or weakens the currency, or that higher rates slow the economy and reduce inflation.

…

What I am asserting is that the Fed and the mainstream have it backwards with regard to how interest rates interact with the economy. They have it backwards with regard to both the current health of the economy and inflation, and, therefore, their discussion of appropriate monetary policy is entirely confused and inapplicable.

Furthermore, while I recognize that raising rates supports both aggregate demand and inflation, I am categorically against raising rates for that purpose.

…

The problem with the mainstream credit channel is that it relies on the assumption that lower rates encourage borrowing to spend. At a micro level this seems plausible- people will borrow more to buy houses and cars, and business will borrow more to invest. But it breaks down at the macro level. For every dollar borrowed there is a dollar saved, so any reduction in interest costs for borrowers corresponds to an identical reduction for savers. The only way a rate cut would result in increased borrowing to spend would be if the propensity to spend of borrowers exceeded that of savers. The economy, however, is a large net saver, as government is an equally large net payer of interest on its outstanding debt. Therefore, rate cuts directly reduce government spending and the economy’s private sector’s net interest income.

I don’t understand why as a heteredox author, Mosler simplifies his analysis so much.

This post is not about discussion about whether it is time to raise interest rates in the United States. It’s not the time. It is about Mosler’s claim that monetary policy works opposite to what is usually assumed.

This oversimplification can easily be debunked. If the central bank raises the short term interest rate to say 15% from 0.25%, it will obviously lead to a reduction in borrowing. Firms will reduce investment and stock building as higher rates will require them to pay higher interest and the expectation that the economy will slow down will dampen production. Households may postpone plans for purchases of new houses and take out lesser loans and those with existing loans on floating interest rates are likely to reduce consumption when faced with a higher debt burden because of higher interest payments. Further, raising rates from say 0.25% to 15% may bankrupt a lot of firms because interest payments on debt may become very high. There are also feedback effects: a slowdown of output will lead to higher unemployment and less consumption and so on. It can be argued that interest payment by one economic unit is income for another so one needs a model to see how all this works: complications such as consumption propensities of interest payers and receivers.

Of course this effect may not be so strong if the short term interest rate is raised from 0.25% to say 2% but asserting that there is no effect and that the effect is exactly the opposite is too simplified a claim.

Does that mean that rising short term interest rates is always accompanied by a lower output? No. Monetary policy is only one channel. It is possible that while the central bank is raising interest rates, other things that affect aggregate demand conditions are working to raise output. For example, the government may be raising pure government expenditure while the central bank is raising rates, or exports are rising.

Now reconsider Mosler’s point quoted above:

For every dollar borrowed there is a dollar saved, so any reduction in interest costs for borrowers corresponds to an identical reduction for savers. The only way a rate cut would result in increased borrowing to spend would be if the propensity to spend of borrowers exceeded that of savers.

Not sure what that means. Dollar is not fixed in quantity. Further an economic unit may be both a net borrower and a saver. To see this think of a simple example: Your disposable income is $1mn, your consumption is $200,000 and you borrow $4.2mn to buy a house for $5mn. Your saving is $800,000 and your net borrowing is $4.2mn. You are both a saver and a borrower. Also, I am not sure how “propensity to spend of borrowers” means, as long as one is talking of borrowing to not make purchases of financial assets: all that is borrowed is spent, so this propensity is always equal to 1.

Perhaps Mosler has in mind the debt/income ratio. In the above example, your debt/income has risen but it isn’t necessarily the case with firms as investment is self-financing. Firms may borrow more in response to a fall in interest rates. But this needn’t cause a rise in debt/income as investment is also a source of income for firms as a whole. So firms’ debt/income may actually improve.

Mosler discusses the net lending of the private sector when he is talking of “net saving” (saving less investment expenditure), which is identically the net lending. Even if the private sector as a whole sees a deterioration of their net lending position it isn’t necessarily problematic in the short run. There is no reason that this is a constant relative to output or income which Mosler implicitly is assuming.

Finally the point about interest income on government bonds: it is true that if interest rates are higher, the private sector is receiving more income from the government and this is one factor to consider among all factors which affect aggregate demand. But there is no reason to assume that this effect is always higher.

In stock-flow consistent models, one sees the long run output depend positively on interest rates. But short term, this effect isn’t always positive except in simple pedagogic models.

Mosler gives the example of Japan to show what he says vindicates him. Low rates in Japan hasn’t helped Japan. The analysis is oversimplified because output depends on so many other things than monetary policy. There is no need to make simplistic assertions. Heteredox economists will be be seen as simpletons because of analysis such as that of Mosler. Mosler’s idea of writing was perhaps to stress the importance of fiscal policy and that mainstream economists underplay the positive role of fiscal policy and exaggerate the role of monetary policy. It can be said directly instead of claiming “the mainstream have it backwards with regard to how interest rates interact with the economy.”

IMF’s World Economic Outlook On Global Imbalances

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The IMF has released a couple of chapters from its upcoming World Economic Outlook. There is one chapter Are Global Imbalances At A Turning Point, which talks of not just “flow imbalances” (current account deficits/surpluses) but also “stock imbalances” (international investment positions).

There is a nice table with a lot of information (although it is interested in absolute indebtedness and misses out small countries with high indebtedness in the list but still good information).

IMF Largest Creditor And Debtor Economies

The article stresses that flow imbalances are not just enough to analyse the macroeconomics but stock imbalances also need to be studied. Of course, in reality deficits/surpluses are not the true measures of imbalances as Nicholas Kaldor stressed in a footnote in his 1980 article The Foundations Of Free Trade Theory And Their Implications For The Current World Recession (published in Collected Essays Vol. 9):

Morever, the actual surpluses and deficits are not a proper measure of the potential size of such imbalances (and of the deflationary force they exert) since the countries who suffer from an excessive import propensity tend, on that account, to suffer from an insufficiency of domestic demand as well so their aggregate output or income is demand-constrained; they may, in addition be forced to follow a deflationary fiscal and monetary policy, and for both of these reasons, will import less from the surplus countries than they would do under full employment conditions.

The same reasoning is valid for stock imbalances as well. The true solution to reverse the imbalances without hurting aggregate demand is to rein in free trade and expand domestic demand by fiscal policies, especially by creditor nations but with so much orthodoxy around — especially from the IMF, there still is a long way to go. The global imbalances problem itself is the result of neoliberal policies promoted by the IMF.

Credit And Economic Growth

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In a new column for Bloomberg, Noah Smith questions the intuition that credit fuels economic growth.

click to view on Twitter

He says:

It seems like the only people who don’t instinctively believe in credit-fueled growth are academic economists.

The academics have good reason for being skeptical.

His reason (in short) is the following:

It’s pretty obvious how credit drives my personal household consumption. If I borrow, I can get a nice big TV and a new car, but eventually I’ll have to skimp to pay it back. In a way, the consumption-fueled borrowing binge is an illusion of wealth — after all, borrowing doesn’t increase my salary. Pleasure today means pain tomorrow.

Notice how Smith’s argument uses a lot of national accounting and flow of funds concepts: consumption, borrowing, wealth, repayment (of loans) and so on. The interesting thing is that one can use the system of national accounts and flow of funds to create models which show precisely the opposite of what Smith is saying. The best place obviously to look out for is the book Monetary Economics: An Integrated Approach to Credit, Money, Income, Production and Wealth by Wynne Godley and Marc Lavoie which has models called stock-flow consistent models or SFC models. It is however difficult to write down a simple SFC model in a blog post, so I will try to highlight how it works in words but refer the reader to these models.

Here’s how in a simple model:

  1. Consumers decide to borrow more and banks respond by granting them loans.
  2. Consumers spend the funds received on consumption goods.
  3. Since loans make deposits, it’s not as if someone forgoes consumption to lend as neoclassical textbooks say.
  4. Firms see their inventories go down and respond by increasing their inventories by producing more.
  5. For producing more, firms hire more labour and pay salary/compensation.
  6. People newly employed spend their income and there’s further rise in production as firms produce more when seeing a higher demand for their products.
  7. Higher production leads to a rise in productivity and wages/household incomes of the already employed rise in response (although not necessarily the case).

So we have a higher output than what we started with and higher national income.

One can take several issues with this and this is one reasons models are really helpful and pinpoint what’s going on. This is the reason I referred to the book by Godley and Lavoie above. So for example, one can ask: what if the rise in the national income and output is just a rise in the nominal value but that it’s possible that prices have changed and that the real output hasn’t changed. This of course needs a model of prices and inflation but a familiarity with stock-flow consistent models will make you realize that it is an extreme assumption to think that the real output hasn’t risen in the sequence of events highlighted above.

The second thing is the above “model” in words had just banks lending to households whereas in the real world, credit (as in any credit, such as firms borrowing) is via credit markets of which banks are only one part. This issue is not so simple to argue out, but it can be shown that it really doesn’t matter (in the first approximation). I do not know how to quickly argue it out in short here but will leave that for now.

Of course the above model can be misleading. For example, if households take a lot of debt, debt repayment burden will hit and cause a slowdown as households’ consumption will drop and this may lead to an economic slowdown. This point may look similar to what Noah Smith is saying, but that is not the case. One can imagine an economy starting with a GDP of 100 and growing to 120 in some time period and then slowing down to 118 because of the debt burden. Also the above model was implicitly a pure private sector model and in general one has both the government and the overseas sector adding more complications. Again more reasons why having a proper mathematical model for such things is important.

Another critique of Smith (in my mini-exchange of tweets with him on Twitter) was that SFC models do have behavioural assumptions. I agree, but my point was that there’s no reason to dismiss the argument “credit fuels growth” by purely theoretical arguments. If at all, the system of national income and flow of funds make it more convincing that credit is important.

Of course none of this means that policies should be promoted to ease credit conditions always and try to create a boom and what Smith says is somewhat true – there can be pain later, so it is important to consider fiscal policy, balance of payments and so on but the story told here is quite different from the one told by Noah Smith.

ROKE Issue On Steve Keen’s Notion Of Aggregate Demand

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The new issue of ROKE (Review of Keynesian Economics) is online with a few articles available free for some time. Marc Lavoie, Thomas Palley and Brett Fiebiger comment on Keen’s notion of aggregate demand.

Marc Lavoie’s article A comment on ‘Endogenous money and effective demand’: a revolution or a step backwards? is available here.

Steve Keen’s own paper Endogenous money and effective demand is available here.

From Marc Lavoie’s introduction and the ending:

Steve Keen argues that post-Keynesians have not sufficiently emphasized the revolutionary character of endogenous money for macroeconomic theory, and that this should be done by recognizing that aggregate demand is equal to current or past income plus the change in debt. This equation, attributed in particular to Hyman Minsky, is discussed and questioned, and it is recalled that a similar equation had been proposed by Alfred Eichner. The consequences of bank credit for firms or households are further analysed within the context of the national accounts, and it is shown that one does not need a redefinition of aggregate demand and aggregate supply, in contrast to what is proposed by Keen…

…

All post-Keynesians certainly concur with the idea that banks have the capacity to alter the level of aggregate demand, and hence that it would be desirable for banks, debt, and money to be included in models of macroeconomics… There are several examples of post-Keynesian macroeconomic models that incorporate banks, debt, and money – for instance, Godley and Cripps (1983) and Godley and Lavoie (2007), just to mention those that I am most familiar with… But this does not imply, as Keen claims, that we need a redefinition of aggregate demand such that the starting point of macroeconomics is that ‘effective demand is equal to income plus the turnover of new debt’ (Keen 2014a, p. 286). Nor does it mean that aggregate supply needs to be redefined ‘to incorporate the financial markets’ (ibid., p. 290). To provide new definitions of existing terms will only lead to a maze of confusions.

Keen makes the grandiose claim that his approach leads to a ‘new, monetary macroeconomics’ (Keen 2014a, p. 286). While statements of this kind may appeal to an internet audience, I doubt they will convince readers of this journal.

Marc also quotes my blog post Income ≠ Expenditure? which critiqued Keen. (Thanks!).

Tom Palley and Brett Fiebiger’s papers are not available for download by the journal. I will update the post in case ROKE decides to make it available. The permanent links are available in the left column of the papers linked in the post. Palley’s draft version is available here

Also don’t miss the paper by Anthony Thirlwall in the current issue.

Marc Lavoie’s New Book

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Marc Lavoie is out with his new book Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations. (Publisher’s site for the book)

Marc Lavoie - Post-Keynesian Economics - New FoundationsAs per the book’s website,

The book is a considerably extended and fully revamped edition of the highly successful and frequently cited Foundations of Post-Keynesian Economic Analysis, published in 1992. It provides an exhaustive account of post-Keynesian economics and of the developments that have occurred in post-Keynesian theory and in the world economy over the last twenty years. Topics covered include open-economy issues, the methodological foundations of heterodox economics, consumer theory, firms and pricing, money and credit, effective demand and employment, inflation theory, and growth theories.

Chapter 1 is available for download at the publisher’s website here

Greg Mankiw And Empirics

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Greg Mankiw wonders if teaching students empirics is feasible and answers in negative:

Noah Smith says introductory economics needs to be more empirical. I understand his argument, and have some sympathy with it, but I wonder if the substantial change he seems to be proposing is practical. Economists usually do empirical work with statistical tools that most college freshmen have not yet learned.

We teachers of introductory economics can and should explain where and why economists disagree. That is part of helping students develop their critical thinking skills. But I doubt students are in a position to try to evaluate the competing empirical work that shapes the differing views.

In the end, introductory economics is just that: an introduction to the economist’s way of thinking. That means giving students basic concepts–comparative advantage, supply and demand, market efficiency and market failure–that will make them more perceptive readers of the newspaper.

The failure to teach empirics to students and how it distorts their vision was well understood by Wynne Godley. In a 1993 article Time, Increasing Returns And Institutions In Macroeconomics, in S. Biasco, A. Roncaglia and M. Salvati (eds.), Market and Institutions in Economic Development: Essays in Honour of Paolo Sylos Labini, (New York: St. Martins Press), pp. 59-82 he wrote:

… But my objection goes beyond skepticism that the world we live in is being described realistically. My additional concern is that the NCP [neoclassical paradigm] is prejudicial with regard to the understanding of some of the most important processes going on in the world today. Thus in the ‘classical’ version of the NCP real output is determined by supply side alone; fiscal policy is entirely impotent and the government can only affect anything by changing the money supply; even then all it can do is affect the price level. The idea that fiscal policy is impotent, which seems to be based entirely on this model, has been extremely influential in contemporary political discussion; it is not just a provisional result suitable for a week or two in an elementary class.

Then the abolition of time prejudices the perception of inflation as an evolutionary process; the equilibria generate ‘explanations’ of price levels not changes, and theories of inflation cannot be convincingly coaxed forth. As if this were not enough, the whole construction leads by virtue of its axioms to the conclusion that wage and price flexibility, in combination with free trade, will generate full employment and convergence, if not equalisation, of living standards between countries and between regions within countries. In sum, while the absence of processes occurring in historical time means that the NCP does not encourage students to go and look up figures in books, if and when they are forced to do so their vision is likely to have been for ever distorted.

[emphasis added]

Steve Keen And Sectoral Balances

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Steve Keen has a new article on sectoral balances here.

First apologies in advance for sometimes criticizing heterodox economists more but needless to say, such criticisms are of a totally different nature than criticisms of mainstream economists.

Anyway, I am surprised at why Keen mixes accounting identities, especially when it involves banks in the analysis. In the new article, Keen has an equation:

 Bank lending p.a. = Nominal GDP growth / Velocity of Money + Government Deficit + Trade Surplus

I don’t get this. The correct sectoral balances equation (in a simplified three-sector setting) is:

Net Lending = Government Deficit + Current Account Balance of Payments

Here, net lending is that of the private sector. The terminology net lending is something national accountants use, while Wynne Godley used NAFA  — net accumulation of financial assets which means a slightly different thing in national accounts, but this point is irrelevant here.

Keen’s equation seems to mix many things and it has a term for GDP growth which actually needs a model and is not something that can be derived from an accounting identity. Morever, Keen seems to forever blur bank lending and lending in general and hopefully he gets these things right in the future. The hidden assumption in Keen’s models —something which has been pointed out by Nick Edmonds — is that non-bank lending has no effect on aggregate demand which (the assumption) doesn’t make sense.

The original sectoral balances identity was used by Wynne Godley with a behavioural model around it, although he started building his models when he realized in the 70s that the accounting identity itself is a great revelation. And a narrative around the three balances makes a good story especially for telling a story about future scenarios and so on.

Keen, on the other hand has a relation which is not really an identity but a behavioural equation. By itself there’s nothing wrong but given his mixing things up, it really ends up adding confusions. Keen’s blog title uses the phrase “arithmetic” which simply means a manipulation of numbers but has an equation which is more than arithmetic. Reading his article suggests that he has improved the sectoral balances to take into account bank lending. But the sectoral balances equation is an identity even if banks exists. And Keen seems to derive his equation as if it were an accounting identity.

Again goes on to show, it is highly important in macroeconomics to know flow of funds properly.