Sunday, August 21, 2016

Synthesize...

In the context of the 2008 Financial-Crisis in the US economy that send jitters to the rest of the global economies, the long divide between the “freshwater” and “saltwater” economists also known as “the neo-Classicals” and “the neo-Keynesians”, respectively, over the rigidity or sticky or no-rigidity of the key economic-variables, could be brought to the light of evidences to understand the view-point of the two schools of thought. The neo-Classicals maintain that the economy in the long-run could self-equilibrate with the help of change in the real economic variables like, real-wages, real-interest rate and real exchange rate, i.e. inflation adjusted variables, while the neo-Keynesians believe in government intervention and sticky or rigid prices to converge the economy to stability. In the earnest efforts to tackle the recession that followed the Lehman-brothers, an investment bank, collapse the Federal Reserve Bank of the US embarked on massive monetary-easing and set inflation target to achieve economic-activity, full-employment and growth-rate. Nevertheless, the economy after these seven–years showed recovery in terms of employment and economic growth, but inflation remained below the target. Even after so much of easing the economy failed to increase demand and inflation and the discussion is still on to raise the inflation target, but as we know inflation is also a kind of tax and it reduces demand and growth by increasing the price-level and the interest rate. Thus, inflation reduces demand. The Fed initially thought that more money-supply would increase inflation and inflation expectation, but this did not happen as oil-prices, that have constrained the growth many times, have gone down due to innovation in crude oil by shale. “Targeting” and “expectations” have been the buzzwords in Economics, now the countries target economic variables like prices or inflation, wages, interest-rate, exchange rate and economic-growth, and also try to shape expectations about the future- values of economic variables. There has been a tradition among the major economies to target higher GDP projections to increase investment. Nonetheless, inflation targeting and exchange rate targeting are also not uncommon. However, the question is still there that which variables to target, nominal or real and if there is a need for government-intervention (?). The neo-Classicals favor the real economic-variables, but not government-intervention; however, it is still unclear that the central-bank is a part of the government although independent. Keynes’ prescribed fiscal-policy in the liquidity-trap to increase nominal-wages and effective-demand whereas Pigou recommended to increase real-wages and, probably, the same effective-demand. Notwithstanding, if we target real variables with the help of monetary and fiscal policy we might get results or outcomes soon. We might try to affect real-variables since nominal variables confuse the agents. For example, the Fed has committed inflation and also income which might send contradictory signals about real wages and real-wages expectation which reflect the real position. In this situation spending would be low and people would also save more due to higher inflation expectation which during recessions may negatively affect demand/supply and economic-growth. Conversely, if people see and expect lower prices they would increase spending because real-wages and real-wage-expectations would go-up. Similarly, if the Capitalist see and expect lower prices of investment goods and services, they would increase investment because real cost would go down and real profits could increase. Moreover, if foreign importers see and expect lower domestic prices they would import more because real exchange rate would increase, exports would increase. All the three cases above might help increase demand/supply, employment and the economic-growth, but with the help of low inflation and inflationary-expectations and real economic-variables. However, the Fed is trying to the same with the help of higher inflation and inflation expectations and nominal variables which have given only limited results and sub-par growth rate. The US has had been the home of many great economists of which Milton Friedman is outstanding and widely celebrated. He himself proposed “the optimal-monetary-policy” that says that monetary-policy might give better outcomes in terms of demand/supply, employment and economic growth if the nominal interest rate is set substantially low and there is little deflationary bias  in the economy (Aubhik Khan, Robert G. King & Alexander L. Wolman, 2002). Moreover, the relationship between deflation and depression is weak and there are periods of satisfactory growth and deflation in the history (Andrew Atkeson, Patrick J. Kehoe, 2004). The Fed is indirectly targeting nominal wages, interest-rate and exchange rate through inflation which misses the outcome of more demand/supply, employment and growth-rate, but if the Fed targets real wages, real-interest-rate and real exchange rate by lowering inflation and inflationary expectations or through little deflation it might be able to achieve better outcomes, demand and growth. There has been a real-wage and productivity gap in the US since 1970’s which the Fed and the government might try to level in order to increase domestic demand and growth (Mark Setterfield, 2010). Committing a lower inflation or little deflation path by the monetary-policy might help increase real wages and domestic demand. Likewise it would also increase real-return on investment and wealth thereby increasing supply and growth (Jonas Crews, Kevin L. Kliesen and Christopher J. Waller, 2016), and, is also likely to increase real-exchange-rate (real-exchange-rate equals nominal-exchange rate multiplied by the foreign country price-level divided by the domestic price-level) and exports, and growth. Friedman has clearly acknowledged that the optimal-monetary-policy would entail dis-inflation or little deflation and would require a sufficiently low nominal interest-rate. In the developed-world the evidences show that price-levels in these countries have gone down even with huge increases in the money-supply and lower interest-rates in the long-run. In the long-run, perhaps lower borrowing cost has helped improve supply and lower the price-level. The Fed may review Friedman’s optimal-monetary-policy in respect to the relationship between lose money-supply, lower borrowing cost, more supply, lower price-level or inflation and real-variables – real-wages, real-interest-rate and real-exchange-rate - for better guidance about the future monetary-policy.  

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