What Super-neutrality Really Isn’t

Our friend Nick Rowe pays homage to Milton Friedman in one of his latest posts on what monetary policy cannot do. Indeed, Friedman’s speech to the AEA in 1967 should be required reading for any who wish to learn about monetary policy (it is indeed required reading for my Money and Banking students). The purpose of this homage is to absolve monetary policy of any wrong-doing in the current recession and preceding housing boom. Specifically, he argues:

It was in that paper that Friedman introduced the concept of the natural rate of unemployment. Prior to Friedman, most economists thought there was a downward-sloping Phillips curve, and that monetary policy could keep unemployment low provided we were willing to accept higher inflation. Friedman argued that this was true in the short run only, and that in the long run, when expected inflation equaled actual inflation, the Phillips curve was vertical. Monetary policy could target any rate of inflation, but the result would be the same long run equilibrium rate of unemployment.

Friedman needed a name for that long run equilibrium rate of unemployment, and he chose to call it the “natural rate of unemployment”. He chose that name to draw a parallel to Wicksell’s concept of the natural rate of interest.

[...]

There is nothing special about unemployment or interest rates in Friedman’s argument. Everything he says about them applies equally well to any real variable. Just as there is a natural rate of unemployment, and natural rate of interest, so there is a natural rate of output, employment, real wages, relative price of houses, or relative price of sardines. The underlying vision is one of the long-run super-neutrality of money.

Monetary policy has real effects in the short run, because it takes time for prices and expectations to adjust to a change in monetary policy. But if we compare alternative worlds where prices and expectations have adjusted to alternative monetary policies with different average money growth rates and average inflation rates, real variables should not be affected. They are pinned down at their natural rates by real, not monetary forces.

I am in agreement with Nick on nearly every point of this argument. Nevertheless, I am puzzled regarding his conclusion about relative prices. When discussing long-run superneutrality of money, he is referencing the idea that a change in money growth will only cause a change in the rate of inflation in the long run and thus have no effect on real variables. However, even accepting long run money neutrality, isn’t it possible (and in all likelihood probable) that relative prices have changed? In fact, this was Hayek’s main point in extending Wicksell’s idea of a natural rate of interest. In Prices and Production, for example, he writes:

. . . it seems obvious as soon as one once begins to think about it that almost any change in the amount of money, whether it does influence the price level or not, must always influence relative prices. And, as there can be no doubt that it is relative prices which determine the amount and the direction of production, almost any change in the amount of money must necessarily also influence production.

The appropriate question is thus whether superneutrality of money not only implies that the change in the rate of inflation is proportionate to the change in the rate of money growth, but also that individual price changes are equiproportional. Nick seems to believe that it is the case, whereas I find this conclusion wanting.

There is no greater illustration of our opposing views than the idea of inflation targeting. Nick argues that monetary policy did not play a role in the Canadian housing boom:

Did a change in monetary policy cause the house price bubble? In Canada, absolutely not. There was no change in monetary policy in Canada. As I argued in my previous post, The Bank of Canada hit its inflation target almost exactly on average over the period when Canadian house prices were rising. With actual CPI inflation at the 2% target, and expected CPI inflation presumably at the same 2% target, there was no sign of the unexpected inflation that is the signature of the short run effects of a change in monetary policy.

The inflation target was 2% and actual inflation was 2%. Nick views as suggesting that monetary policy could not possibly be to blame for rising house prices. I do not find this evidence convincing in the least. What an inflation target does is establish transparency and accountability for the central bank. If the central bank hits its target, all this tells us is that they have hit their goal. It does not tell us about the desirability of the outcome.

It is entirely possible (if not probable) that monetary policy has an influence on relative prices and the allocation of resources without the aggregate level (growth) of money having an effect on the aggregate level (growth) of output. Indeed, the fact that housing prices rose 85% in Canada while the inflation rate was 2% poses interesting questions. Does the price index targeted by the Bank of Canada underweight housing? Is housing measured properly in the price indices? Doesn’t the rise in housing prices suggest that relative prices have changed (in real terms)?

I think that this is the fundamental point surrounding inflation targeting. If one focuses exclusively on the overall rate of inflation and monetary policy affects relative prices, then monetary policy directed in this manner has the potential to create asset price bubbles, resource misallocations (or simply reallocations), and boom-bust scenarios — even if super-neutrality holds.

Do We Need More Fiscal Stimulus? (UPDATED)

Last week, David Leonhardt wrote:

In the weeks just before President Obama took office, his economic advisers made a mistake. They got a little carried away with hope.

[...]

There are two possible explanations that the administration was so wrong. And sorting through them matters a great deal, because they point in opposite policy directions.

The first explanation is that the economy has deteriorated because the stimulus package failed. Some critics say that stimulus just doesn’t work, while others argue that this particular package was too small or too badly constructed to make a difference.

The second answer is that the economy has deteriorated in spite of the stimulus. In other words, the patient is not as sick as he would have been without the medicine he received. But he is a lot sicker than doctors realized when they prescribed it.

To me, the evidence is fairly compelling that the second answer is the right one.

I think that Leonhardt is conflating the two main points. First, there is a question as to whether the economy is worse than the current administration expected. If we believe their forecasts, one can have little doubt than it is worse than they expected (see this graph via Calculated Risk). This then begs the question as to whether the stimulus is insufficient to combat the downturn. Leonhardt seems to say that the economy is worse than expected and thus the stimulus has been insufficient:

In other words, the patient is not as sick as he would have been without the medicine he received. But he is a lot sicker than doctors realized when they prescribed it.

However, the fact that the economy is worse than expected does not necessarily mean that the stimulus is not big enough.

Frequent readers of the blog are aware of the fact that I am not a fan of fiscal stimulus. Nonetheless, the reason that I am so skeptical that the stimulus has not worked to date is not because of my aversion to fiscal stimulus, but rather because it has barely been tried! The government has spent something like $50 billion of the total of over $800 billion to date. In other words, only about 5% of the total money that was allocated for stimulus has been spent. How then are we to claim that the stimulus was not big enough?!

This is not to say that the stimulus package will eventually be a success. Nevertheless, it is too soon to say that it has failed.

UPDATE: Free Exchange raises much the same point:

GAO’s figures do suggest that it’s a little premature to be expecting much of the stimulus or passing judgment on it. Of the planned outlays in the stimulus, roughly $49 billion is targeted for spending in 2009, of which only about $29 billion has been spent. That $29 billion is only slightly larger than California’s state budget gap; it’s just not enough to make much of a dent in the broader downturn.

Of course, the spending isn’t the only part of the stimulus bill. The share of the fiscal boost already in the system increases to perhaps 15% if one includes the tax provisions. And Jan Hatzius is arguing that a far larger share of the actual impact of the bill has been felt than 10%. The net stimulative impact of the package isn’t an easy thing to measure, as it turns out.

Inflation is a Monetary Phenomenon, But This Isn’t Inflation

There has been much talk recently about the potential inflation on the horizon given the unprecedented movement of the Federal Reserve of increasing the monetary base through quantitative easing. The talk has predominantly surrounded the substantial increase in the monetary base. However, increases in the monetary base are not sufficient to cause inflation. Like discussion of other markets, we must consider both supply and demand conditions.

Milton Friedman famously quipped, “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Friedman was undoubtedly correct. However, recently a few seem to have taken this claim to mean something different entirely. Namely, that any increase in the money supply necessarily causes inflation. This is something that Friedman himself did not believe.

In his restatement of the quantity theory of money, Friedman pointed out that the quantity theory is primarily a theory of money demand. Specifically, quantity theorists view the level of real money balances as more important than the nominal quantity of money. Thus, if at any point in time people have chosen to hold some level of real money balances that they deem optimal, an increase in the nominal money supply will leave these individuals with a larger level of real money balances than they wish to hold. These individuals will then necessarily try to reduce their holdings of nominal money balances such that their real money balances fall back to their optimal level (perhaps by increasing spending). Unfortunately, as a group, they will not be able to do so because every person’s spending is another person’s receipt (or income). Initially output will increase and gradually prices will rise until the level of real balances falls back to the optimal level.

Given this discussion, it should not be difficult to understand why I prefer a monetary equilibrium framework. What’s more, it should be apparent that what causes inflation is not an increase in the money supply, but rather an excess supply of money.

Ultimately, the question at hand is whether the current increases in the monetary base imply that there is an excess supply for money. If so, inflation is on the horizon. If not, we need not fear inflation.

Personally, I do not believe that the recent increases in base money imply that there is an excess supply of money. There are a couple reasons for this belief. First, it has been well-known — at least among monetarists — since Clark Warburton’s influential work that the peaks in the time series variables important for quantity theorists follow this order: (1) money, (2) output, and (3) velocity. The implication here is that declines in velocity (increases in the demand for money) are an accentuating feature of the business cycle. In other words, after output begins to fall, the demand for money increases. As our previous discussion of monetary equilibrium implies, this creates an excess demand for money, which results in falling output and prices — thereby exacerbating the previous decline in output.

Second, the money multiplier has declined drastically. In fact, the money multiplier for M1 remains below 1. This means that for every increase of $1 in base money, the money supply (as measured by M1) increases by less than $1. In order to determine the cause of the decline in the M1 multiplier, we should first discuss its components. The money multiplier for M1 consists of the currency-to-deposit ratio, the required reserve-to-deposit ratio, and the excess reserve-to-deposit ratio. An increase in any of these ratios implies that the money multiplier will fall. The required reserve ratio is set by the Federal Reserve and has not changed. Thus, the decline in the M1 multiplier must be the result of changes in the currency-to-deposit ratio and the excess reserve ratio. As previously mentioned, the demand for money often increases during the downturn in the business cycle. What’s more, financial crises often induce a flight to quality in which individuals abandon risky investments for safe investments such as bonds or cash. The increase in cash balances increases the currency-to-deposit ratio.

The largest cause of the decline in the money multiplier, however, is the result of the increase in the level of excess reserves. What’s more, this increase in excess reserves can be directly attributed to the fact that the Federal Reserve started paying interest on excess reserves late last year. In doing so, the Fed essentially reduced the opportunity cost of holding excess reserves thereby giving banks the incentive to hold more reserves on their balance sheets. This is why our friend Scott Sumner not only supports eliminating the interest payments on excess reserves, but prefers that the Fed impose a penalty on those who hold reserves above the required level.

Ultimately, the money multiplier (M1) has fallen from around 1.6 prior to the recession to .93 as of June 17. At the beginning of January 2008, the monetary base was roughly $848 billion. Given that money multiplier, this would suggest that M1 was around $1.356 trillion. Thus, given the current money multiplier, this would suggest that the monetary base would have to be about $1.458 trillion today to maintain the same money supply — an increase of roughly 72%. Given that we are currently in a recession, this suggests that the Fed wants to increase the money supply rather than simply maintain the earlier level. Given that the monetary base is about 90% higher than it was at this time last year, this would suggest that the Fed is expansionary, but hardly over-expansionary given the circumstances surrounding money demand.

With that being said, the Fed must be careful and begin pulling money out of the economy when this demand for base money subsides and the money multiplier begins to rise again. A failure to do so would result in a substantial period of inflation. However, at the current time, the evidence suggests that the massive increase in the monetary base is justified by the increase in the demand for base money. Thus, the increase is in the monetary base doesn’t suggest that massive inflation is on the horizon … yet.

(In the future, I hope to post on how the Fed can prevent finding itself in such a precarious situation in the future, but this is clearly enough for now.)

Quote of the Day

“In any event, it is not like the only alternatives available to us are a government-run health insurance plan or unregulated laissez faire.”

— Greg Mankiw

More on Interest Rates

Frederic Mishkin on rising bond yields:

When the Federal Open Market Committee meets this Tuesday and Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will face a serious dilemma.

Since the last committee meeting six weeks ago, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield has risen by around 70 basis points (0.70%), with the result that the interest rate on 30-year mortgages has risen by a similar amount. The rise in long-term interest rates is particularly worrisome, because it has the potential to choke off economic recovery and lead to further deterioration in the housing market. That would put an already weakened financial system under stress. Does the situation call for the Fed to expand its purchases of Treasury bonds to lower long-term interest rates?

To answer this question, we need to look at why long-term interest rates have risen. Here, there is good news and bad news. One cause of the rise in long-term rates is the more positive economic news of the past couple of months, particularly in financial markets. The bad news is that long-term interest rates are higher because of concerns about the deteriorating fiscal situation, with massive budget deficits expected for the indefinite future. To fund these budget deficits, the Treasury has to sell large quantities of bonds both now and in the future, causing bond prices to fall and interest rates to rise. The increased supply of Treasury debt puts pressure on the Fed to buy it up.

Note that he doesn’t point to rising inflation.

Similarly, Scott Sumner looks at the TIPS spread. You will notice that (1) the TIPS spread implies that expected inflation is around 1.47%, and (2) the TIPS spread largely follows the movements in the S&P 500. This provides more evidence against the hypothesis that yields are rising because of inflation concerns (as I previously discussed here).

What I’m Reading

• Interest and Prices by Michael Woodford — again
• Monetary Policy, Inflation, and the Business Cycle by Jordi Gali
• Some Fiscal Calculus by Harald Uhlig
• Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Toughest Firm on Wall Street by Kate Kelly

Can We Please Raise the Level of the Debate?

In all of our self-importance, economists and political pundits have seen the current recession as a time to argue about whether markets clear. Inevitably, the discussion on financial news networks always devolves into a debate about whether markets are efficient, etc.* (Incidentally, can I call cross-talk and yelling a discussion? I am talking to you CNBC.) A prime example of this type of discourse is found in a recent article by John Tamny and a subsequent post by Ezra Klein.

Tamny’s article essentially extols the virtues of free markets. He points out that recessions often lead to falling asset prices, which allow others to purchase these assets and use them more wisely. Tamny is correct that an important part of any recession is the reallocation of assets and capital. However, when making a larger point about the macroeconomy and the policy, it often doesn’t serve ones case to provide anecdotal examples of how markets clear.

Ezra Klein rightfully scoffs at using such examples to sell markets as well as articulating the left-of-center response that although markets might clear, the process can be painful. Unfortunately, Klein continues:

What would a “humble federal government” do, exactly? Shut down the stimulus projects so a couple million more people end up unemployed and a couple million other people can buy their possessions at fire sale prices? Shut down the system of financial supports which are currently sustaining a weakened lending market? Should they have held back from Detroit’s collapse so that the assets of the various companies were simply liquidated, along with what was left of the Rust Belt’s economy? Should they cut off economic aid to the states so infrastructure literally crumbles?

A course these are all loaded questions. For example, even if the stimulus were to save “a couple million” jobs, this would come at the expense of either current or future consumption due to the increase in future tax liabilities that was created thereby causing job losses where this money is no longer spent. (We have been through the literature on this before.) It is similarly questionable why the automakers would have to liquidate upon entering bankruptcy without government assistance.

More:

At the end of the day, it will be a resuscitation of household spending and business expansion that restarts our economic growth. But for now, both have fallen through the floor, with terrible consequences for both individuals and businesses. What little demand exists is being substantially kept afloat by the massive intervention of the federal government.

Define “little”. I would describe several trillion as substantial. Furthermore, there must be a very large multiplier, especially considering much of the fiscal stimulus hasn’t even been spent.

More:

…the idea that the economy will heal itself if the government only steps out of the way is exactly the thinking that led to the deep recession of 1937. What a pity those lessons haven’t been better learned.

I am struggling to understand how the year that FDR decided to raise taxes and the Federal Reserve decided to increase reserve requirements thereby leading to another monetary contraction strikes one as government getting out of the way. It is indeed a pity that those lessons haven’t been learned.

I don’t mean to pick on Klein or Tamny, but rather highlight the fact that this debate is rather silly. We did not live in a world of laissez faire prior to the financial crisis — nor prior to the Great Depression — and thus it seems more than a bit self-important to sit around and debate whether markets clear as though we are living through the quintessential moment in which this argument will be won. It is also important to realize that the fact that markets fail does not imply that government can perform any better.

* I find this entire debate to be quite a bit tiresome as well considering that banks are one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country (by this I mean the actual regulation that is supposed to be enforced, not what actually is enforced) as well as the fact that the Federal Reserve, whose power is derived from the government, plays such a central role in this entire fiasco.

Quote of the Day

“In modern teaching an “A” is the grade you get when you have done nothing wrong. So I give the Fed an A for predicting the crisis, because they did nothing wrong there, and a D for adopting a monetary policy far too contractionary for the needs of the economy in September and October 2008, when things obviously starting getting much worse. I’d be happy if they simply did their job by keeping expected NGDP growing on a 5% track, I don’t expect them to be some sort of Nostradamus.”

— Scott Sumner

Becker on the Pay Czar

Gary Becker on the pay czar:

The title of my post, “The Fatal Conceit”, is taken from the title of a book published in 1988 by Friedrich Hayek. In this book Hayek attacks socialists for “the fatal conceit” that government officials can effectively determine prices and production through various forms of central planning without having the incentives and information available to firms in competitive markets. A closely related conceit is behind the belief that someone sitting in Washington can determine the pay to hundreds of executives and other employees.

The social purpose of competition and private enterprise is to provide quick responses to constantly changing market conditions. These responses include determining and changing the salaries, bonuses, and stock options of employees and top executives. Companies get into trouble and even fail when their decisions, including decisions on the quality of employees and their compensation, are less effective than decisions of their competitors.

[...]

The background of the Czar, Kenneth Feinberg, is not reassuring in these respects. A lawyer, he first worked for the federal government, and then during the past several decades headed a law firm based in Washington. Since he apparently has never been an employee of any company other than the government and Washington law firms, how can this background prepare him to set the pay of large companies, such as AIG or GM, that are in highly competitive industries?

Read the whole thing.

Was Keynes Correct?

My answer is going to be much more nuanced than the title might imply, but I think it is something that a discussion of this type requires. For example, it would be quite natural to answer the question in the title with another question (”Was he correct about what?”). The impetus behind this post was inspired by two unrelated, but thought-provoking blog posts by Casey Mulligan and Roger Farmer, each of whom answer the question in the affirmative for entirely different reasons. As someone who both appreciates Keynes and is skeptical of the effects of fiscal policy I thought that I might weigh in to provide my unique perspective.

Casey Mulligan asserts that Keynes was correct when he wrote, The Economic Consequences of the Peace regarding government spending and inflation. Indeed, I think that many would agree that this might have been Keynes’s greatest text. However, Mulligan notes on his own blog that the General Theory is “incorrect or at best unintelligible.” I have always had trouble with this type of statement as it begs the question “incorrect about what?” while simultaneously giving the impression that the GT is somehow impossible to understand — a point which I do not believe to be true. If Mulligan is referring to fiscal policy, which is somewhat indirectly implied by the context of his statement, then I think that he is correct. However, fiscal policy is not a primary theme in the GT. I would similarly argue that Keynes’s consumption function is incorrect in that consumption is not given by a stable relationship with current income, but rather permanent income as Friedman’s 1957 text demonstrated.

Ultimately, however, I think that the most important theme throughout the GT is the role of expectations and uncertainty. This is the topic of Roger Farmer’s post:

In the FT’s Economists’ Forum, Benn Steil wrote a stimulating piece in which he argued that Keynes was wrong. His argument is that interpretations of Keynesian economics are all based on the assumption that wages and prices are sticky. But wages and prices are not sticky. Ergo – Keynes was wrong. Mr. Steil and I are in complete agreement that the Keynesians, interpreted in this way are, to use a technical term, out to lunch. But that does not imply that Keynes was wrong. At least not entirely wrong. Far from it.

[...]

Keynes said three things in the General Theory. First: the labour market is not cleared by demand and supply and, as a consequence, very high unemployment can persist forever. Second: the beliefs of market participants independently influence the unemployment rate. Third: It is the responsibility of government to maintain full employment.

I have already stated my skepticism about the third point, but I think that Farmer is correct that these are the important themes of the GT.

Much of Farmer’s work has been dedicated to these ideas. He has demonstrated using reasonable models that a continuum of equilibria can exist. In such a case, the realized equilibrium can be a function of “sunspots”, or beliefs that are uncorrelated with fundamentals. Thus, changes in beliefs can have an impact on business cycle dynamics.

Whether or not you agree with Farmer’s research agenda or his particular methodology, I think that he is the closest of nearly anyone in modern macro to understanding the truly important themes of Keynes’s GT. The idea that beliefs about things that are uncorrelated with market fundamentals might have an impact on the business cycle was certainly a theme drive home by Keynes in the GT.

In short, I think that whether Keynes was correct requires a much more nuanced perspective than is generally presented. As I have expressed, I think that Keynes was incorrect about the consumption function and overly optimistic about the role of fiscal policy. However, I think that he was correct in asserting that expectations and confidence, which need not always be consistent with fundamentals in a world of uncertainty, can have a significant impact on economic fluctuations.