All posts in category Fiscal policy

Brad DeLong on the Sumner Critique and why the fiscal multiplier is zero

This is Brad DeLong:

An optimizing central bank that cares only about inflation and unemployment because it does not find itself at the zero nominal lower bound and does not fear engaging in nonstandard monetary policy will engage in full fiscal offset: it will take care to make sure that if fiscal policy becomes more stimulative then it will make monetary policy less stimulative by the same amount.

What Brad of course here is expressing is the so-called Sumner Critique – that is the fiscal multiplier will always be zero if the central bank directly or indirectly targets aggregate demand either as a result of an inflation target, an NGDP level target or for that matter a Bernanke-Evans style monetary rule.

Brad has a nice little model to illustrate his point. In some ways Brad’s model is similar to Nick Rowe’s game theoretical discussion of what Brad calls “full fiscal offset” (see my earlier post on the topic here). My simpler IS/LM+ model illustrates the same point (have a look at the model here).

Brad, however, thinks that the fiscal multiplier is positive at the Zero Lower Bound (ZLB):

… this argument breaks down at the zero nominal lower bound. At the zero lower bound the central bank does care only about inflation and unemployment. It cares as well about the magnitude of the non-standard monetary policy measures it must take in order to achieve its net monetary policy impetus value m.

This argument is somewhat harder for me to get. The Zero Lower Bound only exists as a mental construction in the heads of central bankers. Central banks can always ease monetary policy – even if interest rates are close to zero. That is exactly what the Fed and the Bank of Japan are doing at the moment.

Furthermore, it might of course be right that “real world” central banks prefer not to use other instruments rather than interest rates and therefore prefer the government to “push” aggregate demand (hence that is why Brad argues that the “instrument” should enter into the utility function of the central  bank). However, that would still be monetary policy (rather than fiscal policy) as government spending would only impact aggregate demand/NGDP because the central bank chose not to offset the increase in government spending. If the central bank on the other hand used for example a money base rule or McCallum’s MC rule where the policy instrument is a combination of the exchange rate and interest rates then the central bank would not pay any attention to the ZLB.

PS I find it “interesting” to read the comment section on Brad’s blog. It is clear that some of the more ideologically inclined Keynesians have a very hard time accepting the fact that the fiscal multiplier might be zero. (yes, I similarly have a very hard time accepting arguments that it might be positive so I am no saint…)

—-

This one is pretty funny (HT Daniel Brackins)

krugman astroid

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9 Comments
by Lars Christensen on February 18, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Brad DeLong, Fiscal multiplier, Fiscal policy, IS/LM model, Sumner Critique
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Posted by Lars Christensen on February 18, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/02/18/brad-delong-on-the-sumner-critique-and-why-the-fiscal-multiplier-is-zero/

The trillion dollar coin is an utterly idiotic idea

Following US political debate these days is like following a bad parody of a third world banana republic and even though I the deepest respect for Americans and US in general I must say it is hard not to agree with those Europeans that shake their heads these days and say “they are stupid those Americans”. Well, it is not the Americans – it is their politicians and you could say a similar thing about Europe.

The latest banana republic gimmick is the suggestion that the US Treasury should use a legal loophole to print a trillion dollar coin in the event that the US congressional majority – that’s the Republicans – would refuse to increase the so-called debt celling.

The idea in my view is completely ludicrous and it is incredible that anybody seriously would even contemplate such an idea. Anyway, is Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman:

“It’s easy to make sententious remarks to the effect that we shouldn’t look for gimmicks, we should sit down like serious people and deal with our problems realistically. That may sound reasonable — if you’ve been living in a cave for the past four years.Given the realities of our political situation, and in particular the mixture of ruthlessness and craziness that now characterizes House Republicans, it’s just ridiculous — far more ridiculous than the notion of the coin.

So if the 14th amendment solution — simply declaring that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional — isn’t workable, go with the coin.”

Nobel Prize or not Krugman is wrong – as he so often is.

First, of all there is no reason to think that the US government would have to default on it’s public debt just because the debt ceiling is not increased. The monthly debt servicing costs in the US is significantly smaller than the US government’s total monthly tax revenues. It might be that the US Treasury would have to stop paying out salaries to US Congressmen and stop buying new military hardware for a while – neither would be a major lose – but the tax revenues would easily cover  the debt servicing costs. That of course do not mean that I suggest that the debt ceiling should not be increased – that is US party political shenanigans that I simply don’t even want to comment on. However, it is wrong to suggest that the US government would automatically default if the debt ceiling is not increased.

Lars, wouldn’t a 1 trillion dollar coin be monetary easing? So it most be good?

What I really want to discuss is the Market Monetarist perspective on this discussion. Yes, Market Monetarists have for the past four years argued that US monetary policy has been overly tight and the reason the US recovery has been so relatively weak is the that Federal Reserve has had too tight monetary policy. That has led Market Monetarists like myself and other to call for monetary easing from the Federal Reserve.

However, at the core of Market Monetarist thinking is not the call for monetary easing and no Market Monetarist has ever said that monetary easing is the cure of all evils. Rather at the centre of Market Monetarist thinking is the call for a rule based monetary policy. An easing of monetary policy based on a trillion dollar coin is probably the most discretionary and least rule based monetary (and fiscal) idea anybody have come up with over the past four years.

Yes, Market Monetarists are certainly skeptical about central bankers ability to conduct monetary policy in a proper fashion, but that certainly do not mean that we think US politicians and bureaucrats in the US Treasury would do a better job. Far from it!

I would even go further – I don’t necessarily think that the US economy needs more quantitative easing IF the Federal Reserve started conducting monetary policy based on a transparent monetary rule like NGDP level targeting. Furthermore, if I would have to chose between an NGDP level target or a massive ramping up of quantitative easing within a discretionary framework then there is no doubt that I would choose the rule based framework. Market Monetarists are not the monetary version of discretionary Krugmanian fiscal policy.

Concluding, the trillion dollar coin idea is stupid. It is stupid because it banana republic “economic” policy based on the worst political motives without any foundation in the rule of law and a general rules based framework.

The fact is that the US government faces serious fiscal challenges. The US public debt level needs to be reduced and even if the Federal Reserve pushed back NGDP to its pre-crisis trend level I believe there would be a significant need for fiscal consolidation. There is no getting around it – debt ceiling or not, trillion dollar coin or not – fiscal policy will have to be tightened sooner or later. And if you need idea about what to cut I have some ideas about that as well (see here).

It is simple mamanomics – you can’t continue spending more money than you have. It might be that certain US policy makers would be happy if their mom raised their weekly allowances, but would they also be happy if their mom prostituted herself to do that?

PS there is no party politics in what I am saying – I have the same lack of respect for both main political parties in the US as do most Americans.

PPS Scott Sumner and Tyler Cowen also comment on the trillion dollar coin – for some reason the two gentlemen are slightly more diplomatic than I am. Josh Hendrickson, however, is as clear on the issue as I am – Josh has two posts on the trillion dollar coin. See here and here.

PPPS If you think there is a lot of James Buchanan and Friedrich Hayek in this post then I have achieved what I want to achieve. After all Friedman and Schwartz’s “Monetary History” is not the only book I read.

Update: Both Steve Horwitz and George Selgin comment on the trillion dollar coin – not surprisingly I have no reason to disagree with the two gentlemen.

18 Comments
by Lars Christensen on January 8, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Debt ceiling, Fiscal cliff, Fiscal policy
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Posted by Lars Christensen on January 8, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/01/08/the-trillion-dollar-coin-is-an-utterly-idiotic-idea/

The fiscal cliff has never been a market theme

When I over the last couple of days have looked at my twitter account nine of ten tweets have been about the “fiscal cliff” and the financial media all over the world have been all about that horrible “cliff”. Commentators from left to right in the US have issued warnings about the horrors of the fiscal cliff. Yes, it has felt very much like we indeed have been heading for an economic meltdown. Economic slowdown in China or the euro crisis is not important – the only thing important is the fiscal cliff (blah, blah…)

Just take a look at what Google Trends is telling us. The graph below shows searches for “fiscal cliff” over the last 90 days.

googlecliff

Since mid-November the searches for “fiscal cliff” has clearly picked up and really spiked in the last couple of weeks.

However, despite the desperate efforts of pundits and the financial media the fiscal cliff has never really become a serious market theme. The best way to illustrate this is to look at the US stock market – and more specifically on two sets of stocks – defense stocks and “consumer discretionaries”. Both sectors should be expected to be impacted heavily in the event of a full-blown fiscal cliff event as a result of tax hikes and cuts in US defend spending. I have looked the two sectors’ performance during 2012 relative to the overall stock market performance (S&P500).

If the market really had been worried about the fiscal cliff we should have seen defense stocks and consumer discretionaries plummet. However, as the graph below shows that has certainly not been the case.

fiscal cliff

In fact both consumer discretionaries and defence stocks have outperformed the overall US stock market since August-September. Therefore if anything the performance of these two sub-indices have been positively correlated with the fiscal cliff “worries”.

In fact I would argue that the markets have paid little substantial attention to the ongoing political noise from Washington. It is for example notable that defence stocks have continued to do well despite Obama’s reelection.

This of course do not prove that fiscal policy is not important – far from it, but other things are certainly much more important and the markets are a lot more forward-looking than it seems to be the “normal” perception in the financial media. The discussion of the fiscal cliff has not been (a market moving) surprise to the markets and neither has been the political “show” that we have seen in recent weeks. Yes, the US political system is dysfunctional, but that is really no surprise to the markets. Nor is it likely to be a surprise to US corporations and consumers. As consequence it hard to believe that the fiscal cliff can be classified as an “shock” to the economic system.

A the fiscal cliff as a textbook take-it-or-leave-it game

As my good friend professor Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard has noted the negotiations about the fiscal cliff has been a complete textbook example of a take-it-or-leave-it game. Even though pundits on the left and the right of US politics have bashed both the GOP and the Democrats for failing in the negotiations there is really nothing surprising about how the negotiations have played out. Any student of game theory would tell you that and apparently the markets understand game theory better than pundits and the financial media reporters.

There is no reason to play the blame game here – both the GOP and the Democrats (including the President) have so far pretty much behaved rationally (in a game theoretical sense) – that of course do not mean that what they are doing is nice to look at or for that matter in the interest of the American people, but game theorists would not be surprised – neither has the markets been.

For good discussion of the game theoretical aspects of the fiscal cliff negotiation see this excellent post by John Patty on the “The Math of Politics” blog from December 14 2012.

The real market mover is monetary policy

Finally let me just repeat the Market Monetarist position (see more previous posts on the issue here, here, here and here). Monetary policy dominates fiscal policy – the Fed will be able to counteract any negative shock to aggregate demand (or nominal GDP). The performance of consumer discretionary stocks pretty well illustrates this. As the market started to price in QE3 in August and later was positively surprised by the implicit announcement of the Bernanke-Evans rule in September consumer discretionaries have rallied. Hence, at least judging from the stock market performance monetary policy has dominated fiscal policy worries. I am not arguing that if the there had not been a “deal” on the fiscal cliff the markets would have not seen a set-back, but I am certainly arguing that this issue has gotten far to much attention compared to have relatively unimportant the issue is.

I am normally not making predictions here, but I today predict that “fiscal cliff” searches on Google has already peaked (but no I am not a betting man). From today the fiscal cliff is so much 2012. It is time to focus on something else…also for the financial media.

PS fiscal policy always have an impact of income distribution and as far and as I can see this is the real issue in the US, but that does not really make the discussion important from a macroeconomic perspective (unless it has supply side effects).

6 Comments
by Lars Christensen on January 2, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bernanke-Evans rule, Evans rule, Fiscal cliff, Fiscal policy, Game Theory
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Posted by Lars Christensen on January 2, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/01/02/the-fiscal-cliff-has-never-been-a-market-theme/

JPIrving on why not to fear the fiscal cliff

Turn on the TV and watch five minutes of CNBC or Bloomberg TV these days and you get the impression that the world is coming to an end as a result of the fiscal cliff. However, the contrast to this is the development in the US financial markets. Yes, there are some jitters in the markets, but the market developments do not exactly indicate that we falling into the abyss in a couple of days. This is the theme of a new excellent post from JPIrving.

Here is JP:

“In a situation like this, the thing to do is to look at the markets to get a sense of what they foresee. However reading markets is not so straightforward in this situation. Unlike monetary policy, which is more or less neutral in its impact on the composition of aggregate demand (where the ‘money goes first’), fiscal policy is by definition nonneutral. If the government cuts the military’s equipment budget, then military contractors stand to lose more than others.”

JP is right – if the markets really were fearing a collapse in aggregate demand then we would see a collapse in the stock markets and we haven’t seen that.

JP continues:

“If we would say that there is a 40% chance of taking on the full fiscal cliff, and that markets are already discounting this, I would say that the full fiscal cliff would not have the sort of disasterous consequences some fear. At least this is what the markets say to me.

Some regions would be hard-hit, but the recovery would survive.”

Let me just say I wholeheartedly agree.

PS Some (Johan Weissmann at The Atlantic) tells us to worry about a “Diary cliffs” as well. However, the market is not worried. I tend to believe the market, but Weissmann is right that US politicians behave as small children.

3 Comments
by Lars Christensen on December 28, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Fiscal cliff, Fiscal policy, JPIrving
Tagged ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on December 28, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/12/28/jpirving-on-why-not-to-fear-the-fiscal-cliff/

Answering questions on “Quora” about Market Monetarism

I recently signed up for Quora. According to Wikipedia Quora “is a question-and-answer website created, edited and organized by its community of users.”

I am not a frequent user of Quora but drop by from time to time and tonight I ran into this question:

Why do some market monetarists advocate fiscal austerity?

That one I obviously had to answer and here it is:

The short answer is the Market Monetarists do not advocate fiscal austerity. What MM’ers are arguing is that monetary dominates fiscal policy. Hence, IF fiscal policy is tightened then it will not necessarily have an negative impact on aggregate demand – or nominal GDP – if the central bank for examples targets inflation or the nominal GDP level. This is known as the Sumner Critique.

The view that monetary policy dominates fiscal policy in the determination of nominal spending in the economy makes Market Monetarists less fearful fiscal austerity than for example keynesians. Furthermore, Market Monetarists are highly skeptical about discretionary policies – both monetary and fiscal – and that leads Market Montarists to advocate rule based fiscal and monetary policy.

In addition most of the leader Market Monetarists thinkers are libertarian or conservative and as such highly skeptical about a large public sector and as a result many Market Monetarists therefore would welcome cuts in public spending. That, however, is not at the core of Market Monetarist thinking.

Finally for most Market Monetarists fiscal austerity is simply about simple arithmetics – in the long run governments cannot spend more money than they bring in. Therefore, for countries that are unable to access the global capital markets – such as Greece – there is no alternative to austerity.

I have written numerous blog posts on these issues on my blog The Market Monetarist. See some of them here:

“Conditionality” is ECB’s term for the Sumner Critique

In New Zealand the Sumner Critique is official policy

Policy coordination, game theory and the Sumner Critique

The Bundesbank demonstrated the Sumner critique in 1991-92

The fiscal cliff is not the end of the world

Cato Institute on US military spending and the fiscal cliff

The fiscal cliff is good news

The fiscal cliff and the Bernanke-Evans rule in a simple static IS/LM model

The fiscal cliff and why fiscal conservatives should endorse NGDP targeting

There is no such thing as fiscal policy – and that goes for Japan as well

There is no such thing as fiscal policy

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on December 26, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Fiscal cliff, Fiscal policy, Sumner Critique
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on December 26, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/12/26/answering-questions-on-quora-about-market-monetarism/

Cato Institute on US military spending and the fiscal cliff

In an earlier post I claimed that the “full” fiscal cliff would not necessarily be a disaster for the US economy – and I was probably also unusual forthcoming in my hope that US defending might be cut as a result of the fiscal cliff, but this blog is primarily about monetary policy issues so I don’t want to bore my readers with more of my views on the US defense budget. Instead I would like to recommend my readers to have a look at what the Cato Institute has to say on this issue.

This is from Cato Institute’s Facebook page:

In recent days several senior Republicans have come out saying they would be willing to break their anti-tax pledge as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations. At least one of those lawmakers, Senator Lindsey Graham, has said that this is because he is unwilling to let sequester budget cuts “destroy the United States military.” Cato scholars have long argued that the proposed sequester cuts would allow the United States to maintain a wide margin of military superiority, while paying substantial dividends for the U.S. economy over the long run.

• “Budget Hawks or Military Hawks?,” Cato Video with Grover Norquist - http://youtu.be/C7AWXLDPmE0

• “The Bottom Line on Sequestration,” by Christopher Preble -http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/bottom-line-sequestration

• “The Pentagon Will Survive the Fiscal Cliff,” by Justin Logan -http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/pentagon-will-survive-fiscal-cliff

Enjoy and stop worrying about lower public expenditures – after all the Sumner Critique applies: NGDP will be unaffected by lower defense spending as long as the Federal Reserve implements the Bernanke-Evans rule. By the way fiscal conservatives should be impressed with this – if the Fed keeps NGDP on track (or follow a Bernanke-Evans style policy rule) then it will remove any keynesian style opposition to fiscal consolidation.

You might also want to have a look at this excellent article by Gallaway and Vedder on the “The Great Depression of 1946″. There was of course no Great Depression in 1946 despite a massive cut in US military spending by the end of the Second World War. It is not everything Gallaway and Vedder write that I agree on, but I nonetheless think that they make a very compelling case that even drastic cuts in defense spending is unlikely to lead to any serious economic downturn. That was the case in 1946 and would be the case in 2013.

By the way Cliff is not worried…

Cliff-Clavin-Forget-the-Fiscal-Cliff-CNBC

11 Comments
by Lars Christensen on December 2, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Cato, Fiscal cliff, Fiscal policy, Lowell Gallaway, Richard Vedder
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Posted by Lars Christensen on December 2, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/12/02/cato-institute-on-us-military-spending-and-the-fiscal-cliff/

The fiscal cliff is good news

When I started this blog I set out to write about monetary policy issues – primarily from a none-US perspective – and furthermore I am on vacation with my family in Malaysia so writing this blog post goes against everything I should do – however, after listen to five minutes of debate about the ”fiscal cliff” on CNBC tonight I simply have to write this: What is your problem? Why are you so scared about fiscal consolidation? After all this is what the fiscal cliff is – a 4-5% improvement of public finances as share of GDP.

The point is that the US government is running clearly excessive public deficits and the public debt has grown far too large so isn’t fiscal tightening exactly what you need? I think it is and the fiscal cliff ensures that. Yes, I agree tax hikes are unfortunate from a supply side perspective, but cool down a bit – it is going to have only a marginally negative impact on the long-term US growth perspective that the Bush tax cuts expiries. But more importantly the fiscal cliff would mean cuts in US defense spending. The US is spending more on military hardware than any other country in the world. It seems to me that US policy makers have not realized that the Cold War is over. You don’t need to spend 5% of GDP on bombs. In fact I believe that if the entire 4-5% fiscal consolidation were done, as cuts to US defense spending the world would probably be a better place. But that is not my choice – and it is the peace-loving libertarian rather than the economist speaking (here is a humorous take on the sad story of war). What I am saying is that the world is not coming to an end if the US defense budget is cut marginally. Paradoxically US conservatives this time around are against budget consolidation. Sad – but true.

Since September the Federal Reserve has had the Bernanke-Evans rule in place. That means basically means that the Fed will step up monetary easing in response to any increase in unemployment. Hence, if the full fiscal cliff leads to any increase in unemployment the fed will counteract that with monetary easing. So effectively the fiscal cliff means fiscal tightening and monetary easing. This of course would also be the case if the fed was a strict inflation targeting central bank – that directly follows from the Sumner critique.

Fiscal consolidation and monetary easing is this is exactly what the US had in 1990s – the best period for the US economy since WWII. By at that time a Democrat President also had to work with a Republican dominated Congress.

So no, I don’t understand what there is to fear. Lower public spending and easier monetary policy is the right medine for the US economy (yes and please throw in some structural reforms as well). If that is the fiscal cliff please bring it on. It will be good for America and good for the world. And it might even be a more peaceful world.

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PS if you are really concerned about the fiscal cliff just agree on this:

1) Cut US defense spending to 2% of GDP

2) NO tax hikes

3) Commit the fed to bring back NGDP to the pre-crisis trend level through QE

Update: My version (second and third!) version of this post had an incredible amount of typos – sorry for that. I have now cleaned it up a bit.

Update 2: David Glasner also comments on the fiscal issue – David agrees with me in theory, but is more worried about the what the fed will do in the real world. When David is saying something I always listen. David is a real voice of reason – often also of moderation. That said, I strongly believe the Sumner Critique is correct. NGDP is determined by monetary policy and not by fiscal policy – so if the fiscal cliff will lead to a recession the fed will be to blame and not the US politicians (they are to blame for a lot of other things…).

21 Comments
by Lars Christensen on November 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in David Glasner, Fiscal cliff, Fiscal policy, Sumner Critique
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Posted by Lars Christensen on November 16, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/11/16/the-fiscal-cliff-is-good-news/

Paul Krugman warns against fiscal stimulus

This is Paul Krugman on the effectiveness on fiscal policy and why fiscal “stimulus” will in fact not be stimulative:

“The US is currently engaged in the largest peacetime fiscal stimulus in history, with a budget deficit of around 10 percent of GDP. And this stimulus is working in the narrow sense that it has headed off the imminent risk of a deflationary spiral, and generated some economic growth. On the other hand, deficits this size cannot be continued over the long haul; USA now has Italian (or Belgian) levels of internal debt, together with large implicit liabilities associated with its awkward demographics. So the current strategy can work in the larger sense only if it succeeds in jump-starting the economy, in eventually generating a self-sustaining recovery that persists even after the stimulus is phased out.

Is this likely? The phrase “self-sustaining recovery” trips lightly off the tongue of economic officials; but it is in fact a remarkably exotic idea. The purpose of this note is to expose this hidden exoticism – to show that anyone who believes that temporary fiscal stimulus will produce sustained recovery is implicitly endorsing a rather fancy economic model, the sort of model that finance ministries would under normal circumstances regard as implausible and disreputable…

…What continues to amaze me is this: USA’s current strategy of massive, unsustainable deficit spending in the hopes that this will somehow generate a self-sustained recovery is currently regarded as the orthodox, sensible thing to do – even though it can be justified only by exotic stories about multiple equilibria, the sort of thing you would imagine only a professor could believe. Meanwhile further steps on monetary policy – the sort of thing you would advocate if you believed in a more conventional, boring model, one in which the problem is simply a question of the savings-investment balance – are rejected as dangerously radical and unbecoming of a dignified economy.”

Wauw! What is this? What happened to the keynesian Krugman? Isn’t he calling for fiscal easing anymore? Well yes, but I am cheating here. This is Paul Krugman, but it is not today’s Paul Krugman. This is Paul Krugman in 1999 – and he is talking about Japan and not the US. I simply replaced “Japan” with “the US” in the Krugman quote above.

Read the entire article here.

HT Tyler Cowen and Vaidas Urba.

15 Comments
by Lars Christensen on October 26, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Fiscal policy, Japan, Paul Krugman, Tyler Cowen
Tagged , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on October 26, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/10/26/paul-krugman-warns-against-fiscal-stimulus/

The fiscal cliff and the Bernanke-Evans rule in a simple static IS/LM model

Sometimes simple macroeconomic models can help us understand the world better and even though I am not uncritical about the IS/LM model it nonetheless has some interesting features which from time to time makes it useful for policy analysis (if you are careful).

However, a key problem with the IS/LM model is that the model does not take into account – in its basic textbook form – the central bank’s policy rule. However, it is easy to expand the model to include a monetary policy rule.

I will do exactly that in this post and I will use the Federal Reserve’s new policy rule – the Bernanke-Evans rule – to analysis the impact of the so-called fiscal cliff on a (very!) stylised version of the US economy.

We start out with the two standard equations in the IS/LM model.

The money demand function:

(1) m=p+y-α×r

Where m is the money supply/demand, p is prices and y is real GDP. r is the interest rate and α is a coefficient.

Aggregate demand is defined as follows:

(2) y=g-β×r

Aggregate demand y equals public spending and private sector demand (β×r), which is a function of the interest rate r. β is a coefficient. It is assumed that private demand drops when the interest rate increases.

This is basically all you need in the textbook IS/LM model. However, we also need to define a monetary policy rule to be able to say something about the real world.

I will use a stylised version of the Bernanke-Evans rule based on the latest policy announcement from the Fed’s FOMC. The FOMC at it latest meeting argued that it basically would continue to expand the money base (in the IS/LM the money base and the money supply is the same thing) to hit a certain target for the unemployment rate. That means that we can define a simple Bernanke-Evans rule as follows:

(3) m=λ×U

One can think of U as either the unemployment rate or the deviation of the unemployment rate from the Fed’s unemployment target. λ is a coefficient that tells you how aggressive the fed will increase the money supply (m) if U increases.

We now need to model how the labour market works. We simply assume Okun’s law holds (we could also have used a simple production function):

(4) U=-δ×y

This obviously is very simplified as we totally disregard supply side issues on the labour market. However, we are not interested in using this model for analysis of such factors.

It is easy to solve the model. We get the LM curve from (1), (3) and (4):

LM: r= y×(1+δ×λ)⁄α+(1/α)×p

And we get the IS curve by rearranging (2):

IS: r =(1/β)×g-(1/β)×y

Under normal assumptions about the coefficients in the model the LM curve is upward sloping and the IS curve is downward sloping. This is as in the textbook version.

Note, however, that the slope of the LM does not only depend on the money demand’s interest rate elasticity (α), but also on how aggressive  (λ) the fed will react to an increase in unemployment.

The Sumner Critique applies if λ=∞

The fact that the slope of the LM curve depends on λ is critical. Hence, if the fed is fully committed to its unemployment target and will do everything to fulfill (as the FOMC signaled when it said it would step up QE until it hit its target) then λ equals infinity (∞) .

Obviously, if λ=∞ then the LM curve is vertical – as in the “monetarist” case in the textbook version of the IS/LM model. However, contrary to the “normal” the LM curve we don’t need α to be zero to ensure a vertical LM curve.

Hence, under a strict Bernanke-Evans rule where the fed will not accept any diviation from its unemployment target (λ=∞) the (government) budget multiplier is zero and the so-called Sumner Critique therefore applies: Fiscal policy cannot increase or decrease output (y) or the unemployment (U) as any fiscal “shock” (higher or lower g) will be fully offset by the fed’s actions.

The Bernanke-Evans rule reduces risks from the fiscal cliff

It follows that if the fed actually follows through on it commitment to hit its (still fuzzy) unemployment target then in the simple model outlined above the risk from a negative shock to demand from the so-called fiscal cliff is reduced greatly.

This is good news, but it is also a natural experiment of the Sumner Critique. Imagine that we indeed get a 4% of GDP tightening of fiscal policy next year, but at the same time the fed is 100% committed to hitting it unemployment target (that unemployment should drop) then if unemployment then increases anyway then Scott Sumner (and myself) is wrong – or the fed didn’t do it job well enough. Both are obviously very likely…

I am arguing that I believe the model presented above is the correct model of the US economy. The purpose has rather been to demonstrate the critical importance of a the monetary policy rule even in a standard textbook keynesian model and to demonstrate that fiscal policy is much less important than normally assumed by keynesians if we take the monetary policy rule into account.

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 15, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Ben Bernanke, Bernanke-Evans rule, Federal Reserve, Fiscal policy, IS/LM model, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy rules, Sumner Critique, The Great Recession, Uncategorized
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Posted by Lars Christensen on September 15, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/15/the-fiscal-cliff-and-the-bernanke-evans-rule-in-a-simple-static-islm-model/

“Conditionality” is ECB’s term for the Sumner Critique

Some time ago Scott Sumner did a number of blog posts on fiscal policy and why he believes that the budget multiplier is zero. At the time I was somewhat frustrated that the amount of time Scott was using to focus on an issue that I found quite obvious. However, I now found myself doing exactly the same thing – I can’t let go of the game played by central banks against governments and impact this has on the economic policy mix. This is maybe because I find empirical evidence for the so-called Sumner Critique popping up everywhere.

The Sumner Critique basically says that the central bank can always overrule any impact of expansionary fiscal policy on aggregate demand by tightening monetary policy and if the central bank is targeting for example inflation or nominal GDP then it will do so. Therefore, under inflation targeting or NGDP targeting the budget multiplier will always be zero even if the world is Keynesian.

Last week’s policy announcement from the ECB gives further (quasi) empirical support for the Sumner Critique. Hence, the ECB announced that it would conduct what it calls “Outright Monetary Transactions” (OMT) – that is it would (or rather could) buy euro government bonds.

But see here what the ECB said about the conditions for OMT:

“A necessary condition for Outright Monetary Transactions is strict and effective conditionality attached to an appropriate European Financial Stability Facility/European Stability Mechanism (EFSF/ESM) programme. Such programmes can take the form of a full EFSF/ESM macroeconomic adjustment programme or a precautionary programme (Enhanced Conditions Credit Line), provided that they include the possibility of EFSF/ESM primary market purchases. The involvement of the IMF shall also be sought for the design of the country-specific conditionality and the monitoring of such a programme.

The Governing Council will consider Outright Monetary Transactions to the extent that they are warranted from a monetary policy perspective as long as programme conditionality is fully respected, and terminate them once their objectives are achieved or when there is non-compliance with the macroeconomic adjustment or precautionary programme.

Following a thorough assessment, the Governing Council will decide on the start, continuation and suspension of Outright Monetary Transactions in full discretion and acting in accordance with its monetary policy mandate.”

The important term here is “conditionality”. The ECB’s condition for buying government bonds is that the individual euro zone country has a EFSF/ESM macroeconomic adjustment programme. Such a programme is basically a pledge of a given government to tighten fiscal policy. In other words – the ECB could buy for example Spanish government bonds, but the condition would be that the Spanish government should tighten fiscal policy.

Therefore, what the ECB is doing is basically asking the Spanish government and other euro zone governments to be the “Stackelberg leader”: First you tighten fiscal policy and then we will ease monetary policy.

As a consequence the ECB has basically said that the fiscal multiplier should be zero – the ECB will “neutralize” any impact on aggregate demand of changes in fiscal policy. This is better news than it might sound. Obviously European monetary policy is much too tight in the euro zone and I would have liked to see a lot more action from the ECB. However, one could understand “conditionality” to mean that the ECB will fill the possible hole in aggregate demand from fiscal consolidation in euro zone – monetary policy will be eased in response to fiscal tightening. That is good news.

However, the crucial problem of course is that the euro zone needs higher aggregate demand and therefore I would have been much happier if the ECB had announced a clear plan to increase aggregate demand (or rather nominal GDP) – it did not do that. However, if the ECB at least will try to counteract the possible negative impact on aggregate demand from fiscal consolidation then that is good news. One could of course say that this is a completely natural consequence of the ECB’s inflation targeting regime – if fiscal tightening reduces aggregate demand then the ECB should ease monetary policy to avoid inflation undershooting the inflation targeting.

Concluding, “conditionality” is another term for the Sumner Critique and it is in my view yet another illustration that expansionary fiscal policy is unlikely to bring us out of this crisis if central banks is not playing along.

Related posts:

In New Zealand the Sumner Critique is official policy
Policy coordination, game theory and the Sumner Critique
The fiscal cliff and why fiscal conservatives should endorse NGDP targeting
The Bundesbank demonstrated the Sumner critique in 1991-92
“Meantime people wrangle about fiscal remedies”
Please keep “politics” out of the monetary reaction function
Is Matthew Yglesias now fully converted to Market Monetarism?
Mr. Hollande the fiscal multiplier is zero if Mario says so
Maybe Jens Weidmann and Francios Hollande should switch jobs
There is no such thing as fiscal policy

4 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 11, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, euro crisis, Fiscal policy, Scott Sumner, Sumner Critique
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Posted by Lars Christensen on September 11, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/11/conditionality-is-ecbs-term-for-the-sumner-critique/

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