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The “Weidmann rule” and the asymmetrical budget multiplier (is the euro zone 50% keynesian?)

During Christmas and New Years I have been able to (nearly) not think about monetary policy and economics, but I nonetheless came across some comments from Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann from last week, which made me think about the connection between monetary policy rules and fiscal austerity in the euro zone. I will try address these issues in this post.  

This is Jens Weidmann:

“The euro zone is recovering only gradually from the harshest economic crisis in the post-war period and there are few price risks. This justifies the low interest rate…Low price pressure however cannot be a licence for arbitrary monetary easing and we must be sure to raise rates at the right time should inflation pressure mount.”

It is the second part of the quote, which is interesting. Here Weidmann basically spells out his preferred reaction function for the ECB and what he is saying is that he bascially wants an asymmetrical monetary policy rule – when inflation drops below the ECB’s 2% inflation target the ECB should not “arbitrary” cut its key policy rate, but when inflation pressures increase he wants the ECB to act imitiately.

It is not given that the ECB actually has such a policy rule, but given the enormous influence of the Bundesbank on ECB policy making it is probably reasonable to assume that that is the case. That in my view would mean that Summer Critique does not apply (fully) to the euro zone and as a result we can think of the euro zone as being at least 50% “keynesian” in the sense that fiscal shocks will not be fully offset by monetary policy. As a result it would be wrong to assume that the budget multiplier is zero in the euro zone – or rather it is not always zero. The budget multiplier is asymmetrical.

Let me try to illustrate this within a simple AS/AD framework.

First we start out with a symmetrical policy rule – an inflation targeting ECB. Our starting point is a situation where inflation is at 2% – the ECB’s official inflation target – and the ECB will move to offset any shock (positive and negative) to aggregate demand to keep inflation (expectations) at 2%. The graph below illustrates this.

ASAD AD shock

If the euro zone economy is hit by a negative demand shock in the form of for example fiscal tightening across the currency union the AD curve inititally shifts to the left (from AD to AD’). This will push inflation below the ECB’s 2% inflation target. As this happens the ECB will automatically move to offset this shock by easing monetary policy. This will shift the AD curve back (from AD’ to AD). With a credible monetary policy rule the markets would probably do most of the lifting.

The Weidmann rule – asymmetry rules

However, the Weidmann rule as formulated above is not symmetrical. In Weidmann’s world a negative shock to aggregate demand – for example fiscal tightening – will not automatically be offset by monetary policy. Hence, in the graph above the negative shock aggregate demand (from AD to AD’) will just lead to a drop in real GDP growth and in inflation to below 2%. Given the ECB’s official 2% would imply the ECB should move to offset the negative AD shock, but that is not the case under the Weidmann rule. Hence, under the Weidmann rule a tightening of fiscal policy will lead to drop in aggregate demand. This means that the fiscal multiplier is positive, but only when the fiscal shock is negative.

This means that the Sumner Critique does not hold under the Weidman rule. Fiscal consolidation will indeed have a negative impact on aggregate demand (nominal spending). In that sense the keynesians are right – fiscal consolidation in the euro zone has likely had an negative impact on euro zone growth if the ECB consistently has followed a Weidmann rule. Whether that is the case or not is ultimately an empirical question, but I must admit that I increasingly think that that is the case. The austerity drive in the euro zone has likely been deflationary. However, it is important to note that this is only so because of the conduct of monetary policy in the euro area. Had the ECB instead had an fed style Evans rule with a symmetrical policy rule then the Sumner Critique would have applied also for the euro area.

The fact that the budget multiplier is positive could be seen as an argument against fiscal austerity in the euro zone. However, interestingly enough it is not an argument for fiscal stimulus.  Hence, according to Jens Weidmann the ECB “must be sure to raise rates at the right time should inflation pressure mount”. Said in another way if the AD curve shifts to the right – increasing inflation and real GDP growth then the ECB should offset this with higher interest rates even when inflation is below the ECB’s 2% inflation target.

This means that there is full monetary offset if fiscal policy is eased. Therefore the Sumner Critique applies under fiscal easing and the budget multiplier is zero.

The Weidmann rule guarantees deflation 

Concluding, with the Weidmann rule fiscal tightening will be deflationary – inflation will drop as will real GDP growth. But fiscal stimulus will not increase aggregate demand. The result of this is that if we assume the shocks to aggregate demand are equally distributed between positive and negative demand shocks the consequence will be that we over time will see the difference between nominal GDP in the US and the euro become larger and larger exactly because the fed has a symmetrical monetary policy rule (the Evans rule), while the ECB has a asymmetrical monetary policy rule (the Weidmann rule).

This is of course exactly what we have seen over the past five years. But don’t blame fiscal austerity – blame the Weidmann rule.

NGDP euro zone USA

PS I should really acknowledge that this is a variation over a theme stressed by Larry Summers and Brad Delong in their paper Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy. See my discussion of that paper here.

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10 Comments
by Lars Christensen on January 2, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Brad DeLong, Bundesbank, Deflation, ECB, euro crisis, Evans rule, Jens Weidmann, Larry Summers, Sumner Critique
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Posted by Lars Christensen on January 2, 2014

https://marketmonetarist.com/2014/01/02/the-weidmann-rule-and-the-asymmetrical-budget-multiplier-is-the-euro-zone-50-keynesian/

I am sick and tired of hearing about “currency war” – and so is Philipp Hildebrand

Milton Friedman used to talk about an interest rate fallacy – that people confuse low interest rates with easy monetary policy. However, I believe that we today are facing an even bigger fallacy – the exchange rate fallacy.

The problem is that many commentators, journalists, economists and policy makers think that exchange rate movements in some way are a zero sum game. If one country’s currency weakens then other countries lose competitiveness. In a world with sticky prices and wages that is of course correct in the short-term. However, what is not correct is that monetary easing that leads to currency depreciation hurts other countries.

Easing monetary conditions is about increasing domestic demand (or NGDP). In open economies a side effect can be a weakening of the country’s currency. However, any negative impact on other countries can always be counteracted by that country’s central bank. The Federal Reserve determines nominal GDP in the US. The Bank of Mexico determines Mexican NGDP. It is of course correct that strengthening of the Mexican peso against the US dollar can impact Mexican exports to the US, but the Fed can never “overrule” Banxico when it comes to determining NGDP in Mexico. This of course is a variation of the Sumner Critique – that the fiscal multiplier is zero if the central bank directly or indirectly targets aggregate demand (through for example inflation targeting or NGDP level targeting). Similarly the “export multiplier” is zero as the central bank always has the last word when it comes to aggregate demand. For a discussion of the US-Mexican monetary transmission mechanism see here.

At the core of the problem is that most people tend to think of economics in paleo-Keynesian terms – or what I earlier have termed national account economics. Luckily not everybody thinks like this. A good example of somebody who is able to understand something other than “national account economics” is former Swiss central banker Philipp Hildebrand.

Hildebrand has a great comment on FT.com on why there is “No such thing as a global currency war”.

Here is Hildebrand:

As finance ministers and central bankers make their way to this week’s Group of 20 leading nations meeting in Moscow, some of them may find it impossible to resist the temptation to grab headlines by lamenting a new round of “currency wars”. They should resist, for there is no such thing as a currency war.

This is because central banks are simply doing what they are meant to do and what they have always done. They set monetary policy consistent with their domestic mandates. All that has changed since the crisis is that central banks have had to resort to unconventional measures in an effort to revive wounded economies.

 So true, so true. Central banks are in the business of controlling nominal spending in their own economies to fulfill whatever domestic mandate they have.
Over the last couple of months the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan have moved decisively in the direction of monetary easing and all indications are that the Bank of England is moving in the same direction. That is good news. Hildebrand agrees:

In the US, for example, the unemployment rate is 2 percentage points above its postwar average. In the UK, output remains 3 per cent below its level at the end of 2007.

In both of these countries, the remits given to the central banks make their responsibility clear: to take action to provide economic stimulus. The US Federal Reserve, for example, has responsibility to “promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates”. In the UK, the Bank of England’s main objective is to maintain price stability. But subject to that, it is required to “support the economic policy of Her Majesty’s government, including its objectives for growth and employment”.

Japan’s problems are different in nature, and longer in the making. Japanese inflation has been negative, on average, for well over a decade. It is an environment that would not be tolerated in any other developed economy. The recently signalled desire for inflation of 2 per cent is hardly a leap towards monetary unorthodoxy, let alone an act of war.

Obviously the side effect of monetary easing from the major central banks of the world (with the horrible exception of the ECB) is that other countries’ currencies tend to strengthen. That is for example the case for the Mexican peso as I noted above. With currencies strengthening these countries are importing monetary tightening. However, that can easily be counteracted (if necessary!) by cutting interest rates or conducting quantitative easing. Hildebrand again nails it:

One can sympathise with emerging economies with floating exchange rates, which may feel they are bearing too much of the burden of adjustment. But surely the answer is not for developed economy central banks to turn away from their remits. Rather, it is for emerging economies to focus their own monetary policy on sensible domestic remits, with their exchange rates free to be determined in the market.

There is one small and particularly open economy where sustained currency movements were not merely the consequence of conventional or unconventional monetary policy measures but where the central bank opted to influence the exchange rate directly. In September 2011, when I was chairman of the Swiss National Bank, it announced that it would no longer tolerate an exchange rate below 1.20 Swiss francs to the euro – and to enforce that minimum rate it would be prepared to buy foreign currency in unlimited quantities.

If Mexico had a problem with US monetary easing then Banxico could simply copy the policies of SNB – and put a floor under USD/MXN. However, I doubt that that will be necessary as Mexican inflation is running slightly above Banxico’s inflation target and the prospects for Mexican growth are quite good.

Hildebrand concludes:

The monetary policy battles that have been fought and continue to be fought in so many economies are domestic ones. They are fights against weak demand, high unemployment and deflationary pressures. A greater danger to the world economy would in fact arise if central banks did not engage in these internal battles. These monetary battles are justified and fully embedded in legal mandates. They are not currency wars.

 Again Hildebrand is right. In fact I would go much further. What some calls currency war in my view is good news. We are not in a world of high inflation, but in a world of low growth and quasi-deflationary tendencies. The world needs easier monetary policy – so if central banks around the world compete to print more money then this time around it surely would be good news.
Unfortunately in Europe central bankers fail to understand this. Here is Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann:
“Experience from previous, politically induced depreciations show that they don’t normally lead to a sustained increase in competitiveness,” Weidmann said. “Often, more and more depreciations are necessary. If more and more countries try to depress their currency, it will end in a depreciation competition, which will only produce losers.”
Dr. Weidmann – monetary easing is not about creating hyperinflation. Monetary depreciation is not about “competitiveness”. What we need is easier monetary policy and if the consequence is weaker currencies so be it. At least the Bank of Japan is now beginning to pull the Japanese economy out of 15 years of deflation. Unfortunately the ECB is doing the opposite.
Maybe Dr. Weidmann could benefit from studying monetary history. A good starting point is Ralph Hawtrey. This is from Hawtrey’s 1933 book “Trade Depression and the Way Out” (I stole this from David Glasner):

In consequence of the competitive advantage gained by a country’s manufacturers from a depreciation of its currency, any such depreciation is only too likely to meet with recriminations and even retaliation from its competitors. . . . Fears are even expressed that if one country starts depreciation, and others follow suit, there may result “a competitive depreciation” to which no end can be seen.

This competitive depreciation is an entirely imaginary danger. The benefit that a country derives from the depreciation of its currency is in the rise of its price level relative to its wage level, and does not depend on its competitive advantage. If other countries depreciate their currencies, its competitive advantage is destroyed, but the advantage of the price level remains both to it and to them. They in turn may carry the depreciation further, and gain a competitive advantage. But this race in depreciation reaches a natural limit when the fall in wages and in the prices of manufactured goods in terms of gold has gone so far in all the countries concerned as to regain the normal relation with the prices of primary products. When that occurs, the depression is over, and industry is everywhere remunerative and fully employed. Any countries that lag behind in the race will suffer from unemployment in their manufacturing industry. But the remedy lies in their own hands; all they have to do is to depreciate their currencies to the extent necessary to make the price level remunerative to their industry. Their tardiness does not benefit their competitors, once these latter are employed up to capacity. Indeed, if the countries that hang back are an important part of the world’s economic system, the result must be to leave the disparity of price levels partly uncorrected, with undesirable consequences to everybody. . .

How much better the world would be had the central bankers of today read Cassel and Hawtrey and studied a bit of monetary history. Hildebrand did, Weidmann did not.

PS if the Fed and the BoJ’s recent actions are so terrible that they can be termed a currency war – imagine what would happen if the Fed and the BoJ had decided appreciate the dollar and the yen by lets say 20%. My guess is that we would be sitting on a major sovereign and banking crisis in the euro zone right now. Or maybe everybody has forgot the “reverse currency war” of 2008 when the dollar and the yen strengthened dramatically. Look how well that ended.

—-

Related posts:

Is monetary easing (devaluation) a hostile act?
Bring on the “Currency war”
The Fed’s easing is working…in Mexico
Mises was clueless about the effects of devaluation
The luck of the ‘Scandies’
Exchange rates and monetary policy – it’s not about competitiveness: Some Argentine lessons
Fiscal devaluation – a terrible idea that will never work

8 Comments
by Lars Christensen on February 12, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank of Japan, Currency war, Jens Weidmann, Philipp Hildebrand
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Posted by Lars Christensen on February 12, 2013

https://marketmonetarist.com/2013/02/12/i-am-sick-and-tired-of-hearing-about-currency-war-and-so-is-philipp-hildebrand/

“The gold standard remains the best available monetary mechanism”

< UPDATE: See an updated version of this piece here >

This is from the Bank of International Settlements third annual report publish in May 1933:

“For the Bank for International Settlements, the year has been an eventful one, during which, while the volume of its ordinary banking business has necessarily been curtailed by the general falling off of international financial transactions and the continued departure from gold of more and more currencies, culminating in the defection of the American dollar, nevertheless the scope of its general activities has steadily broadened in sound directions. The widening of activities, aside from normal growth in developing new contacts, has been the consequence, primarily, of a year replete with international conferences, and, also, of the rapid extension of chaotic conditions in the international monetary system. In view of all the events which have occurred, the Bank’s Board of Directors determined to define the position of the Bank on the fundamental currency problems facing the world and it unanimously expressed the opinion, after due deliberation, that in the last analysis “the gold standard remains the best available monetary mechanism” and that it is consequently desirable to prepare all the necessary measures for its international reestablishment.”

Take a look at the report. The whole thing is outrageous – the world is falling apart and it is written very much as it is all business as usual. More and more countries are leaving the the gold standard and there had been massive bank runs across Europe and a number of countries in Europe had defaulted in 1932 (including Greece and Hungary!) Hitler had just become chancellor in Germany.

And then the report state: “the gold standard remains the best available monetary mechanism”! It makes you wonder how anybody can reach such a conclusion and in hindsight obviously today’s economic historians will say that it was a collective psychosis – central bankers were suffering from some kind of irrational “gold standard mentality” that led them to insanely damaging conclusions, which brought deflation, depression and war to Europe.

I wonder what economic historians will say in 7-8 decades about today’s central bankers.

——

Reading recommendation of the day: Lords of Finance – The (Central!) Bankers who Broke the World

Completely unrelated take a look at this story about Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann.

Meanwhile in Greece you have this and in Hungary you have this.

Draw your own conclusions…

12 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 31, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, Economic and monetary history, euro crisis, Gold Standard, Jens Weidmann, Reading recommendations
Tagged , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on May 31, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/31/the-gold-standard-remains-the-best-available-monetary-mechanism/

Jens Weidmann, do you remember the second pillar?

Today the ECB is very eager to stress it’s 2% inflation target. However, a couple of years ago the ECB in fact had two targets – the so-called two pillars of monetary policy. The one was the inflation target and the other was a money supply target – the so-called reference value for the growth rate of M3.

The second pillar in many ways made a lot of sense – at least as a instrument for monetary analysis. The second pillar was put into the ECB tool box by the Bundesbank which insisted that monetary analysis was as important as a pure inflation target. Read for example former ECB chief economist and Bundesbanker Otmar Issing’s defense of the two-pillar set-up here.

The starting point for calculating the reference value for M3 was the equation of exchange:

(1) MV=PY

or in growth rates:

(2) m+v=p+y

(2) of course can be re-written to:

(2)’ m=p+y-v

If we assume trend real GDP growth (y) is 2% you can calculate the reference value for m that will ensure 2% inflation over the medium term. You of course also have to make an assumption about velocity. ECB used to think that trend growth in v was -0.5 to -1%.

This give us the following reference growth rate for M3 (m-target):

(3) m-target=2+2-(-1)=5% (4.5% if you assume velocity growth of -0.5%)

Said in another way if the ECB keeps M3 growing at 5% year-in and year-out then inflation should be around 2% in the medium term. An yes, this is of course exactly what Milton Friedman recommend long ago.

2.5% M3 growth is hardly inflationary

Today we got the latest M3 numbers for the euro zone. The calvinists should be happy – M3 decelerated sharply to 2.5% y/y in April. Half of what should be the reference growth rate for M3 – and that is ignoring the fact that velocity has collapsed.

What does that tells us about the inflationary risks in the euro zone? Well, there are no inflationary risks – there are only deflationary risks.

Using the assumptions above we can calculate the long-term inflation if M3 keeps growing by 2.5% – from (2)’ we get the following:

(4) p=m-y+v

(4)’ p=2.5-2+(-1)=-0.5%

So it is official! Monetary analysis as it used to be conducted in the Bundesbank is telling you that we are going to have deflation in the euro zone in the medium term! And don’t tell me about monetary overhang – the ECB is in the business of letting bygones be bygones (otherwise the ECB would target the NGDP LEVEL or the price LEVEL) and by the way the ECB spend lots of time in 2004-7 to explain why money supply growth overshot the target.

Jens Weidmann – monetarist or calvinist?

The Bundesbank brought in monetary analysis and a money supply focus to the ECB so I think it is only fair to ask whether Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann still believe in monetary analysis? If he is true to the strong monetarist traditions at the Bundesbank then he should come out forcefully in favour of monetary easing to ensure M3 growth of at least 5% – in fact it should be much higher as velocity has collapsed, but at least to bring M3 back to 5% would be a start.

I hope the Bundesbank will soon refind it’s monetarist traditions…please make Milton Friedman and Karl Brunner proud!

PS I of course still want the ECB to introduce a NGDP level target, but less would make me happy – a 5-10% target range for M3 (the range prior to the crisis) and a minimum price on European inflation linked bonds would would clearly be enough to at least avoid collapse.

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 30, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, euro crisis, Jens Weidmann, Milton Friedman, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, MV=PY, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on May 30, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/30/jens-weidmann-do-you-remember-the-second-pillar/

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