18/2/2014: Gold Demand Trends 2013

The World Gold Council released its annual (2013) report on Gold Demand Trends (GDT). link: http://www.gold.org/investment/statistics/demand_and_supply_statistics/

Highlights are:

• Jewellery: 2013 saw the largest volume increase in jewellery demand for 16 years as consumers across the globe reacted to lower gold prices. Full year demand was 2,209.5t, 17% above 2012 and the highest level since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis.
• Investment: 2013 was a year of contrast between the different elements of gold investment. Demand for bars and coins surged to an all-time high of 1,654.1t as individual investors took advantage of lower prices, while large-scale selling of more tactical ETF positions by western investors generated outflows of 880.8t.
• Technology: Annual demand for gold used in technology stabilised at 404.8t, from 407.5t in 2012. The lower price environment and improved global economic outlook was supportive for gold used in a range of applications in the sector.
• Central Banks: Net purchases by central banks increased global official gold reserves by 368.6 tonnes. 2013 was the fourth consecutive year of net purchases, albeit at a slightly reduced pace due to the environment of heightened gold volatility and slower foreign reserve accumulation.
• Supply: In 2013 the supply of gold declined 2% to 4,339.9t as a drop in recycling activity (in response to lower gold prices) more than offset growth in mine production.

Total demand is 3,756.1 tonnes against 4,415.8 tonnes in 2012 down 14.9% y/y, of which ETFs and similar investment funds' purchases declines accounted for 880.8 tonnes in 2013 against a rise of 279.1 tonnes in 2012. Thus, the decline of 659.7 tonnes y/y was more than accounted for by the net swing in demand from ETFs of -1,159.9 tonnes.

Total bar and coin demand for investment purposes, however, rose from 1,289 tonnes in 2012 to 1,654.1 tonnes in 2013.

17/2/2014: Is Bitcoin a Real Currency?

Bitcoin has been a focal point of many debates and discussions. None as important as whether or not the digital currency is a real currency.

A new research paper, titled "IS BITCOIN A REAL CURRENCY?" by David Yermack (NBER Working Paper 19747: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19747, December 2013) attempts to answer this question.

"Late 2013 became an auspicious time for Bitcoin, a “virtual currency” launched five years earlier by computer hobbyists. During the month of November 2013, the U.S. Dollar exchange rate for one Bitcoin rose more than fivefold, and the value of one Bitcoin, which had begun trading at less than five cents in 2010, exceeded $1,200.00. Two days of hearings were held by the U.S. Senate Commitee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, at which government regulators testified that virtual, stateless currencies like Bitcoin had the potential to play useful roles in the commercial payment system.

Stories appeared in the media about travelers subsisting for lengthy periods by spending only Bitcoin, and various businesses – including Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space travel startup – attracted publicity by agreeing to accept Bitcoin as payment. With approximately 12 million Bitcoins circulating, the worldwide value of the currency exceeded $14 billion, equal to the market capitalization of a mid-range S&P500 company."

Yermack argues that "Bitcoin does not behave like a currency at all. Instead it resembles a speculative investment similar to the Internet stocks of the late 1990s." In other words: not even a commodity...

Starting from the money as defined in economics: "having three characteristics: it functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Bitcoin increasingly satisfies the first of these three criteria, because a growing number of merchants, especially in online markets, appear willing to accept it as a form of payment. However, …Bitcoin performs poorly as a unit of account and as a store of value."

Why?

Reason 1: excessive volatility: "The currency exhibits very high time series volatility (see chart below), which tends to undermine any useful role for Bitcoin as a unit of account. A currency should have only negligible volatility in order to be a reliable store of value."

Reason 2: no correlation with other currencies: "Bitcoin’s daily exchange rate with the U.S. Dollar has virtually zero correlation with the Dollar’s exchange rates against other prominent currencies such as the Euro, Yen, Swiss Franc, or British Pound. Therefore Bitcoin’s value is almost completely untethered to that of
other currencies, which makes its risk nearly impossible to hedge for businesses and customers and renders it more or less useless as a tool for risk management."

Reason 3: "Bitcoin lacks additional characteristics that are usually associated with currencies in modern economies." Which are:

• "Bitcoin cannot be deposited in a bank, and instead it must be possessed through a system of “digital wallets” that have proved vulnerable to hackers. 
• "No form of insurance has been developed for owners of Bitcoin comparable to the deposit insurance relied on consumers in most economies. 
• "No lenders use Bitcoin as the unit of account for standard consumer finance credit, auto loans, and mortgages, and no credit or debit cards have been denominated in Bitcoin. 
• "Bitcoin cannot be sold short, and financial derivatives such as forward contracts and swaps that are routine for other currencies do not exist for Bitcoin. The absence of these types of contracts seems to be the most straightforward explanation for the astronomical rise in Bitcoin’s value in November 2013. Since currency investors have no easy way to bet against Bitcoin’s appreciation, skeptics can only watch as optimists trade the currency among themselves at ever-rising prices."

About the only steadily-advanced argument for Bitcoin is that it is a private currency offering anonymity. Alas, it might be the former, but it does not offer the latter. "The benign attitude of U.S. regulators toward Bitcoin, as revealed in the November 2013 Senate hearings, may stem from the existence of a universal online audit trail for Bitcoin transactions. Although many services exist on the Internet that purport to cloak Bitcoin transfers in anonymity, confidence in the security of these protocols appears to be naive. The arrest of Silk Road’s operator in October 2013, which took place amid widespread publicity of online data monitoring by the U.S. National Security Agency, disabused many about the possibility of keeping any information anonymous on the Internet. Tax evasion, money laundering, purchases of contraband, and other illicit activities using online transfers become far more difficult when the use of a virtual currency like Bitcoin can be reconstructed by governments that have sufficient technical skills."

Ouch!

14/2/2014: BlackRock Institute Survey: N. America & W. Europe, February

BlackRock Investment Institute released its latest Economic Cycle Survey for EMEA region was covered here http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2014/02/822014-blackrock-institute-survey-emea.html

Now, on to survey results for North America and Western Europe region. Emphasis is, as always, mine.

"This month’s North America and Western Europe Economic Cycle Survey presented a positive outlook on global growth, with a net of 65% of 110 economists expecting the world economy will get stronger over the next year, (18% lower than within January report).

The consensus of economists project mid-cycle expansion over the next 6 months for the global economy."

First, 12 months ahead outlook: "At the 12 month horizon, the positive theme continued with the consensus expecting all economies spanned by the survey to strengthen except Norway and Denmark, which are expected to remain the same."

Note that Ireland has moved closer to Eurozone average, away from 1st position in the chart it occupied in 2013.

Now, for 6 months outlook: "Eurozone is described to be in an expansionary phase of the cycle and expected to remain so over the next 2 quarters. Within the bloc, most respondents expect only Greece to remain in a recessionary phase at the 6 month horizon. Over the Atlantic, the consensus view is firmly that North America as a whole is in mid-cycle expansion and is to remain so over the next 6 months."

Note: Red dot denotes Austria, Norway and Switzerland.

Notable changes on previous: Greece position is much improved compared to 2013 when it occupied the North-Eastern most corner. Denmark is now in a weaker outlook position than Greece with higher expectations of a recessionary phase 6 months out. Ireland is bang-on on 10 percent assessing current state of economy as recessionary and same percentage of analysts expecting economy to be in a recession over the next 6 months. Coverage for Ireland is pretty solid in terms of number of analysts surveyed, so the above, in my opinion, shows that analysts consensus expects economy to strengthen over the next 6-12 months with strong support for a modest uplift.


Note: these views reflect opinions of survey respondents, not that of the BlackRock Investment Institute. Also note: cover of countries is relatively uneven, with some countries being assessed by a relatively small number of experts.

14/2/2014: Buffett's Alpha Demystified... or not?

Warren Buffett is probably the most legendary of all investors and his Berkshire Hathaway, despite numerous statements by Buffett explaining his investment philosophy, is still shrouded in a veil of mystery and magic.

The more you wonder about Buffett's fantastic historical track record, the more you ask whether the returns he amassed are a matter of luck, skill, unique strategy or all of the above.

"Buffett’s Alpha" by Andrea Frazzini, David Kabiller, and Lasse H. Pedersen (NBER Working Paper 19681 http://www.nber.org/papers/w19681, November 2013) shows that "looking at all U.S. stocks from 1926 to 2011 that have been traded for more than 30 years, …Berkshire Hathaway has the highest Sharpe ratio among all. Similarly, Buffett has a higher Sharpe ratio than all U.S. mutual funds that have been around for more than 30 years." In fact, for the period 1976-2011, Berkshire Hathaway realized Sharpe ratio stands at impressive 0.76, and "Berkshire has a significant alpha to traditional risk factors." According to the authors, "adjusting for the market exposure, Buffett’s information ratio is even lower, 0.66. This Sharpe ratio reflects high average returns, but also significant risk and periods of losses and significant drawdowns."

According to authors, this begs a question: "If his Sharpe ratio is very good but not super-human, then how did Buffett become among the richest in the world?"

The study looks at Buffett's performance and finds that "The answer is that Buffett has boosted his returns by using leverage, and that he has stuck to a good strategy for a very long time period, surviving rough periods where others might have been forced into a fire sale or a career shift. We estimate that Buffett applies a leverage of about 1.6-to-1, boosting both his risk and excess return in that proportion."

The conclusion is that "his many accomplishments include having the conviction, wherewithal, and skill to operate with leverage and significant risk over a number of decades."


But the above still leaves open a key question: "How does Buffett pick stocks to achieve this attractive return stream that can be leveraged?"

The authors "…identify several general features of his portfolio: He buys stocks that are
-- “safe” (with low beta and low volatility),
-- “cheap” (i.e., value stocks with low price-to-book ratios), and
-- high-quality (meaning stocks that profitable, stable, growing, and with high payout ratios).
This statistical finding is certainly consistent with Graham and Dodd (1934) and Buffett’s writings, e.g.: "Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down"  – Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Annual Report, 2008."


Of course, such a strategy is not novel and Ben Graham's original factors for selection are very much in line with it, let alone more sophisticated screening factors. Everyone knows (whether they act on this knowledge or not is a different matter altogether) that low risk, cheap, and high quality stocks "tend to perform well in general, not just the ones that Buffett buys. Hence, perhaps these characteristics can explain Buffett’s investment? Or, is his performance driven by an idiosyncratic Buffett skill that cannot be quantified?"

The authors look at these questions as well. "The standard academic factors that capture the market, size, value, and momentum premia cannot explain Buffett’s performance so his success has to date been a mystery (Martin and Puthenpurackal (2008)). Given Buffett’s tendency to buy stocks with low return risk and low fundamental risk, we further adjust his performance for the Betting-Against-Beta (BAB) factor of Frazzini and Pedersen (2013) and the Quality Minus Junk (QMJ) factor of Asness, Frazzini, and Pedersen (2013)."

And then 'Eureka!': "We find that accounting for these factors explains a large part of Buffett's performance. In other words, accounting for the general tendency of high-quality, safe, and cheap stocks to outperform can explain much of Buffett’s performance and controlling for these factors makes Buffett’s alpha statistically insignificant… Buffett’s genius thus appears to be at least partly in recognizing early on, implicitly or explicitly, that these factors work, applying leverage without ever having to fire sale, and sticking to his principles. Perhaps this is what he means by his modest comment: "Ben Graham taught me 45 years ago that in investing it is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results." – Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Annual Report, 1994."


There is more to be asked about Warren Buffett's investment style and strategy. "…we consider whether Buffett’s skill is due to his ability to buy the right stocks versus his ability as a CEO. Said differently, is Buffett mainly an investor or a manager?"

Authors oblige: "To address this, we decompose Berkshire’s returns into a part due to investments in publicly traded stocks and another part due to private companies run within Berkshire. The idea is that the return of the public stocks is mainly driven by Buffett’s stock selection skill, whereas the private companies could also have a larger element of management."

Another 'Eureka!' moment beckons: "We find that both public and private companies contribute to Buffett’s performance, but the portfolio of public stocks performs the best, suggesting that Buffett’s skill is mostly in stock selection. Why then does Buffett rely heavily on private companies as well, including insurance and reinsurance businesses? One reason might be that this structure provides a steady source of financing, allowing him to leverage his stock selection ability. Indeed, we find that 36% of Buffett’s liabilities consist of insurance float with an average cost below the T-Bill rate.


So core conclusions on Buffett's genius: "In summary, we find that Buffett has developed a unique access to leverage that he has invested in safe, high-quality, cheap stocks and that these key characteristics can largely explain his impressive performance. Buffett’s unique access to leverage is consistent with the idea that he can earn BAB returns driven by other investors’ leverage constraints. Further, both value and quality predict returns and both are needed to explain Buffett’s performance. Buffett’s performance appears not to be luck, but an expression that value and quality investing can be implemented in an actual portfolio (although, of course, not by all investors who must collectively hold the market)."

Awesome study!

14/2/2014: Debt & Growth: New IMF Paper

An interesting working paper from the IMF, worth further digesting and blogging: "Debt and Growth: Is There a Magic Threshold?" by Andrea Pescatori, Damiano Sandri, and John Simon (IMF Working Paper WP/14/34, February 2014: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp1434.pdf)

Per abstract (emphasis is mine): "Using a novel empirical approach and an extensive dataset developed by the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF, we find no evidence of any particular debt threshold above which medium-term growth prospects are dramatically compromised."

"Furthermore, we find the debt trajectory can be as important as the debt level in understanding future growth prospects, since countries with high but declining debt appear to grow equally as fast as 
countries with lower debt."

"Notwithstanding this, we find some evidence that higher debt is associated with a higher degree of output volatility."

As I noted above: needs more reading and blogging. Generally, before dealing with the paper in details, this appears to contradict Reinhart & Rogoff (2010) paper and several subsequent papers (on slowdown in growth conclusions) and support a number of papers finding inconclusive evidence. Note another caveat: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

13/2/2014: Sticky Wages, Job Effort and Jobless Recoveries

In two posts earlier I discussed some new studies relating to the problem of a jobless recovery (http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2014/02/1222014-jobless-recoveries-post.html) and the ICT-driven displacement of workers (http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2014/02/1222014-ict-productivity-employment-in.html). Here is another recent study dealing with labour markets outcomes in the case of a recessionary shock.

Here is another paper on employment adjustments, this time looking at cyclical shocks and wages rigidity: "HOW STICKY WAGES IN EXISTING JOBS CAN AFFECT HIRING" by Mark Bils, Yongsung Chang, Sun-Bin Kim (NBER Working Paper 19821: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19821, January 2014).

There is much evidence that wages are sticky within employment matches, so that incumbent workers face wages that do not adjust significantly fast downward in the downturns, thus creating a wage mis-match with entry of new workers. "For instance, Barattieri, Basu, and Gottschalk (2014) estimate a quarterly frequency of nominal wage change, based on the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), of less than 0.2, implying an expected duration for nominal wages greater than a year."

"On the other hand, wages earned by new hires show considerably greater  flexibility. Pissarides (2009) cites eleven studies that distinguish between wage cyclicality for workers in continuing jobs versus those in new matches, seven based on U.S. data and four on European. All these studies find that wages for workers in new matches are more pro-cyclical than for those in continuing jobs."


"Consider a negative shock to aggregate productivity. If existing jobs exhibit sticky wages, then firms will ask more of these workers. In turn this lowers the marginal value of adding labor, lowering the rate of vacancy creation and new hires. Note this impact on hiring does not reflect the price of new hires, but is instead entirely a general equilibrium phenomenon. By moving the economy along a downward sloping aggregate labor demand schedule, the increased effort of current workers reduces the demand for new hires.

The result of this mechanism of adjustment is that "wage stickiness acts to raise productivity in a recession, relative to a flexible or standard sticky wage model. Thus it helps to understand why labor productivity shows so little pro-cyclicality, especially for the past 25 plus years (e.g., Van Zandweghe, 2010)."

The authors set up two versions of the model for such an adjustment.

First model allows firms "to require different effort levels across workers of all vintages… During a recession the efficient contract for new hires dictates low effort at a low wage, while matched workers, whose wages have not adjusted downward, work at an elevated pace."

In the scone variant of the model, authors "impose a technological constraint that workers of differing vintages must operate at a similar pace. For instance, it might not be plausible to have an assembly line that operates at different speeds for new versus older hires."

The study finds that the second model "generates considerable wage inertia and greater employment volatility." In other words, if contracts do not allow firms to impose greater effort requirement on new hires against incumbent workers, there will be more shocks to unemployment and stickier wages for incumbents. Or in other words, there will be a more jobless recovery.

The authors provide an example: "Again consider a negative shock to productivity, where the sticky wage prevents wage declines for past hires. The firm has the ability and incentive to require higher effort from its past hires, in lieu of any decline in their sticky wages. But, if new hires must work at
that same pace, this implies high effort for new hires as well. For reasonable parameter values we find that firms will choose to distort the contract for new hires, rather than give rents (high wages without high effort) to its current workers. This produces a great deal of aggregate wage stickiness. The sticky wage for past hires drives up their effort and thereby the effort of new hires. But, because high effort is required of new hires, their bargained wage, though flexible, will be higher as well. In subsequent periods this dynamic will continue. High effort for new hires drives up their wage, driving up their effort in subsequent periods, driving up effort and wages for the next cohort of new hires, and so forth. By generating (counter)cyclicality in effort, this model can make vacancies and new hires considerably more cyclical." (Or put differently, it creates more unemployment at the shock and retains more unemployment in the adjustment period.

Now onto empirical evidence: "There is only sparse direct evidence on cyclicality of worker effort. Anger (2011) studies paid and unpaid overtime hours in Germany for 1984 to 2004. She finds that unpaid overtime (extra) hours are highly countercyclical. This is in sharp contrast to cyclicality in
paid overtime hours. Quoting the paper: "Unpaid hours show behavior that is exactly the opposite of the movement of paid overtime." Lazear, Shaw, and Stanton (2012) examine data on productivity of individual workers at a large (20,000 workers) service company for the period June 2006 to May 2010, bracketing the Great Recession. At this company a computer keeps track of worker productivity. They find that effort is highly countercyclical, with an increase in the local unemployment rate of 5 percentage points associated with an increase in effort of 3.75%."

The authors use their model to "show that sticky wages for current matches exacerbates cyclicality of hiring when effort responds. In particular, for our benchmark calibration with common effort, the effort response markedly increases the relative cyclical response of unemployment to measured productivity. It does so by increasing the response of unemployment to productivity, but also by making measured productivity less cyclical than the underlying shock."

The authors then look at the data to see if their "model is consistent with wage productivity patterns across industries, especially the cyclical behavior of productivity in industries with more versus less flexible wages. We measure stickiness of wages by industry based on panels of workers from the Survey of Income and Program Participation for 1990 to 2011."

The study finds that 

• "productivity (TFP) is more procyclical in industries with more flexible wages"; and 
• "this impact is much greater for industries where labor is especially important as a factor of production. 
• "However, we do not see that wages are more procyclical for industries with flexible wages, suggesting that frequency of wage change may not capture wage flexibility particularly well."

12/2/2014: The Origins of Stock Market Fluctuations

An exceptionally ambitious paper on drivers of stock markets changes over long time horizon. A must-read for my students in MSc Finance and certainly going on syllabus next year. Big paper, big conclusions.


"The Origins of Stock Market Fluctuations" by Daniel L. Greenwald, Martin Lettau, and Sydney C. Ludvigson (NBER Working Paper No. 19818, January 2014, http://www.nber.org/papers/w19818).

"Three mutually uncorrelated economic shocks that we measure empirically explain 85% of the quarterly variation in real stock market wealth since 1952."

This is an unbelievably strong statement. Traditionally, little attention is given "to understanding the real (adjusted for inflation) level of the stock market, i.e., stock price variation, or the cumulation of returns over many decades. The profession spends a lot of time debating which risk factors drive expected excess returns, but little time investigating why real stock market wealth has evolved to its current level compared to 30 years ago. To understand the latter, it is necessary to probe beyond the role of stationary risk factors and short-run expected returns, to study the primitive economic shocks from which all stock market (and risk factor) fluctuations originate."

"Stock market wealth evolves over time in response to the cumulation of both transitory expected return and permanent cash flow shocks. The crucial unanswered questions are, what are the economic sources of these shocks? And what have been their relative roles in evolution of the stock market over time?"

The authors use "a model to show that they are the observable empirical counterparts to three latent primitive shocks: a total factor productivity shock, a risk aversion shock that is unrelated to aggregate consumption and labor income, and a factors share shock that shifts the rewards of production between workers and shareholders."

And the core conclusions are: "On a quarterly basis, risk aversion shocks explain roughly 75% of variation in the log difference of stock market wealth, but the near-permanent factors share shocks plays an increasingly important role as the time horizon extends. We find that more than 100% of the increase since 1980 in the deterministically detrended log real value of the stock market, or a rise of 65%, is attributable to the cumulative effects of the factors share shock, which persistently redistributed rewards away from workers and toward shareholders over this period."

This is a huge result. "Indeed, without these shocks, today's stock market would be about 10% lower than it was in 1980. By contrast, technological progress that rewards both workers and shareholders plays a smaller role in historical stock market fluctuations at all horizons."

And on the risk aversion shocks? Uncorrelated with consumption or its second moments, these shocks "largely explain the long-horizon predictability of excess stock market returns found in data."

"These findings are hard to reconcile with models in which time-varying risk premia arise from habits or stochastic consumption volatility."

Massively important paper.

12/2/2014: ICT, Productivity & Employment in the US Manufacturing

More recent research, to follow up on previous post (which dealt with jobless recoveries). This time around on the key issue of workers displacement by technology.

"RETURN OF THE SOLOW PARADOX? IT, PRODUCTIVITY, AND EMPLOYMENT IN U.S. MANUFACTURING" by Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon H. Hanson and Brendan Price (NBER Working Paper 19837, http://www.nber.org/papers/w19837 from January 2014) looks into the validity of the 'technological discontinuity' paradigm - the one that "suggests that IT-induced technological changes are rapidly raising productivity while making workers redundant."

Here's the justification of the tested thesis: "An increasingly influential “technological-discontinuity” paradigm suggests that IT-induced technological changes are rapidly raising productivity while making workers redundant. This paper explores the evidence for this view among the IT-using US manufacturing industries."

Basic argument here is that modern workplace is continuing to become more automated, transformed by the ICT capital. Two implications of this are:

"First, all sectors—but particularly IT-intensive sectors—are experiencing major increases in productivity. Thus, Solow’s paradox is long since resolved: computers are now everywhere in our productivity statistics."

"Second, IT-powered machines will increasingly replace workers, ultimately leading to a substantially smaller role for labor in the workplace of the future. Adding urgency to this argument, labor’s share of national income has fallen in numerous developed and developing countries over roughly the last three decades, a phenomenon that Karabarbounis and Neiman (forthcoming) attribute to IT-enabled declines in the relative prices of investment goods. And many scholars have pointed to the seeming “decoupling” between robust U.S. productivity growth and sclerotic or negligible growth rates of median U.S. worker compensation (Fleck, Glaser and Sprague 2011) as evidence that the “race against the machine” has already been run—and that workers have lost."


Top conclusion of the paper: "There is some limited support for more rapid productivity growth in IT-intensive industries depending on the exact measures, though not since the late 1990s."

But there are some serious nuances involved.

"We find, unexpectedly, that earlier “resolutions” of the Solow paradox may have neglected certain paradoxical features of IT-associated productivity increases, at least in U.S. manufacturing." Of these, the paper highlights two:

"First, focusing on IT-using (rather than IT-producing) industries, the evidence for faster productivity growth in more IT-intensive industries is somewhat mixed and depends on the measure of IT intensity used. There is also little evidence of faster productivity growth in IT-intensive industries after the late 1990s.

"Second and more importantly, to the extent that there is more rapid growth of labor productivity (ln(Y=L)) in IT-intensive industries, this is associated with declining output (ln Y ) and even more rapidly declining employment (lnL). If IT is indeed increasing productivity and reducing costs, at the very least it should also increase output in IT-intensive industries. As this does not appear to be the case, the current resolution of the Solow paradox does not appear to be what adherents of the technological-discontinuity view had in mind."

In other words: "Most challenging to this paradigm, and our expectations, is that output contracts in IT-intensive industries relative to the rest of manufacturing. Productivity increases, when detectable, result from the even faster declines in employment."

Goes some miles explaining the declining role of primary labour… 

12/2/2014: Jobless Recoveries post-Financial Crises: Solutions Menu?

Next few posts will be touching on some interesting new research papers in economics and finance… in no particular order. Please note, no endorsement or peer review analysis from me here.

To start with: NBER WP 19683 (http://www.nber.org/papers/w19683) by Calvo, G., Coricelli, F. and Ottonello, P. "JOBLESS RECOVERIES DURING FINANCIAL CRISES: IS INFLATION THE WAY OUT?" from November 2013.

The paper discusses 3  traditional policy tools to mitigate jobless recoveries during financial crises: 

• inflation
• real devaluation of the currency, and  
• credit-recovery policies. 

The nominal exchange rate devaluation tool not being available to the euro area economies independently of the ECB, we have by now heard a lot about inflation (the need for). At the same time, real devaluation tool includes fabled European cost-competitiveness measures. 

Here's the pre-cursor to the paper: "The slow rate of employment growth relative to that of output is a sticking point in the recovery from the financial crisis episode that started in 2008 in the US and Europe (a phenomenon labeled “jobless recovery”). The issue is a particularly burning one in Europe where some observers claim that problem economies (like Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal) would be better off abandoning the euro and gaining competitiveness through steep devaluation. This would be a momentous decision for Europe and the rest of the world because, among other things, it may set off an era of competitive devaluation and tariff war."

Hypotheticals aside, the study starts by "digging more deeply into the relationship between inflation and jobless recovery, also considering the possible role of real currency depreciation and resource reallocation (between tradables and non-tradables)."

As authors note: "This discussion is particularly relevant for countries that, being in the Eurozone, cannot follow a nominal currency depreciation policy to mitigate high unemployment rates 

(e.g. Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal)."

First finding is that there is "some evidence suggesting that large inflationary spikes (not a higher inflation plateau) help employment recovery. Even in high-inflation episodes, inflation typically returns to its pre-crisis levels…" so the effects of the induced inflation wear out quasi-automatically.

Second finding is that "(independent of inflation) financial crises are associated with real currency depreciation (i.e., the rise in the real exchange rate) from output peak to recovery. This shows that the relative price of non-tradables fails to recover along with output even if the real wage does not fall, as is the case in low-inflation financial crisis episodes. This implies that, contrary to widespread views, nominal currency depreciation may eliminate joblessness only if it generates enough inflation to create a contraction in real wages; real currency depreciation or sector reallocation might not be sufficient to avoid jobless recovery if all sectors are subject to binding credit 

constraints that put labor at a disadvantage with respect to capital." In other words, there goes Argentina's fabled hope for recovery via devaluations.

Third finding extends the second one to the case closer to euro area peripherals: "Similarly, for countries with fixed exchange rates, “internal” or fiscal devaluations during financial crises are likely to work more through reductions in labor costs than changes in relative prices and sectoral reallocation obtained through taxes and subsidies affecting differentially tradable and non-tradable sectors." In other words, internal devaluations work, and they work via cost competitiveness gains and exporting sector repricing relative to domestic.

Tricky thing, though: "However, neither nominal nor real wage flexibility can avoid the adverse effects of financial crises on labor markets, as wage flexibility determines the distribution of the burden of the adjustment between employment and real wages, but does not relieve the burden from wage earners." which means that a jobless recovery is more likely under internal devaluation scenario.

Fourth finding: "Our findings highlight the difficulty in simultaneously preventing jobless and wageless recoveries, and suggest that if the goal is to avoid jobless recovery, the first line of action should be an attempt to relax credit constraints." Oops… but credit constraints are not being relaxed in the case of collapsed financial systems and debt overhang-impacted households in the likes of Ireland.

More on this: "Only direct credit policies that tackle the root of the problem seem to be able to help unemployment and wages simultaneously. …common sense suggests the following conjectures. In advanced economies, quantitative easing operations, especially if they involve the purchase of “toxic” assets, can have an effect on increasing firms’ collateral and relaxing credit constraints that affect employment recovery." But, of course, in Ireland these measures failed to trigger such outcomes - Nama has been set up for two years now and credit restart is still missing. May be one might consider the fact that targeting of bad assets purchases is needed? May be buying up wasteful real estate assets was not a good idea and instead we should have pursued purchases and restructuring of mortgages? Sort of what Iceland (partially and with caveats) did?

Overall, tough conclusions all around. 

11/2/2014: Greek Bailout 3.0 or a Fix 1.4: Ifo Assessment

In light of Bloomberg report on new package of supports for Greece being planned (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-05/eu-said-to-weigh-extending-greek-loans-to-50-years.html), German institute Ifo issued a neat summary note.

The core supports being discussed in the EU are: extending term of the loans to 50 years, and lowering the interest cost of loans by 50bps.

Here's a summary via Ifo:

• As of December 2013 "Greece had received 213.4 billion euros from two bailout packages."
• First package was May 2010 Greek Loan Facility (GLF) comprising a loan of ca 73 billion euros, disbursed in December 2011. "Of this sum 52.9 billion euros was loaned in the form of bilateral credit between Greece and the other countries of the Eurozone (excluding Slovakia, Estonia and Latvia), while a further 20.3 billion euros was provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)."
• Second package was extended in February 2012 in the form of credit from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). "By December 2013 133.6 billion euros of this second package had been paid out. Moreover, the IMF also increased its financial assistance to Greece by 6.6 billion euros during this period."

In addition, Greece already restructured 52.9 billion euro of the GLF. Original loans were issued for 5 years term at an interest rate equivalent to the 3-month Euribor plus an interest rate margin of 3 percentage points for the first three years and 4 percentage points for the remaining years.

• "The term of all loans was subsequently extended to 7.5 years in June 2011 and the interest rate margin was reduced by 1 percentage point." 
• Subsequently, in February 2012 "the term was extended to 15 years and the margin was reduced to 1.5 percentage points for all further interest payments". 
• In November 2012 the GLF lenders "doubled the term of the loans to 30 years and reduced the interest rate margin to 0.5 percentage points. 

So in effect, Greece had: 2 Bailouts and 3 adjustments to-date.

By Ifo estimates, the above revisions reduced real debt under the GLF by 12 billion euros.
"The envisaged further relaxation of credit conditions for the 52.9 billion euros of the Greek Loan Facility - with an extension of the term to 50 years and a reduction of the margin to 0 percentage points would entail further losses of around 9 billion euros for European creditors." 

10/2/2014: Data shows Irish R&D policy is not exactly producing...

Today, Grant Thornton published their review of the Irish R&D Tax Credits policy, available here: http://www.grantthornton.ie/db/Attachments/Review-of-RandD-tax-credit-regime.pdf?utm_content=buffer1e77c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Top level conclusions:

• "60% of the companies that responded to the survey were indigenous Irish companies with 40% multinationals"
• "35% of companies conducting R&D activities engaged in joint research projects with other parties in 2011"
• "with 19.5% being activities with higher education or institutes within Ireland and 8% outside Ireland"
• "70% of claims are by companies with less than 50 employees"
• "large companies with employees of more than 250 employees account for 10% of claims made. However they account for 45% of claims on a monetary basis"

"The credit is a largely positive scheme with real value being added to the economy from it."

My view: too much of subsidy to MNCs, too little evidence the scheme is not being used by SMEs to fund activity that would have been funded anyway and too little evidence the scheme is being used to fund genuine R&D rather than business development.

But aside from this, there is little evidence that funding is yielding any serious uptick in intellectual property generation. Here's the latest data from the NewMorningIP on patents filings in Ireland.

Based on quarterly aggregates, in Q4 2013, total number of Irish academic patents hit the lowest reading of 48 and the goal number of filed patents match this performance at 593. Irish inventions overall sunk to the lowest level of 236 (previous low was 252 for Q3 2012, imputed on incomplete data). Patents applications by non-academic filers stood at 188 - the lowest level in data series.

Overall, in 2013, there were 2561 patents applications, of which Irish total filings amounted to 1072 (41.9%) and of which Irish non-academic patents applications were just 860 (33.6%). This is hardly stellar and cannot be deemed sustainable for the economy that is allegedly based on innovation. It also makes clear that current system of R&D incentives and supports, including tax credit, is not working.

10/2/2014: Six Years to Admit the Obvious? Call in Europe...

There are two things to be said about the latest comments from Euro area's chief banking regulator, Danièle Nouy issued recently (see FT's piece from yesterday: "Let weak banks die, says eurozone super-regulator" for more):

• They are so trivially obvious, that given it took EU 'leaders' 6 years to come up with them, one has to wonder if the EU mandarins have any capacity to supervise banks in the first place, and
• Danièle Nouy deserves praise for speaking to the reality.

Here are the main points of what she said:

1. “One of the biggest lessons of the current crisis is that there is no risk-free asset, so sovereigns are not risk-free assets. That has been demonstrated, so now we have to react.” Correct. But don't expect any change soon. 
2. On the upcoming ECB tests: some banks need to fail for tests to be credible. 
3. “We have to accept that some banks have no future,” she said, parrying speculation that a wave of consolidation could save the currency bloc’s weakest lenders. “We have to let some disappear in an orderly fashion, and not necessarily try to merge them with other institutions.”

You'd think all of the above should be trivial. And you would be right. Which makes the fact that these statements are front-page news in Europe ever so more amazing.