NGDP targeting: Hayek's Rule

One thing I go on about on this blog is how nominal GDP targeting—a market monetarist policy proposal that has even won over a small group of New Keynesians—is also the kind of policy an Austrian should want in the medium term. Of course, in the long term we'd like to abolish the Bank of England altogether, but even then we'd get, with free banking, something like a stable level of nominal GDP, so it's a pretty good target to work towards. The economist Nicholas Cachanosky wrote a paper in the Journal of Stock & Forex Trading about a year ago, which I missed, called "Hayek’s Rule, NGDP Targeting, and the Productivity Norm: Theory and Application" which lays a lot of the Austrian arguments for targeting the level of nominal income in a very clear and cogent fashion. I include some key extracts below:

The term productivity norm is associated with the idea that the price level should be allowed to adjust inversely to changes in productivity. If total factor productivity increases, the price level (P) should be allowed to fall, and if total factor productivity falls, the price level should be allowed to increase. A general increase in productivity affecting the economy at large changes the relative supply of goods and services with respect to money supply. Therefore, the relative price of money (1/P) should be allowed to adjust accordingly. In other words, money supply should react to changes in money demand, not to changes in production efficiency.

The productivity norm was a common stance between monetary economists before the Keynesian revolution. Selgin [14, Ch 7,8] recalls that Edgeworth, Giffen, Haberler, Hawtrey, Koopmans, Laughlin, Lindahl, Marshall, Mises, Myrdal, Newcome, Pierson, Pigou, Robertson, Tausig, Roepke and Wicksell are a few of the economists from different geographical locations and schools of thought who, at some point, viewed the productivity norm positively.

One of the attractive features of productivity norm-inspired monetary policy rules is the tendency of the results to mimic the potential outcome of a free banking system, one defined as a market in money and banking with no central bank and no regulations. Among the conclusions of the free banking literature is that monetary equilibrium yields a stable nominal income.

Throughout Cachanosky distinguishes carefully between an NGDP target and a productivity norm, though I think these are overstated; and between 'emergent' stability in NGDP and 'designed' stability, which he (like Alex Salter) thinks are importantly different (I am not convinced).

Cachanosky believes that the 2008 crisis implies that NGDP growth beforehand was too fast, and led to capital being misallocated, but I still doubt the Austrian theory of the business cycle makes any sense when you have approximately efficient capital markets.

Despite our differences, I think that Cachanosky's papers are very valuable contributions to the debate, and hopefully they can go some of the way to convincing Austrian economists that the market monetarist approach is not Keynesian.

Equal pay for equal work

A recent speech by Andy Haldane, the Bank of England's chief economist, sheds a good deal of light on the cost of living crisis and the union-led "Britain Needs a Payrise" campaign. Haldane points out how grim the recent situation has been for real wages in the UK economy:

Growth in real wages has been negative for all bar three of the past 74 months. The cumulative fall in real wages since their pre-recession peak is around 10%. As best we can tell, the length and depth of this fall is unprecedented since at least the mid-1800s.

But is this because employers have suddenly become selfish capitalists, whereas before they were paying workers out of the good of their heart? Or is something else at play?

Productivity – GDP per hour worked – was broadly unchanged in the year to 2014 Q2, leaving it around 15% below its pre-crisis trend level. The level of productivity is no higher than it was six years ago. This is the so-called “productivity puzzle”. Productivity has not flat-lined for that long in any period since the 1880s, other than following demobilisation after the World Wars.

We usually think that wages and productivity will be pretty closely related. Employers are unlikely to consistently pay above productivity, because they'd lose money. But equally, they'll be unable to consistently pay far below productivity (less the share needed to rent the capital involved) because in a reasonably competitive market firms will compete their workers away with more attractive job offers.

We might think this is particularly true at the low wage end of the market, because much less of low-skilled workers productivity is job specific. An accountant makes a very poor lawyer, and a civil engineer is not qualified to write code, but a worker in McDonalds will be similarly good at Burger King, or for that matter Waterstones, JR Wetherspoon, Lidl or most other relatively low-skilled areas.

So basic economic models suggest pay will track productivity. And what do we see on the macro level?

The deficit in pay tracks the deficit in productivity. Of course, the situation for public sector workers is a bit different—we actually measure their productivity mainly by inputs. If their pay goes up, their measured productivity goes up. It's hard to see how else we would do it. But the overall picture suggests that the real pay decline is down to a real productivity decline. We haven't moved away from equal pay for equal work—we've just had a big horrible recession and a sluggish recovery!