Economic Stimulus Package

An Austrian analysis of the economic stimulus package at my other blog.

Interest

In our previous discussion on the nature of savings and lending one issue that was intentionally glossed over was that of interest rates. Interest rates are central to economics. A direct recognition of this fact is that all major treatises have, in some way or the other, included the term interest in the title. Consider Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, Mises' Theory of Money and Credit, or Bohm-Bawerk's Capital and Interest.

Expectedly, each school has a unique perspective. The Austrian school largely differentiates itself based on the richness of its theory of capital and interest. However, before we discuss the Austrian theory of interest, it might be instructive to examine the nature of interest by invoking as little economics as possible.

Dimensional Analysis of Interest Rates

When posed the question "what is interest?", one common response is that it is the price of money. This is not true. The price of money, like any other good, is the amount of something else that must be traded for it. To see this, consider the converse: what is the price of a tomato? Well, it is the number of dollars that must be given up in exchange for a tomato. Ok, how about the price of a banana? Again, it is the number of dollars that must be given up in exchange for a banana. Because dollars are money the price of all goods is expressed in dollars, whereas the price of dollars is expressed in other goods.

Returning to the tomato, let's say its price is 2 dollars. Price = 2 dollars per tomato. Expressed this way, we find that the price of a tomato has dimensions. Recall from high school physics that all statements about reality have dimensions. Dimensions give meaning beyond the mere quantity. To say I am 6 tall, or 70 tall is meaningless. I should say that I am 6 feet tall, or 70 inches tall. The dimension of my height is length, expressed in feet or inches. Similarly, the price of a tomato has dimensions dollars per tomato. Price = 2 $/tomato. The same is true for bananas. Price = 4 $/banana. In general, the dollar price of X has dimensions $/X. Price = y $/X. Taking the reciprocal, we get: price = 1/y X/$. Price of what? Why, of dollars, of course! By this simple mathematical argument, we determine that the price of dollars is the amount of good X (happens to be 1/y) that must be trade for one dollar. Thus, while the prices of all goods is expressed in dollars, the price of dollars is expressed in terms of other goods. We can further extend this by noting that if the dollar price of tomatoes is 2 and the dollar price of bananas is 4, then the tomato price of bananas -- the number of tomatoes that must be exchanged for one banana -- is 2: 1/2 tomato/$ x 4 $/banana = 2 tomatoes/banana.

So what has this musings about dimensions taught us about interest rates? Well, what are the dimensions of interest rates? Look up any financial source and you will find interest rates quoted as r % per year. Dimensions = 1/year. Thus, without invoking any economics, we can determine that interest rates are the price of time. Economics enters the picture when we begin to question why time has value, and how one determines that value.

Why Time Has Value

Time has value because, all else equal, humans prefer consumption sooner than later. This concept is known as time preference. Historically, the charging of interest, or usury as it was pejoratively referred to, has been much maligned by the church, Marxists, and others. There is no reason for this myopic prejudice. Interest is a natural phenomenon that arises from the voluntary interactions of individuals expressing their subjective preferences.

Robert Murphy discusses this concept in his article Why Do Capitalists Earn Interest Income:

Since no one would be willing to give $10,000 now in exchange for a promise of $1,000 payments for each of the next ten years, it naturally follows that no one would pay $10,000 for our hypothetical tractor. Because of this fact—that present goods are worth more than future goods—the tractor can be purchased for less than $10,000

Robert Murphy also has a great article on Bohm-Bawerks critique of the exploitation theory of interest.

Determining The Price of Time

The concept of time preference is intuitive and should resonate with the reader. The harder question to answer is how one puts a price on time. Wikipedia defines interest as "a fee paid on borrowed capital"; the operative term being capital. Capital is real wealth (tangible physical goods), not paper claims to wealth. In essence, the holder of capital through the act of saving is foregoing consumption today for consumption in the future. He demands payment for this because of his time preference. That the borrower acquiesces to his demand is a result of the wealth generation process: the borrower expects, by acquiring capital today, to be able to repay that capital plus interest in the future. It is the interaction of these two phenomena that established the price of time as the marginal efficiency of capital.

Reasoning with money tends to obfuscate the insight so let's consider a barter economy and then see if we cannot extend the results to a monetary economy. In a barter economy, a saver saves real wealth and an entrepreneur demands real wealth for investment. Assume the baker saves 10 loaves of bread and the shoemaker in order to build a shoe-making machine needs 10 loaves of bread, 1 for each day that he works on the machine and cannot sustain himself through other means. (Aside: this is the concept of the subsistence fund which shows that savings and not consumption (as in the Keynesian framework) are the drivers of economic growth.)

The two agree that in return for the 10 loaves today, the shoemaker will return 11 loaves when his machine is done. By agreeing to part with the 10 loaves today that could have been otherwise used to purchase, say, a new suit, or a squash racket, the baker has expressed him time preference. He willingly foregos consumption today for increased consumption in the future. Had his time preference been higher, he would have demanded a higher rate of interest. The shoemaker, on the other hand, agrees to return 11 loaves because he expects his new machine to enhance his ability to produce shoes. Had the productivity increase been smaller, the interest rate he could afford would be lower. As various savers and entrepreneurs interact with each other to coordinate savings and investment, the savers express their time preference and the entrepreneurs are guided by the productivity gains they hope to achieve, which illustrates that the price of time is the marginal efficiency of capital.

Introducing money into the equation changes nothing. In the barter economy, the shoe maker must find a baker willing to save bread and offer him a rate sufficient to satisfy his time preference and within the productivity gains he expects. This is just another form of the double coincidence of wants. To alleviate this problem, we introduce money into the system, but do not change the essence of the interactions.

This is a simple description of how the free market allocates capital towards investment. Through this coordination the price of time is established. It is what Wicksell termed the neutral rate. For a more detailed explanation, see Shostak's article on marginal utility and interest formation. See also natural and neutral interest rates by Roger Garrison.

Conclusion

We have argued that interest rates are the price of time and that they should be established by allowing the market to clear free of manipulation. When the central bank increases the money supply or private banks increase the money supply through fractional reserve banking, they cause distortions to the market for capital. If entrepreneurs have first access to the new money then they can acquire the goods they need without convincing anyone to actually save those goods. Thus, expanding the money supply is nothing but forced savings. Ideally, a free market on a gold standard will set the interest rate, and not a central bank that has no idea what the interest rate should be. What is most strange is that mainstream economists will agree that the government should play no part in setting the price of goods and services like cars and orange juice. Yet, they all insist that the government should control the most important price in the economy, the price of time.

Austrian Economics in One Article

Sean Corrigan's contribution to this day and age of fast food and fast living.

Some choice quotes:

Austrians were in the forefront of the Marginalist revolution; an advance which realized that choices are made (and hence valuations formed) "at the margin." This alone was enough to correct errors which had long confounded both classicists and Marxists.

It is the entrepreneur's particular skill—as well as his essential service to society—that he has an enhanced ability to put temporarily underpriced combinations of resources to a more nearly optimal use than can other men.

Mises himself single-handedly destroyed any attempts to construct a socialist rationale in the famous "calculation debate," showing that, without private property and an unhindered price mechanism, production can never be properly coordinated to allocate scarce resources to their best and most urgent uses.

Menger and Boehm-Bawerk, et al.,derived the most satisfying theory of the origins of interest—the so-called natural rate being, essentially, a measure of mortal man’s inherent impatience with any delay in the gratification of his wants and needs.

Hazlitt, developing this theme, wrote that the "One Lesson" of economics is that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that we must always look beyond the immediate results of an action to see its hidden and indirect influences before we pronounce it a success or a failure.

[Austrian economics] does not confuse money with wealth; it knows that production delivers prosperity, not consumption.

Update

As much as I would like to update this blog weekly with articles on Austrian Economics, it is turning out to be harder than I expected. I simply do not have time as I am currently job hunting.

Also, my interest is more focused towards financial markets than economics per se. As such, I have started a new blog (macrothoughts.blogspot.com) that I will update frequently. As for this blog, I am hoping for a couple of articles a month.

Thanks!

Inflation - part 2/2

In part 1 we saw that defining inflation as generally rising prices is a red herring. We argued that the definition is meaningless because it cannot be objectively determined. However, rising prices are a phenomenon we observe today, and one that greatly impacts our lives. Ultimately, our goal is to explain rising prices. It is insufficient to simply deconstruct the mainstream view of inflation, we must offer an alternate theory, one that hopefully better explains price movements.

Supply Shocks and Water Levels

Mainstream economists usually attribute inflation to supply shocks (cost-push), increased aggregate demand (demand-pull), or other exogenous circumstances. This is false. A supply shock is a short term event that affects a small segment of the economy; for example, a hurricane damaging an off-shore oil rig temporarily reducing the supply of oil. Price is the intersection between supply and demand. If supply falls and demand is unchanged, then prices must rise in order for the market to clear. This much is true. However, since oil prices have risen, consumers have less money to spend elsewhere. Their demand for other goods and services thus falls. But the supply of those goods and services is unchanged, therefore prices must fall in order for markets to clear. Thus any rise in the price of oil is accompanied by a fall in the price of other goods and services. The rise/fall will not balance perfectly since there is always the human element to consider, but that is not as important for the present discussion and will be sidelined for the present. What is important is that the price of oil rose, while the prices of other goods and services fell. There was no "general rise in prices." (The same logic holds if a sector suddenly experiences an increased demand.)

Consider the following thought experiment. Imagine a glass partially filled with water. Draw a line around the glass at the level of the water. If you tilt the glass in one direction, the water level rises above the line on the tilted side. However, the water level falls below the line on the other side. The average level is unchanged. This is analogous to the supply shock. Think of the water level as the price level. Tilting the glass (the supply shock, or increased demand) raises the water level on one side (the sector experiencing the shock) and reduces the water level on the other side (the rest of the economy) as water flows between the two sides. We cannot raise the average water level simply by tilting the glass.

Too Much Money Chasing Too Few Goods

Let us continue with our thought experiment. Imagine our goal is to raise the water level. How can we achieve this? The obvious answer is to add more water. Another answer, perhaps less obvious, is to pour the existing water into a narrower glass. There is little else we can do. The same observation holds when it comes to rising prices. In our experiment, the water level represents the price level, the amount of water represents the money supply, and the width of the glass represents the size of the economy. To raise the price level (the water level), we must print more money (add more water) or shrink the economy (use a narrower glass). Any sort of tilting (supply shock, or increased demand) will result in money flowing towards that sector from other sectors causing rising prices in that sector and falling prices elsewhere. There cannot be a "general rise in prices".

Many mainstream economists recognize this. To circumvent the problem, there is the oft cited canard of increased aggregate demand. To simplify: every sector of the economy experiences a simultaneous rise in demand. As supply remains constant, prices must adjust upward for markets to clear. Voila!, generally rising prices. They claim the water level has risen without additional water or changes to the glass. So what magic is this? In fact, there is no magic, only faulty reasoning. Recall from our earlier discussions on money that every trade is an exchange of goods or services for other goods or services. An increased demand for chocolate is supported by an availability of, say, cell phones to be traded for it. Without the cell phones to trade for the chocolate, the demand cannot be financed. Thus, increased aggregate demand is a chimera. It is impossible without increased aggregate supply as a source of financing. (Btw, this is the essence of Say's law, that "supply constitutes demand", not that "supply creates demand" as Keynes erroneously stated.)

Our thought experiment demonstrates that a rise in prices is essentially too much money sloshing around the system chasing too few goods. If the growth in money supply exceeds the growth in the real economy, then the average level of prices will rise, and vice versa (straight from the horses mouth). Armed with this understanding we can conclude that the rise in prices since 1913 resulting in a dollar worth only 4 cents today is simply the Federal Reserve printing too much money. Rather than being an inflation "fighter", the Fed is the root cause of inflation. In fact, looking at price indices prior to 1913, we find the price level is essentially unchanged for large periods of time. See for yourself. The standout in the graph is the parabolic growth since 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window. With absolutely no check on the supply of money, the Federal Reserve has inflated at an alarming pace causing large price increases. In the last decade alone the money supply has more than quadrupled, with M3, the broadest measure of money supply, currently growing in the double digits.

The Complete Picture

We have now formally defined inflation as growth in the money supply. This is the correct definition because the fundamental nature of inflation is not rising prices, but falling purchasing power of the currency. Prices of goods may rise, but the truth is that the price of the currency has fallen. All goods have a price, the dollar included. While the prices of goods and services are generally expressed in units of money, the price of money is expressed in units of goods and services. The price of a tomato is the number of dollars that must be traded for it. Similarly, the price of the dollar is the number of tomatoes (or bananas, or cars, or whatever) that must be traded for it. Generally rising prices is a euphemism for falling dollar.

When the central bank increases the money supply, the effect is upward pressure on prices. More water has been added to the glass. This should give us pause for thought, but it is still not the complete picture. Recall that the other variable in our thought experiment was the width of the glass. Our base goal here is to understand changes in the price level. We are being sloppy if we ignore this other variable. Let us now consider all phenomena that influence the average level of prices:

1. Inflation: defined to be growth in money supply exerts upward pressure on prices. More water is added to the glass. This is what causes generally rising prices.
   
2. Productivity gains: exerts downward pressure on prices. When entrepreneurs invest in technologies or processes that increase productivity, they are able to introduce more real wealth into the economy. The glass is made wider and the water level falls.
3. Government regulation: exerts a decidedly upward pressure on prices because it reduces the size of the economy. In our earlier discussion on supply shocks we had implicitly assumed their effect to be localized. Should the shock extend across multiple sectors or geographies, then it can no longer be considered a supply shock, but rather a system wide problem. Such system wide problems simply do not occur randomly. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, or what-have-you do not impact the economy so as to make the glass observably narrower. Only governments through regulation or wars can achieve that end.
   

The interaction of these factors results in the observed rise/fall in prices. Unfortunately, it is very hard to quantify what part of the rise/fall is attributable to each cause. We can accurately measure money supply growth, but the benefits of productivity gains or the destruction of government regulation is impossible to determine as their is no yard stick in existence. Having a yard stick requires an imagination. An imagination that helps the economist understand what would have transpired had an entrepreneur not invented, or a bureaucracy not stifled, a new technology. That being said, we can make statements about the whole. For instance, with the high-tech industry where newer and better products are consistently offered at lower and lower prices, we conclude that the downward pressure from free market forces delivering productivity gains to the consumer outweighs the upward pressure from money supply growth and the relatively light regulation. Similarly, with the health care industry, where prices are rising in excess of the general economy, we conclude that the controlling effect is not money supply growth, but excessive government regulation that is stifling entrepreneurs from delivering productivity gains to the consumer. (Consider the AMA, the FDA, HMO's, and the tax structure, just as starting points.)

The Hidden Tax

Although inflation causes generally rising prices, it should not be understood as detrimental to all parties involved. It is highly lucrative for the government and the banking industry. When new money is printed (today, created electronically), it greatly benefits the first recipient because assimilating the new money into the economic organism takes time. Those first recipients (government and banks) can purchase goods and services at the old prices. As the money slowly works its way through the economy prices are bid up. Eventually when it reaches the salaried workers, prices have mostly adjusted. This process is a hidden tax on salaried workers, or anyone who receives the money late in the cycle. It is especially detrimental to those on fixed incomes, such as pensioners. Not only does the government understate the effects of inflation in its official numbers, any price decrease that would have occurred as a result of productivity gains are denied to the consumer as well. Inflation is nothing but wealth transfer. The government prints money and buys stuff with it. Prices rise and the salaried worker can buy less stuff. All the stuff the salaried worker could have otherwise bought has accrued to the government. Simple. Politically, it is far more palatable than raising taxes because the process is badly understood and well obfuscated.

Conclusion

Our goal at the outset was to explain rising prices, and we have. Inflation, money supply growth, is the primary cause, with government regulation having sector specific effects depending on how malignant. In a free or lightly regulated market with commodity money, the tendency will be towards generally falling prices. This is a boon to salaried workers and those on fixed incomes who will experience a higher standard of living. See the period 1820 to 1860 here. On the contrary, an inflationary policy causes standard of living declines, which is corroborated by the fact living standards pretty much topped in the early 70's (Sorry, I've been unable to track down the exact statistic. If anyone has it, please forward it to me.)

In the addendum, I will examine the chart of the CPI more closely and attempt to explain the various periods.

References

Inflation in one page, by Ludwig von Mises.

Inflation - part 1/2

Many people will be surprised to learn that the dollar today is worth only 4 cents of a dollar in 1913 when the Federal Reserve, created for the stated purpose of fighting inflation and managing unemployment, was issued the charge of creating the nations currency. The process by which the dollar has gradually lost value (buys fewer and fewer goods) is known as inflation. Today the dollar can purchase less than one-twentieth of the real wealth (tangible physical goods) it could purchase in 1913 despite significant productivity gains registered over the last few decades. This fact alone should illustrate the importance of inflation with regards to the general standard of living, yet it is one of the most widely misunderstood concepts in economics today. This article is written in 2 parts. Part 1 attempts to deconstruct the mainstream view of inflation, and part 2 attempts to build a more meaningful understanding of the process.

Paasche or Laspeyres? False Choice!

Before we can understand what inflation is, it will be helpful to understand what inflation is not. Inflation is widely regarded as a general rise in prices. Economics by Parkin and Bade defines inflation as

an upward movement in the average level of prices. Its opposite is deflation, a downward movement in the average level of prices. The boundary between inflation and deflation is price stability.

This definition is quite vague and is disputed by Austrian economists, but, for argument, let us assume that Parkin and Bade are indeed correct and examine the consequences. So how precisely does one measure the "average level of prices"? The standard approach is to use a price index, a basket of goods and services considered representative of the economy as a whole. Tracking the change in this "representative" basket of goods, one has a proxy for changes in the "average level of prices". There are many problems with this approach:

1. It is extremely hard to determine a "representative" basket of goods and services. Every basket must necessarily make simplifying assumptions in order to be tractable.
2. Should one look at final consumer goods, intermediate goods, or a mixture of the two? In fact, we have the CPI and PPI precisely to make this distinction.
3. Various sectors of the economy experience different changes in "average prices". For example, higher education has it's own "representative" basket, known as the HEPI.
4. Most importantly, markets are constantly evolving to better satisfy human wants and needs. New products are introduced and obsolete products removed; existing products are improved and upgraded; how does the price index capture this? Price series either do not exist or may not be comparable.
   

As we can see, there are various practical problems related to constructing price indices. However, that is not the crux of the issue; there is a deeper philosophical problem: there is no objective manner in which to define a price index.

1. There is no objective "representative" basket of goods and services. The inclusion (or exclusion) of any good or service from the price index may not be arbitrary, but it is certainly not objectively determined.
2. With the market constantly upgrading and improving -- not to mention introducing and obsoleting -- various goods and services, how does one objectively compare price series on qualitatively different goods or when no such series exists. The approach here is known as hedonics, which is a quality adjustment made to the price in order to capture improvements and upgrades. Needless to say, this is a highly subjective affair.
3. As the market is constantly changing, so too are consumer preferences. We do not live in a static world. Consumers, producers, economic actors of all stripes, are continuously evaluating alternatives and taking action based on their perceived self interest. People react to prices and alter their lifestyles accordingly. This cannot be objectively accounted for. It requires the subjective redefinition of the index.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.

We have seen thus far that defining and measuring the "average level of prices" cannot be done in any meaningful objective manner. However, this does not imply that it is arbitrary. While there is much lee way, the "solutions" have a clear pattern: to systematically understate the true rise in prices. John Williams of Shadowstats demonstrates how the government alters economic reporting to paint a rosy picture. For example, looking at pre-Clinton, or pre-Carter methodologies for calculating the CPI shows that inflation is running much higher (7-10%) than the 3% it is currently advertised as. This is perhaps more in line with many peoples anecdotal experience as everyday costs appear completely divorced from government reporting.

To fully understand how the government manipulates CPI numbers, I suggest the reader start with the Boskin Commision. A detailed analysis is beyond the scope of this article, but very briefly, here are the major influencing factors:

1. Hedonics: as described earlier are quality adjustments made to prices. A new car costs 20% more? Well, it is 30% "better" so the price has actually dropped 10%.
   
2. Substitution bias: the price of steak has risen 20%? The price of hamburgers has declined 10%. Well, consumers must have "substituted" away from steak for hamburgers so prices are falling.
3. Outlet substitution: that new jacket costs 20% more at the mall? Well, if you drive 50 miles to another mall, you can get it at the same price. Hence, no rise in prices.
4. Redefining the index: housing prices rising? No problem, use rents instead (what is called owners equivalent rent). This was actually the scheme used to keep CPI numbers under control during the housing bubble that topped in 2005, allowing interest rates to remain at historic lows. Now that the bubble has burst expect a redefinition shortly that uses the Case-Shiller housing index (rapidly falling) instead of rents.
   

Although simplified and trivialized, this is an accurate picture of how easily CPI numbers can be doctored. But what is the motivation? For one, consider the obvious conflict of interest with the government having many liabilities (TIPS, Social Security, etc) linked to CPI "inflation". Even a rudimentary incentives analysis of how economic data impacts the perception and functioning of the government will demonstrate that government statistics are not to be trusted. A more detailed analysis of the methodology (eg shadowstats) confirms this initial impression.

Conclusion

While it is disconcerting that government statistics are so misleading, even more disconcerting is the definition of inflation as rising prices. As mentioned earlier, Austrian economists dispute this definition, and for good reason. First, as we demonstrated, a general rise in prices is a concept that cannot be objectively determined, let alone accurately measured. Second, and more importantly, it does not attempt to understand the root cause of inflation and serves to shift attention away from it by focusing the debate on completely meaningless red herrings related to the price index. To examine the true nature of inflation, we must shine a flashlight through this smoke screen.

One caveat related to our discussion here is that I fully recognize that rising prices are a phenomenon that is important to the general public. I do not mean to shift the discussion away from rising prices, nor do I mean to deride price indices in general. If our stated goal is to measure prices then there is no alternative to using a price index, despite the problems discussed above. However, our stated goal is not to measure prices, it is to understand the causes of inflation. We have not argued that price indices are useless, only that defining inflation as a general rise in prices is inaccurate. Certainly rising/falling prices are the crux of the issue, and we attempt to better understand them in part 2.

References

Inflation in one page, but Ludwig von Mises.