Category: Economics – General

NZ & Oz: why it matters

John Quiggin46 Comments

My previous posts put up various bits and pieces about the sharp economic divergence between NZ and Australia, but I didn’t say much about why this topic is of interest right now. The issue has come up in several different contexts, where the contrast between the two countries, starting from fairly similar positions, seems to me to provide some pretty strong evidence. The questions include

* Do recessions have sustained effects on income levels, or does the economy rapidly return to its previous growth path? The evidence from NZ (six recessions since 1975) and Australia (two) suggests that effects are sustained
* Is market-oriented microeconomic reform a major determinant of economic growth? NZ reformed more, and more vigorously than did Australia and did drastically worse in economic terms.
* Do more flexible labour markets yield better macroeconomic performance? Again, the evidence from NZ and Australia suggests the answer is No.

Obviously, given the points above, I take the view that bad macroeconomic policy in NZ, particularly during the reform era of the 1980s and 1990s, is an important reason for poor economic performance. Important examples include the adoption of a contract-based 0-2 per cent inflation target in the early 1990s, and the misconceived idea of the Monetary Conditions Index at the time of the Asian crisis. I don’t think bad macro policy is a sufficient explanation, but the gap is so large and persistent, it’s hard to explain in terms of standard microeconomic analysis.

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NZ & Oz – a bit more

John Quiggin19 Comments

Readers have sent in a couple more instances of claims that the NZ economy has done, or was about to do, better than competitors, most notably Australia. Here’s Tony Abbott on the alleged success of NZ macro policy

there are other countries which have chosen a different path and there’s no evidence that their response has been any less effective than ours. For instance, in New Zealand they have tried to reform their way through the global financial crisis under the new government’s leadership and they seem to be doing pretty well

and here’s a picture from 1989 of then Finance Minister, David Caygill, showing what he thought the reforms could achieve.

Caygill1989

Declining electricity consumption in Australia

John Quiggin68 Comments

I missed this when it came out a few weeks ago, but the Australian Energy Market Operation (AEMO) has released new forecasts of electricity demand to 2020. The forecasts represent a further reduction on the big cuts in estimated demand made between 2011 and 2012. In 2011, the medium forecast was for nearly 250 000 GWH by 2020, up from 200 000 in 2010. The latest medium forecast is 211 000 GWh for 2020, and the low forecast stays below 200 000 out to 2022-23. These forecasts would be even lower if it were not for three large export LNG projects in Queensland.

Even more striking is the forecast for residential and commercial consumption per persom. In much of the debate around energy issues, it is assumed that increases in living standards must go hand in hand with higher consumption of all forms of energy. But AEMO, assuming moderate rates of economic growth, is predicting that consumption per person will drop to 6000 KwH per year by 2020. In 2005, it was around 7200 KwH, so that’s a drop of more than 15 per cent. Over that time, income per person is likely to rise by around 30 per cent.

The AEMO measures don’t include rooftop solar, but they do include large-scale renewable energy (wind and grid-connected PV). Current policy calls for an additional 20 000 GWh of large-scale renewables by 2020, which would imply a significant reduction in energy-related CO2 emissions over the next decade.

Of course, a lot of this is the fortuitous result of high electricity prices, driven mainly by distribution costs. But it’s certainly an impressive demonstration that lower energy consumption does not mean lower living standards.

Why gold is different from Bitcoins

John Quiggin35 Comments

I have a new piece out in the National Interest, explaining why gold, unlike Bitcoins, will remain valuable for many years to come. In essence, gold has an intrinsic value derived from its industrial and decorative uses, and this value is enhanced by the demand for gold as a store of value, and by the belief (mistaken in my opinion, and certainly not an option I would favor) that gold-backed currencies may be restored.

By contrast, in my view, this piece by Robert Murphy misses the crucial distinction. Monetary demand can enhance intrinsic value, but it can’t make an intrinsically worthless asset valuable. He also fails to state the crucial point about fiat money. The “fiat” comes from the fact that a state can demand taxes can declare (“fiat”) that its money is acceptable in payment of those obligations. Hence, as long as the state can enforce its demands, its money has real value.

Some electricity links

John Quiggin21 Comments

The Australia Institute has a report out making the point that the growth in the administrative and marketing costs of electricity companies, following the reforms of the 1990s, has added more to electricity prices than has the carbon price.

Also, the Centre for Policy Development has a nice piece on solar PV coming out soon. Look for it.

Finally, here’s a piece I wrote for the The Economic and Labour Relations Review in 2001. Conclusion over the fold. I think it stacks up pretty well, certainly compared to the gushing praise for reform that was commonplace at the time.

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The good news

John Quiggin58 Comments

Discussions about reducing CO2 emissions often have a dismal tone, saying that we can’t reduce emissions without a drastic reduction in living standards. Sometimes the inference is that we should do nothing, other times that we should embrace drastically lower living standards (but probably won’t). Most people share this intuition to some extent, particularly as regards activities like driving, that seem central to a modern lifestyle. So, it’s striking to see what’s been happening to per capita gasoline consumption in the US

gasoline-volume-sales-per-capita-vs-price

There’s a lot going on here: prices, fuel economy regulations, ethanol and general cultural shifts which have reduced distances driven. But the big point is that this drastic decline has happened with only modest policy measures, and without any obvious impact on living standards (US living standards haven’t done well in the 2000s, but for entirely different reasons). Looking ahead, Obama’s fuel economy regulations and sustained high prices should drive US gasoline consumption much lower.

Starting as I mean to go on (updated)

John Quiggin125 Comments

As I said in my last post, I’m giving as good as I get from now on, and today I seem to be getting plenty

Over at Catallaxy (Google it if you want), Sinclair Davidson is complaining about my Australian Laureate Fellowship (total budget, including lots of postdocs, PhD students etc, $2 million over 5 years) as an imposition on the taxpayer. Sinclair also receives a taxpayer funded salary of at least $150K. The standard assumption is that 30 per cent of a professorial salary is for research, the rest for teaching, administration, community service and so on. By contrast, I’m funded 100 per cent for research, my own and that of my students and collaborators. So, let’s see who is goofing off on the taxpayer dollar.

Here’s Sinclair: two journal articles, and zero working papers in the last five years. On my arithmetic, allowing 30 per cent of salary for research, that’s a rate of over $100k per publication.
Here’s me 29 journal articles and 36 working papers in the same period. That’s about $30k per publication, without allowing for material produced by the postdocs and PhD students funded by my grant.

Those aren’t exhaustive lists of publications by any means, but I doubt that the relativities would change if we had a more complete list, including books, reports and so on. Adjusting for journal quality, as perceived by the profession, would make the difference even sharper.

Updated With their usual affinity for conspiracy theories, commenters here at and Catallaxy are suggesting that my current Fellowship is a favor from my Labor mates (readers here will be aware of my slavish devotion to our PM, which has, it seems, finally paid off). Of course, the great thing with conspiracy theories is that, the longer you look, the more conspirators you find. I’m sure the Catallaxians will be unsurprised to discover that this is, in fact, my fifth fellowship of this kind (the publication count above refers to my previous one), and that the previous four were all awarded by the Howard government.

Further update Sinclair Davidson has responded with a more complete list of his publications, including quite a few that appear neither on the IDEAS database (because it doesn’t include low-grade journals like Agenda and Policy nor on his personal webpage at RMIT. As I said above, it doesn’t change the relativities.

Yet further update Davidson has managed to convince the ever-gullible Andrew Bolt that pieces in Policy (not even ranked as a peer-reviewed journal by the ARC ranked C by the ARC), Agenda (ranked B) and a bunch of CIS/IPA publications constitute a stellar publication record. There’s nothing wrong with publishing in magazines like these (I do plenty of it), but it’s supposed to be a by-product of academic research, not a substitute for it. Bolt (innumerate, and out by two orders of magnitude on the impact of emissions policy), also repeats his claim that I’m the math-challenged one.