Research

Some new problems have afflicted the economy in the last year.  Two examples come from the US:  blockages in supply chain logistics and a critical shortage in infant milk formula. One problem applies to the EU even more than to the US: energy scarcity due to sanctions against Russian fossil fuel exports.  And one applies almost everywhere: inflation.

Italy hosts the G20 this year.  The 2021 Summit of the Heads of Government will take place in Rome in October. Officials of member countries, including the finance ministers and central bank governors, are preparing.

The G20 meeting will come at a time of great uncertainty as concerns the health and economic effects of the pandemic, midway through its 2nd year.  Although the mechanisms of international cooperation have been badly bruised by events of recent years, they are more important than ever, in light of the interconnectedness across nations that the pandemic so vividly demonstrates.

Of what, specifically, should international cooperation in such bodies as the G20 consist?  To begin with, by “cooperation,” I am not in this case referring to the coordinated setting of national monetary or fiscal policies.  For the most part, countries can, on their own, move those levers in the directions that are right for them.

Areas on which the G20 should focus include three: financial stability, trade, and vaccination.  This is in addition to other important areas, especially the existential issue of global climate change, which should and will receive a lot of attention.

The World Bank on May 19, as it does every six years, released the results of the most recent International Comparison Program (ICP), which measures price levels and GDPs across 176 countries.  The new results are striking.  It is surprising that they have received almost no attention so far, perhaps overshadowed by all things coronavirus.

For the first time, the ICP shows China’s total real income as slightly larger than the US.  It reports that China’s GDP was $19,617 billion in 2017, in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, while the United States’ GDP stood at $19,519 billion.

“Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.”  And the rest of us are condemned to repeat George Santayana.

Will the Coronavirus Recession of 2020 be V-shaped?  Or U-shaped?  If we fail to heed the lessons of history it is likely to be W-shaped, with incipient recovery followed by successive relapses into sickness and recession.

As has been widely noted, we would have been better prepared to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic in the first place if everyone had paid more attention to the past history of epidemics. Be that as it may, the world is now deep into the pandemic and its economic consequences, the most severe such events since the interwar period, 1918-1939.  As decision-makers in every country contemplate their next steps, they would do well to ponder the precedents of that interwar period.

The “bicycle theory” used to be a metaphor for international trade policy.  Just as standing still on a bicycle is not an option — one has to keep moving forward or else the bike will fall over – so it was said that international trade negotiators must continue to engage in successive rounds of liberalization, or else the open global trading system would be pulled down by protectionist interests.  I don’t know if the theory was ever right.  (And, to be honest, I don’t entirely understand why forward movement keeps a bicycle from falling over.)  But if we had stood still on trade policy over the last three years we would be a lot better off than where we are now.

As long as the German economy was doing well, as it was during the recovery from the 2008 global financial crisis, there existed a coherent rationale for German fiscal austerity.  The national commitment to budget discipline was enshrined in the 2009 “debt brake,” which limits the federal structural deficit to 0.35% of GDP, and by the 2011 “schwarze Null” (that is, “black zero”) policy of fully balancing the budget.  Indeed Angela Merkel’s government proudly achieved a balanced budget in 2012 and surpluses in 2014-18.

With unemployment low and growth relatively strong, fear of overheating the domestic economy was a legitimate counter-argument against the other countries that were always urging Germany to undertake fiscal stimulus.  They wanted more German spending, which would reduce its current account surplus (a huge 8-9% of GDP in recent years) and spill over into demand that would help other euro members, especially those to the south.

Donald Trump has postponed until April the supposed deadline for a conclusion to China-US trade negotiations.  A good outcome for both sides would have China agree to better protect private property rights and to reduce the role of the state in its economy; the US agree to strengthen national saving and public investment; and both sides agree to reverse their recent tariff increases and the resulting shrinkage of international markets.  Unfortunately this deal is not likely to happen.

What does the US want?