Friday, May 18, 2007
recession odds
It is very interesting the media only pay attention to the 1/3 part, did not realize the whole statement is the country is unlikely (2/3>>1/3 ) head to recession.
So, the question is not how likely, but will or will not. I tend to lean on the will side...
Monday, May 7, 2007
Invisible hand vs Monopoly II
Senate kills bid to import prescription drugs
is also a result of invisible hand...Invisible hand vs Monopoly
"If you would like a copy and are not a professor eligible for a free one, you will have to rely on the invisible hand of the market to satisfy your cravings."
The price seems not driven by invisible, but visible hands: a good network between the publishers, the authors, and the high lobbying effort them to prevent price competition through imports. Simple examples are kill the second hand market every few years. Tell me why do we need a new edition of Introduction to Calculus book every few years? Tell me why you need an updated edition for many economic books? Tell me why you are able to sell at more than 50% discount for non-US edition in non-US countries but still making a profit? Tell me why most US online book store refuse to sell the non-US edition with identical contents? Tell me if you are not overpricing.
With almost perfectly inelastic textbook demand by students, the network is able to maintain high profit for long time. Poor students...
Please do you claim the price of your textbook is governed by invisible hand. It is govern by a few groups of people by exercising their monopoly power!!
Friday, April 27, 2007
What is it about Polish people and lines?
"With so many years of shortages, the rewards for becoming an expert line cutter were much greater in Poland than in the U.S. So they did perfect standing in lines — perfection means being able to cut in front of people and feel no guilt."
It sounds strange to me. If the hypothesis is true, we should also expect the cost of losing the place in line is very high (again due to many years of shortages). This means those already in line will try every effort to prevent being cut into...so, two force will somehow counteract each other. It is not obvious why cutting in line is so often.
An experiment may be look at the line cutting within the tourist area (where people in line did not face shortage in the past) versus the line cutting in the local area. But two problems are 1. mostly likely, the price in the tourist area may be high enough that line may not often exists. 2. not many locals in the tourist areas.
Mexico interest rate surprise
The rate hike is surprising. The statement is to reinforce the bank's credibility.
The motivation is pretty obvious that the bank wants to reverse the inflation expectation. Currently the expectation is at the upper bound of the target. Here is a few questions we need to look at.
1. Inflation expectation is formed through many different channels. Most cases, it is formed from the inflation history. Of course, there are two ways to have inflation. Supply shock or demand shock.
A. Demand shock is the loosing monetary policy. Mostly due to fiscal pressure on the central bank financing. This was typical in EM in the past, and some EM today. In this case, the bank has an important role to convince the public that printing money to finance the fiscal deficit is not an option. That is one reason we have the inflation targeting institute or an independent central bank. Also under this case, inflation is driven by the government. As governemnt does not change every month, inflation expectation is formed as a response and tends to be sticky.
B. Supply shock on the other hand is not a direct result of policy failure. It is the weather or some global factor that the government/central bank has limited tools to counteract. In this case, inflation expectation tends to be short term and less sticky. In some sense it is more likely to be adaptive, adapted to a few month in the past. Market observes inflation yesterday tends to think it will be similar today because the transition probability for weather switch from one day to another is low. In other words, if the inflation figure drops today more than expected (due to demand slow down for example), expectation tends to adapt and adjust downward fairly quickly. Also because of that, the effect of central bank hike is smaller as the source is inflation is not from government. This seems what is expected in
2. Anyhow, rate hike is real today. what will be next? I think the rate cycle (if there is) should be done. Inflation expectation should go down partly because of this rate hike, but more importantly, the diminishing of the supply shock. Of course, if there is another unexpected supply shock, the story will be different, but that is not the baseline.
3. The real concern is if the real economy response to the interest hike. The economy is cooling down. The uncertainty between the weak
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Rising threat of Protectionism
What will be the impact of rising impact of protectionism?
I think that we need to go back a step to ask why there is a dollar weakness. We agree that is driven by current account deficit, which I personally think is internally driven as a reflection of private and public negative savings. The private and public negative savings are made in the
The thought process of trade protectionism is how this may affect the link mentioned.
There is no reason that protectionism will have any significant impact on public saving. It is very hard to imagine the tariff collected from import will be significant in any measure.
On private saving, there are two things to think about. One is the overall level, the other is the substitution. With tariff and if the price actually rose, it is a matter of elasticity whether the
The other side of the coin is the capital inflow financing. Capital inflow financing is a function of investor’s confidence on the
The last thing is what will be the reaction of foreign countries? One reason why the foreign government continues to buy the
The worst case will be the broad protectionism creates a rise in risk aversion, but I am not sure this will benefit the
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Latin America Trip
I have been in
Different countries have different economic development. The impression from the trip is that all countries are booming. All countries, to a different extent, are able to maintain their fiscal discipline.
Another important observation is that the growth is not limited to a small subset of economic sectors.
This does not mean the countries are totally insulated from shock. One very clear problem in my mind is all their currencies are undervalued. Government intervention is the norm everywhere. There are two problems. One is sterilization is not complete, which means sooner or later, inflation will show up in the domestic economy. If this happens, the most affected group will be the poor, as most of them are not able to hedge the inflation risk. This is particularly important as history tells us that social unrest has been a hidden bomb in the Latin region. Last year’s
On the other side of the same coin, huge rise in international reserve expose the central bank on exchange rate valuation effect. If the world continues to be smooth and if the
The second problem I think is even more worrisome is all countries is very protective to their export sector. This suggests that they are not confident on the domestic economy. Every developing country wants to move to the developed world. Every developed economy is driven by domestic component, and most likely letting its currency floats freely. I don’t see this is the case in any of the Latin economy. The typical argument from the central bank or the ministry of finance is they concern their export sectors, or in short the Dutch Disease. Theoretically sound, but seems not practically right. The Dutch Disease argument relies on high entry barrier. This seems not too important for Latin’s manufacturing industries. But the end, the undervalued currency hinders the transformation to a high value added sectors. This is quite a bad thing in the long run.
In the sense, the government should spell a clear message that FX intervention is transitional, including the intervention magnitude over time. It seems so far there is no clear message out there. The market may think that is transitional not because of the government commitment, but the government capacity. Although the eventual outcome may be FX appreciation, the dynamic is very different. Under the first case, the market will have full information on the FX trend, and export sector are able to plan its transformation in an orderly fashion. Rational expectation suggests that volatility will tend to low. In the second case, market needs to estimate the capacity of the central bank, from inflation data, from interest rate data, etc. export sector will put more efforts on lobbying the government. Speculation will be high, and so is the FX volatility.
I recalled there are a number of countries in the past are able to move from pegged regime to floating regime without triggering a crisis. More importantly, all of them switched their regimes under the good time. This is the time for the
With high international reserves, with fiscal balance and with favorable monetary condition, it is time to let it float. Let the market determine which industry should stay, which should let go. Let the financial market develops under the market condition. Most of those countries are not small open economy, they need their domestic demand determines the economy, not the export sector.