Short Thoughts on China's March Trade Disaster

China’s March trade data looks nothing short of disastrous.  In particular, the 15% yoy fall in exports is a dreadful shock, with the US$144.57bn in exports the lowest nominal total since February 2014’;s holiday-afflicted tally. Worse, March is usually a strong month for exporters, with the history of the last five years showing an average rise of 40.1% mom: this year, exports fell 14.6% mom. In terms of standard deviations from the pattern, February;’s total was 1.6SDs above trend, but March’s was 6.7SDs below trend.

Such a collapse can’t really be described as a ‘deviation against the trend’, but rather a result which smashes the historic trend entirely - China has entered new and dangerous waters.  As such, it has implications both for China and its trading partners.

Before we consider that, however, there is another possibility - that the very smashing of normal seasonal patterns points to some sort of seasonal anomaly which we don’t yet understand and which is afflicting only exports. If so, we should ignore this monthly collapse in preference to the slightly longer-term picture.  Doing so allows one to see that during 1Q exports rose 4.6% yoy, which, although not great, is roughly in line with the 6% yoy growth recorded in calendar 2014.

And there is a second lifeline to this less-pessimistic approach: although March’s imports fell 12.9% yoy, the monthly move (a 30.3% mom rise) conformed almost exactly to historic seasonal patterns, after 1SD+ falls in both January and February. Although with the exception of petroleum and refined products, there is no sign of a recovery in China’s appetite for industrial commodities,  volumes of commodity imports have generally stabilised.

Hang onto that hope, because, having acknowledged those qualifications, March’s collapse of exports, and the consequent collapse of the trade surplus (to just US$3.1bn in March from Eu60.62bn in February), are the last thing China needs. There are two interlinked problems. First, China needs a hefty trade surplus to counter enormous underlying cash outflows which are undermining the liquidity of its financial system. Let’s do the maths: during 4Q14 China had a current account surplus of US$67.021bn, but its foreign exchange reserves fell by US$44.68bn - so somehow there was a net capital outflow of US$111.7bn in 4Q alone.  Second, this capital outflow put pressure on the banking system’s net cashflow: the private sector generated a net savings surplus of Rmb1.925tr in 4Q, equivalent to 8.9% of GDP. These surplus savings should have piled into the banking system as a build-up of net deposits: in fact, what happened during 4Q14 was that banks gave out Rmb 900bn more loans than they received in deposits.

That is the background to January’s expansion of the definition of ‘deposits’ counting towards regulatory loan/deposit ratios, the cuts in banks’ deposit reserve requirements announced in February, and, of course, the cuts in interest rates.

But there is a third problem: if the collapse in March’s export earnings and trade surplus are taken at face value, they also suggest that the loss of competitiveness may put the Rmb under pressure.  That is something I expect PBOC will be reluctant to entertain, simply because of the level of international debt China is now carrying. How much debt?  Last week fx regulator SAFE said those debt were ‘broadly under control’ at US$895.5bn at end-2014, of which US$621.1bn was short-term debt, and US$274.4bn was medium and long-term debt.  But it could be much more: according to BIS, at end-September 2014 (latest data available), their banks had extended US$1.3tr in debts to China, and in 4Q, BIS also reported private international debt securities outstanding to China to total US$91bn. If you are carrying that sort of debt-load, there’s plenty to lose from a currency devaluation. 

This is where things begin to matter, a lot, for China’s trading partners. Right now, most of Asia is living in a world in which although liquidity flows from the West to the East have lessened as the dollar has strengthened, thus discouraging growth-by-leverage, most companies have found compensation in a rise in the terms of trade.  So although in March, export prices were down 11.6% yoy in dollar terms for Japan, down 10.2% for S Korea and down 7.7% for Taiwan, in each case, import prices were down much further, so terms of trade were up 12.2% yoy for Japan, 9.7% yoy for S Korea and 9.6% yoy for Taiwan. The upshot is that the deflationary impact of a sharply rising dollar on profits and margins have been more than offset by falling import prices. 

Such a reasonably satisfactory outcome  for the rest of Asia would probably not survive a trading environment in which China was compelled to devalue sharply to recover export market share gains. 

Heresy About US Jobs Data

To start with the obvious: Friday’s headline news that the addition to non-farm payrolls slumped to only 126k in March was one of the larger shocks of the last few months, down 138k from the revised 264k added in February. This was the weakest number since December 2013, and was bad enough to cut 10yr treasury yields from 1.91% to 1.8% instantly, before settling at around 1.83%.

The key features were a collapse in hiring in the construction sector (the sector shed 1k jobs in March, having hired 29k in February),  a slump in hiring in the leisure & hospitality sector (13k hired in March vs 70k in February), and slowing hiring in education & health (38k in March vs 57k in February).  In addition, the mining sector continues to shed jobs, with 11k lost in both March and February. These details suggest at least some of the weakness can be attributed to the sectoral slump in the oil industry, and unusually poor weather conditions. In fact, the number of people unable to work owing to bad weather came to 182k (nsa) in March, which is 41k more than usual for March.

But in addition, March’s weak non-farm payrolls data echoes other signals of domestic demand weakness  recently: in February retail sales fell 0.6% mom and wholesales sales fell 3.1% mom and orders for durable goods fell 1.4% (as did orders for capital goods non-def ex-air). In addition,  housing starts fell by 17% mom in February, to the lowest since Jan 2014.  This weaknesses are also linked (both cause and effect) to the mini inventory-cycle which the industrial sector is currently working through.  Finally, one should acknowledge the possibility that the inadvertent tightening of monetary conditions imposed by the strength of the dollar, may also be having a depressing influence on domestic demand.

Having established that the non-farm payrolls number was genuinely weak, and that, although unexpected, it is not totally out of sync with the rest of the economic data,  it is worth exploring an alternative possibility - that the apparent weakness may actually reflect changing labour market behaviour linked to an improvement in labour market morale. Admittedly, such an interpretation seems bizarre, and totally at odds with bond market reaction to the data. 

The case for such an interpretation starts with some of the rest of the data contained in March’s labour market surveys.  First, average hourly wages rose 0.3% mom in March, beating expectations for the second time in the last three months, even though a modest retreat in the average number of hours worked meant that  average weekly earnings actually fell 0.1% mom.  In other words, even though conditions are relatively slack, there is no sign of weakening wage pressure. 

Second,  although the weakness of the Establishment Survey’s count of non-farm payrolls was echoed in the Household Survey’s count of employment - up just 34k - the Household Survey contained strands of information which run counter to a simple ‘bearish’ interpretation. First, although the survey showed those ‘employed’ up only 34k, it also showed those in work up 346k, whilst those unemployed fell by 130k. The difference in the totals is explained by two factors: first, the number self-employed rose by 299k on the month, and the number not in the workforce rose by 227k. Those 227k who fell out of the labour force cut March’s labour participation ratio to 62.7% - a retreat back to the lows seen in Sept 2014 and again in Dec 2014. 

Looking at that 227k rise in the number 'not in the workforce', it turns out that the number wanting a job fell by 169k.

Both these factors, if believed (and the volatility of the Households Survey means there must be a question-mark over its findings), are difficult to reconcile with the straightforward ‘times are tough, so hiring is down’ reading of the data.  That bearish reading is also difficult to reconcile with two other factors: first, the record job openings data, and secondly, the currently very strong consumer confidence readings, which specifically include sharply-improved perceptions of labour market conditions.

Traditionally, such improved perceptions would suggest that wages would need to rise in order to attract new entrants into the market, or to fill the record-high number of openings currently unfilled.  In the absence of such wage-rises one would expect to see labour participation rates not rising in line with the economic cycle, whilst rising self-employment coexisted with falling unemployment. Put bluntly, if people consider that the economy is strengthening and that the likelihood of finding a job if needed has improved, then employers may find themselves needing to raise wages more than they had expected in order to attract new employees. 

Ever since the Great Recession, there have been numerous attempts to guess at what level the US might be fully-employed, in the sense of the cycle provoking accelerating wage rises. As time has gone on, the estimated unemployment rate at which full employment is reached has been revised down and down.  It is consistent with the totality of March’s employment surveys  that that rate is now being reached at just the point at which exogenous factors (oil prices, weather, West Coast port problems) have engendered a sub-cycle of inventory and capex related economic weakness.   

It is perhaps deep heresy, and maybe just plain stupidity to suggest it, but the data overall is consistent not simply with the subcyclical weakness, but also with the underlying improvement and strength of the US jobs market. In which case, the immediate bond-market reaction may turn out to be . . . . wrong. 

Japan Households' Sceptical Vision

Bank of Japan's 1Q Tankan confirmed what we already knew from looking at the way the private sector is managing its balance sheet - that corporate Japan is watching the sky, holding fire on investment spending until they become absolutely convinced that nominal sales growth can be relied upon to sustain asset turns.  But what of the household sector?  Has PM Abe done a better job of shifting their expectations than he has done with corporates?

The short answer is: not much. A glacial improvement in perceptions of the economy since 2009 was first boosted by the promise of Abenomics but then knocked back by last year's tax rises - and now once again the glacial improvement has resumed. Much of that has to do with improved household incomes. However, to the (small) extent that this has been accompanied by increased spending, households seem increasingly to be developing buyers' remorse.  Finally, whilst Bank of Japan has persuaded people that prices are currently going up, there has been no flicker at all in longer-term inflationary expectations.

Since 2006 the central bank conducts a quarterly survey of households, tracking opinions on economic conditions, household income and spending, and views on inflation. As one would expect, it paints Japan's householders as grim and generally pessimistic survivors of decades of deflation. Nevertheless, virtually every indicator shows an underlying long-term upward trajectory interrupted by last year's tax rises, but in partial remission by 1Q15.

The evidence is presented in diffusion indexes - ie, the proportion of people saying positive things minus the proportion of people saying negative things.  For example, in the chart below, in which the red line tracks views on the current situation relative to the previous 12 months, seven percent think things have got better, whilst 31.6% say things have got worse, so the DI reading is minus 24.6. The chart shows, PM Abe's election was greeted with a sharp and unprecedented outbreak of optimism about prospects, and a positive reassessment of current conditions. The optimistic expectations were sustained for two months before draining away, whilst the improvement in current conditions was maintained until . . . the tax rises.  However, 1Q has seen a partial recovery in household opinion on current conditions and the coming  year.

Over the long term, households'  economic views are determined mainly by changes in their income, with some input also from what's happening to businesses they are employed in/involved with, and also by the level of street bustle.  For 1Q, however, the improvement was driven by business performance, and to a lesser extent income. This is perhaps surprising, because the DI for what's happened to income over the last 12 months rose 3.5pts to minus 28.1, which is the best in the series' history.  In addition, income outlook rose 7.1pts to minus 27.8,  which was only enough to restore it to pre tax-rise levels.

But improved income prospects are probably not going to translate into increased spending. The DI for current household spending fell 4.9pts, and the outlook for spending also fell 0.6pts.  In the case of the outlook for spending, the DI has now retreated back to pre-Abe levels.  It's also worth paraphrasing what these two DIs are saying: 'Right now I'm spending more than I used to, but next year I'm quite determined to cut back'.  That's a fairly solid rebuff to those who anticipate that a change in inflationary expectations will release a rush of domestic demand.

There's a second with that view - it assumes that Bank of Japan's quantitative easing program not only can generate modestly positive inflation, but that by doing so it can raise household's inflation expectations.  The survey directly asks householders for their views on how fast prices are rising currently, how fast they will rise in the coming year, and how fast over the next five years. What it reveals is that Bank of Japan has managed to raise perceptions of current inflation from an average of 2.8% in 2012 to 5.6% now, and that this perception is still rising.   It has also managed to shift the dial slightly on 12m inflation expectations, with a rise from an average of 4% during 2011-2012, to a steady 4.8% now.  However, there has been absolutely no movement at all in 5yr inflationary expectations: in 1Q that expectation was at 4%, which is exactly the average sustained since 2010.

US Bond Yields and the Rediscovery of Normality

What chance of a bond market collapse as the Fed starts to lift rates?

The final stage in the US Fed's long edging-back to 'normality' will be the first interest rate rise - still generally expected in June. This provokes two  major worries. First, there is the generally unacknowledged problem that for the foreseeable future Fed interest rate decisions are much more exposed to policy error than before the Great Recession.  The reason for this is that the Fed (and its market watchers) can no longer deploy the Taylor Rule (of thumb) to judge what should be done, and what is likely to be done, because there is no robust technical consensus over what US potential output might be. For the foreseeable future, we are more likely to discover the limit to potential US output by tripping over it than by calculation.  

The second worry is this: we may have to rediscover how how bond yields are determined if they are not simply wrangled by the Fed. The whole point of zero interest rate policies and, in extremis, central bank quantitative easing, is precisely to over-ride market mechanisms in order to command the longer-end of the yield curve.  Under such a regime, what matters for bond markets is disproportionately what the central bank decides to do.  

That's what's coming to an end, and already in the expected absence of such security, there are plenty of scary scenarios about what happens next.  This piece is an attempt to offer some prompts. 

The starting point is 'fair value yield' models, which essentially attempt to locate where bond yields 'should be' by accounting for three sets of information: 

• expected movements in the central banks' core short-term interest rate; 
• expected movements in inflation;
• expected movements in GDP growth 

In practice, these models worked tolerably well when central banks were not intervening so aggressively in the long end of the market. The chart below shows the history, and casts forward using Bloomberg consensus forecasts for interest rates, inflation and growth. 

At present, the prevailing 1Q 10yr treasury yield of just under 2% compares with a fair value yield of around 3.1%.   Further, it suggests that if GDP growth steadies to around 2.8% in 1H16, inflation rises to around 2.1% and Fed Funds rates rise to 1.45% by 2Q16, fair value yields would rise to around 4.2%.

That suggests plenty of room for yields to rise in the short to medium term. But historically speaking, does this suggest that current yields are still carrying an unusual discount inherited from the Fed's years of bond-buying?  If we look at the history of deviations from fair value, it turns out that the current 1.2% discount to 'fair value' is not historically unprecedented even in the absence of central bank activism.  Valuations are also not stretched so dramatically from 'fair value' as they were prior to the 'Taper Tantrum' of mid-2013.

In the short term, then, whilst one should anticipate yields rising, the case for a major bond crash is not compelling. In the medium term, of course, the fate of yields will be largely determined by how the economy (and the Fed) performs - which is, of course, the point about 'normality'. 

We need not leave it there: it would be nice to be able to offer some explanation of why bond yields deviate from 'fair value' in the way they have over time - acknowledging that 'fair value models' do not provide complete explanations.  The most obvious explanation is the uncertainty and error which must accompany any set of forecasts or expectations. But in addition, one tool I suggest is movements in the private sector savings surplus (measured as the current account balance minus the quarterly change in federal debt in public hands).  There is a very good reason why one would expect movements in the PSSS to have some impact on government bond yields. What the PSSS measures is, after all, the cashflow passing between the private sector and the financial system. In the simplest of institutional set-ups, if the private sector has a savings surplus (ie, it spends and invests less than it earns during a period), it deposits that surplus in the bank. The bank, by definition, can invest that cash only in either foreign assets or government bonds. 

But this is unlikely to be a simple one-way relationship, since, conversely, one might expect significant movements in bond yields to make an impact on private sector saving/spending decisions. 

Such a feedback relationship means one can't be dogmatic about causation. Nevertheless, it strengthens the expectation that major movements in the private sector savings surplus to be reflected in bond yields (and vice versa). 

Now compare the deviation of bond yields from 'fair value' with movements in the PSSS during the last 25 years. 

What it suggests is that the current gentle movement downwards in the PSSS offers some support for the current structure of bond yields.

And this is where this week's 4Q current account balance information matters: 4Q's current account deficit was estimated at $113.5bn, which suggests the deficit was running around 2.3% of GDP during 2014, essentially unchanged from 2013, and relatively stable.  In addition, it suggested that the PSSS for 2014 came in around 1.5% of GDP, and, like the current account balance, appears to have been almost stable during the last two, after drifting down gently since 2009.  In the context of the threat of bond-yield volatility during the re-discovery of normality, that stability in the core cashflow measure of the US economy is genuinely comforting.  

Corporate Japan - The Impact of Cash

One response to 'Corporate Japan, Still Watching the Sky' was to ask what corporate Japan's return on assets would look like if you stripped out the increasing cash holdings.   So here it is:

 

RoA for this huge sample, using pre-tax operating profits was running at 3.8% in 2014, slightly lower than the 2007 peak of 4.2%. If one were to imagine a world in which corporate Japan divested itself of that cash, that RoA for 214 would rise to 4.3%, compared to a 2007 high of 4.6%.  Looking at the impact of those cash holdings on RoA, during 2014 they stripped 48bps off  RoA. That's the highest since the zaiteku days of the bubble. 

Corporate Japan Is Still Watching the Sky

The Ministry of Finance's quarterly aggregation of private sector balance sheets and p&ls offers the best opportunity to see in detail just what corporate Japan is really doing, and really expecting. Those actions and expectations will ultimately determine when or whether the economy witnesses the 'true dawn' foreseen by Bank of Japan and PM Abe. What the 4Q survey shows is that corporate Japan is still watching the sky, successfully expanding its margins and accumulating an almost unprecedented cash-hoard, but not yet sufficiently convinced of Japan's future growth trajectory to risk investing it.

The core thing we can take from Japan's 4Q quarterly p&s and balance sheet is that though sales rose only 3% yoy during 2014, operating profits rose 12.6%, and the cashflow proxy (change in net debt plus investment spending) jumped 25.1%.

Although sales rose only 2.4% yoy in 4Q and only 3% yoy during 2014, cash and deposits on the balance sheet rose 10.8% yoy, and at year-end accounted for 11.2% of the total balance sheet, the highest proportion since 1992. In addition, these cash holdings are equivalent to 1.5 months sales, which is up a percentage point on the year, and is the highest since 1990. It is also equivalent to 21% of the book value of fixed assets, with the proportion rising 1.4pps on the year.

This has two negative results First, it means that leverage continues to fall: net debt fell Yn11tr during the year, cutting the net debt/equity ratio by 6.7 percentage points to a new low of 52.7%. In financial leverage terms (total assets/shareholders equity) the ratio fell to 2.7x by end-2014, down from 2.77x at end-2013. Those falling leverage ratios depress returns on equity.

It also weighs on asset turns, since the rise in cash and deposits alone accounted for 20.5% of the expansion of the total asset base during 2014. For 2014 as a whole, asset turns fell to 0.931x, from 0.943x in 2013.

And, of course, what was delivering this cashflow was the the sustained rise in operating margins,which rose to 4.28% in 4Q, and to 4.11% for the whole year. In fact, in margin terms,with the exception of 1Q14, 4Q14 was the fattest quarter since 2Q90, and the year as a whole was the best since 1991. (The data also suggests that the repeated depreciations of the yen have had an uneven effect on margins: for large companies, OPM has risen 1.5pps over the last two years, but for small companies OPM rose only 0.5pps, and for medium-sized companies only 0.2pps).

What was driving that margins improvement in 4Q? Margins widened 70bps qoq, with 40bps of that attributable to a fall in the cost of goods sold, and 30bps attributable to a fall in SG&A. Now, of that fall in SG&A, a fall in welfare costs accounted to 10bps, but that was fully offset by a 10bp rise in labour costs ex-welfare, so the remaining 30bps fall looks to be attributable to the hard-yards of cutting management and administration expenses. Meanwhile, the sales/expenses per employee ratio rose to 8.01x in 4Q, the highest since 4Q10, and rose to 7.97x for the year as a whole, the best since 2009.

Within the context of these numbers, it is no surprise that despite the spectacular margins and cashflow performance, even though ROA inched back to pre-crisis levels, there was no movement whatsoever in ROE. To be blunt, hoarding that cash is killing ROE.

We are still waiting for that cash finally to be reinvested. As it is, the 2.8% yoy rise in capex recorded in 4Q once again simply tracks depreciation, as it has since 2010. During 2014 as a whole, capital expenditure was only 101% of the depreciation allowances taken – ie, within the margin of error. Evidently, corporate Japan has yet to be convinced that sustained topline growth of more than the 0.5% pa averaged since 2005 can be achieved by Bank of Japan. What will it take?

Haldane, Fast and Slow

Andrew Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England and, apparently, one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, gave a provoking presentation on the past and future of economic growth at the University of East Anglia a week ago, entitled ‘Growing, Fast and Slow’.

In it, - as the title suggests - he mobilized Kahneman’s framework of ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’  to help approach the topical, or perhaps just millenarian, question of whether the world is about to lapse back into a pre-growth stupor out of which it struggled about 300 years ago.  Since I am interested in economic growth, and  have also found Kahneman's work interesting, I want to make some observations on it.

(And before I start, let me acknowledge that those of us who have not yet been named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people . . . . we do feel the lash of disappointment keenly. )

I do not think it simply professional resentment which drives my conclusion that Haldane’s delivers an  intellectual sugar-rush of covering a lot a ground quickly, which quickly dissipates when you start to digest his his thesis. Haldane fast is fun, Haldane slow is not so  good.

The Argument

Haldane wants to take on ‘one of the key issues of our time’, namely, whether the post-crisis slower rates of growth are a temporary or a longer-lasting valley in our economic fortunes. The way he wants to do this is by looking at long histories, since ‘some growth epochs have seen secular stagnation, others secular innovation.’  If we can understand the sociological and technical determinants of those growth phases, we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on today.

So he contrasts the period of secular innovation and growth  since 1750 with the three millennia prior to the Industrial Revolution, during which, apparently, global per capita GDP averaged only 0.01% a year. The conclusion is important: current growth levels are exceptional, and secular stagnation is far more common than secular innovation.  Having made this distinction, he sharpens it: ‘The short history (the Golden era) and the long history (the Malthusian era) of growth could not be more different.’

He then asks the question: ‘what caused this shift in growth?’  He characterises two possible explanations, claiming they are supported by the common theme of patience. In what he characterises as the the neo-classical explanation, patience supports saving, which in turn finances investment, and today’s investment is tomorrow’s growth.  The model is exogenous, supported by a) the patience of individuals, and b) technological progress, the ‘manna from heaven, a surprise gift which keeps on giving’.

Haldane admits this theory ‘does a decent job of explaining the phase shift in growth after the Industrial Revolution’, but identifies two problems. First, he mistrusts the exogenous role of technology, fretting there may be nothing we can do to encourage the next big wave of technological advance. Second, he is keen to develop an ‘endogenous’ growth theory in which in the key factors are as much sociological as technological - skills and education, culture and cooperation, institutions and infrastructure all work together building in a cumulative evolution fashion, rather than spontaneously combusting.

A fair portion of the paper assembles evidence supporting this second approach. For his argument, this evidence really matters because it supports what is actually his central thesis, that ‘the technological seeds of the Industrial Revolution were sown well before Hargreaves Arkwright and Watt arrived on the scene.’  And this proves that ‘innovation is more earthly endeavour than heavenly intervention’.

Still, even if you accept all this, the question still remains, why did societies suddenly being accumulating capital at particular points in history?  This is where he makes an interesting jump, arguing that ‘those technological and sociological trends may, in turn, have caused a re-wiring of our brains’.

His answer is to propose a mash-up between Kahneman and the history of interest rates. He suggests that the fall in interest rates (and return on capital) prior Industrial Revolution reflected society’s ‘evolving time preferences’ (ie, patience). Partly this reflected the possibility that income and wealth had growth enough to indulge the luxury of for more patient thinking. But also the post-Gutenberg proliferation of books may have ‘re-wired our brains’ in such a way to stimulate the slow-thinking, reflective, patient part of the brain (ie, Kahneman’s Type II thinking).  And in turn that would have supported the accmulation of intellectual capital, and consequently technology. So slow thought will have made for fast growth.

The Implications

Having constructed this framework, he then deploys it to draw implications for our own time. First, he wonders about the fall in real interest rates over the past 30 years, suggesting that perhaps this does mean our patience - capacity for Type II thought, technical innovation and growth - has grown. Perhaps, after all, technology will go on being the gift that keeps giving.

But his heart doesn’t seem in it: the last and most minatory part of the paper gloomily logs evidence that the key inputs to the endogenous growth theory are in decline: specifically, he worries that the rise in inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) will slow growth. Rising inequality, he fears, is leading to a deterioration in human capital. ‘Inequality may retard growth because it damps investment in education’.

And from there it is but a short step to worrying about short-termism, and proposing that the ability of the internet to cause a neurological re-wiring like that he proposed for the impact of Gutenberg.  ‘But this time technology’s impact may be less benign.’  He speculates that this time ‘an information-rich society may be attention-poor’. ‘It may cause fast-thinking, reflexive, impatient part of the brain to expand its influence. If so, that would tend to raise societal levels of impatience and slow the accumulation of all types of capital.  Fast thought could make for slow growth.’

Hence, it is not unreasonable to worry about a relapse back into pre-Industrial Revolution economic stupor.

Criticisms

There are many things unsatisfactory about this paper. I won’t even begin to list the number of questions I have about the historical data he relies upon. Similarly, there are a number of points at which he reaches for conclusions which, upon reflection, seem unnecessary and even arbitrary. But there are three areas which are central to his thesis, and which seem to me to be extremely contentious - eventually to the point of culpability.  In ascending orders difficulty, with the least-difficult first, they are:

The Role of Interest Rates. First, it is quite remarkable that he wishes to interpret interest rates, even real interest rates, solely and merely as an indicator of ‘patience’. It is remarkable, for example, that he does not acknowledge the role of inflation expectations, and their rate of formation, in the decline of bond yields over the past 30 years. It is remarkable, too, that he has nothing to say on the impact (or otherwise) of monetary policy and monetary institutions throughout the ages.  How is this possible? Surely he does not envisage monetary institutions and policies as merely far derivatives of underlying changes in neurological structures affecting our degree of patience?

Technological Teleology. Second, underlying his entire paper is a search for a technological teleology. Offering a theory of that teleology derived from an underlying stipulation of, or assumption of, increasingly broad and unquantifiable categories of ‘capital’  lies at the heart of the ‘endogenous’ growth theories he proposes. These attempts to categorise and quantify these purported types of capital are, I think, inherently implausible. (Two reasons: i) they can’t be counted and ii) even if they could, they’d suffer the same catastrophic problems with ‘real prices’ as all other capital stock estimates do.)  But much more dramatically, they dismiss the quite plausible possibility that technology has its own teleological aims and trajectories.  Haldane writes: ‘innovation was an earthly creation, not manna from heaven’, but that hardly exhausts the list of possibilities of what’s going on with technology. It seems quite likely that technological innovation implies and develops its own trajectory, and that that internal logic has a more powerful causative impact on the development and distribution of various types of capital, than vice versa.

The book I’d recommend for this is Kevin Kelly’s ‘What Technology Wants’. One of the ironies of Haldane’s presentation is that at some stages, he comes awfully close to acknowledging the possibility that technology in fact has its own teleology independent of human intention. He admits, for example, that ‘empirical evidence suggests a high degree of history-dependence, or hysterisis, in technological transfer’.  But not, apparently, in technological development itself, only its transfer. Really?

The Rise of China and Asia. But the worst fault, the most glaring absence, is the way Haldane has wiped the rise of China and Asia over the last 30 years from his assessment of the world’s current situation. This surfaces at every argument he advances for the worries about the state of the conditions allowing for ‘endogenous’ growth. For example, he worries about the decline of social capital, specifically that the rise in inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient in the US) will slow growth.  He also worries that this will get worse as middle-class jobs continue to be ‘hollowed out’ by technology.

But you cannot exclude China from any argument about inequality and growth.  All analysis agrees that China’s historically-unprecedented growth has been accompanied by a large rise in inequality (so maybe a rising Gini coefficient doesn't automatically result in a lower growth rate, as claimed elsewhere?). Conversely, the rise of China’s working masses has also led to an unprecedented reduction in global poverty. It seems very likely that, when measured in global rather than national terms, the last 30 years has seen a narrowing of inequality rather than its accentuation.

Simply  noting the that the Gini coefficient in the US has risen at the same time as its growth rate has slowed hardly even classifies as argument, let alone as demonstration.

Similarly, Haldane worries about a possible decline in human capital. Why? The evidence he offers is that ‘the US is slipping down the international league tables of education attainment’ and ‘the UK could be following suit’. So what? Tell it to the Chinese!  On a global scale, you cannot conclude that human capital is eroding simply by noting that US and UK students no longer always rule the roost.

And finally, he frets about infrastructural capital where, it is said, ‘investment trends are not encouraging’. Really? First, he equates infrastuctural capital with the size of public sector investment to GDP - can he really believe this to be a useful proxy? Second, of course, once  again, the only relevant data is taken to be from the West. It’s not as if there’s been any significant infrastructural investment in Asia over the last 30 years, is it?

To be frank, this sort of cherry-picking of the data, this consistent willingness to edit from the picture that part of the global economy which is not based in the US or Western Europe, ruins the latter part of his paper. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago, the omission of more than half of humanity from the story might have been overlooked, or at least excused as an inevitable result of a lack of data. But not now - extrapolating global growth trajectories from the narrow and difficult recent experience of the Western middle classes is simply dumb.

My Conclusions

Having made these criticisms, I feel duty bound to offer my own conclusions on the future of economic growth. I have three.  First, any competent interpreter of Solow growth models will recognize that the underlying assumption is that there is no reason why with sufficient capital back-up an Asian (say) cannot be as productive as (say) a European or American.  So if capital flows are truly global, the ineluctable tendency will be for the world to become less unequal, and, specifically, that the unusually privileged position enjoyed by Europeans and Americans will be constantly under threat. Second, that in these circumstances, the immediate response will be for those privileged to seek to entrench their privileges by securing monopolistic or oligopolistic market positions in any way they can. In this scenario,  widening national inequality measures in the West will almost certainly reflect rising  economic rents, and usually market failure. Third, technology has its own teleology; it is infinitely more likely to surprise and amaze us than to sputter out because of our own ‘lack of social capital’.