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Economics

[2657] Fiscal devaluation mimics currency devaluation

I am a supporter of regionalism. Despite whatever jokes I may have about the euro, I do not want to see its disintegration.

While I have refined my opinion by stressing on the importance of having similar economies coming into a union instead of having a disparate set of economies with wildly different setups and cycles coming together, I do still pretty much in favor of monetary union. I may be in the minority now but I do advocate a single currency for Southeast Asia. Not for all countries in the region but maybe just between Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. These countries were in a union before while Singapore and Brunei are effectively already in a currency union. Furthermore, Malaysian and Singaporean economies are similar in many ways – both are trade-dependent though more so for Singapore. A combination of Indochinese countries can form another separate union. So, I envision at least two monetary unions within Asean (or three with Indonesia and Timor Leste together).

I am still amazed by the fact my trade professor at Michigan showed me. During one winter morning, he showed that trade between New York and Seattle was many times higher than between Seattle and Vancouver, despite the fact that Seattle is much closer to Vancouver than New York. “It appears Canada is located on the moon!” he stressed.

He was demonstrating that monetary union increased trade. As a strong believer of the net benefit of free trade, I was hooked by it. Even now.

And Europe has benefited from its monetary union, even as it is hobbled by troubles right now.

One painful but the obvious solution to the ongoing European problem is for countries in economic recession, indeed, depression, to leave the Eurozone and devalue their currencies. That would have happened in a typical country during a recession. Currency devaluation helps a country regains its competitiveness by making its exports cheaper to the rest of the world. That what happened in Malaysia in the periods after the worst recession the country has ever experienced yet. That was what happened in Asia. It was an export-driven recovery.

For the 17 members of the Eurozone, devaluation is not an option if the integrity of the euro is cherished.

There are alternatives to exit from the Eurozone.

The first was internal devaluation. This pretty much refers to austerity measures. Wages are cut down to make a crisis country more competitive, among others. This a painful because while it does aid competitiveness, it does create a downward spiral that is associated with deflation. People will not spend before they expect prices tomorrow will be cheaper than today. People will not spend because they have less money. While real prices will adjust in the long run, the short term can be really painful.

There is an interesting article on Bloomberg today about fiscal devaluation as proposed by economist Gita Gopinath (of Harvard “Call Me Maybe” recruitment video fame, anybody?).[1] It tries to mimic the effect of currency devaluation, which makes it very appealing. It includes a hike in value-added tax along with the provision of tax credit. The arrangement discourages imports and support exports. The VAT is imposed on all domestically consumed or used goods but the tax credits are granted to all domestic producers that eliminate the effect of VAT. Exporters benefit from this setup. Importers suffer. The great part is that it is no clear link to price deflation, which makes this arrangement usable in time of recession.

That however does raise the alarm of protectionism. In times like this in Europe, it is tolerable. In normal times, this can be a barrier to free trade. It can give unfair advantages to the home countries that may later mimic the ugliness of currency wars.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
[1] — When French President Francois Hollande unveiled a plan in November for a business tax credit and higher sales taxes as a way to revive the economy, he was implementing an idea championed by economist Gita Gopinath.

Gopinath, 41, a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has pushed for tax intervention as a way forward for euro-area countries that cannot devalue their exchange rates. ”Fiscal devaluation” is helping France turn the corner during a period of extreme budget constraints, former Airbus SAS chief Louis Gallois said in a business- competitiveness report Hollande commissioned. [Rina Chandran. Harvard’s Gopinath Helps France Beat Euro Straitjacket. Bloomberg. February 7 2013]

Categories
Economics

[2553] The lesson of Europe for Southeast Asia

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned of the danger of a common currency in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. It is a reminder that needs not a resounding. The horror of Europe is enough to make one thinks twice of a currency union. The talks of Greek exit can potential become the end of the European dream.

The European crisis is a challenge to me partly because I am supportive of a currency union for Southeast Asia. Sometimes in the past, I contended to be associated with the term Aseanist.

More importantly, I am supportive of a currency union because of my free trade tendency: a union boosts trade because it reduces trade barrier significantly.

To be fair to myself, I support a union across similar economies and not wholly across the diverse Southeast Asia economies from the financially sophisticated Singapore to the tiny backwater East Timor.

Really, the lesson of Europe is not that monetary union does not work. The lesson is that monetary union works best for similar economies: the economic cycles mostly coincide, the structures are about the same, the culture of societies in it are not so different, etc.

I think I have made the case for a currency union for Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei for a start. In fact, Singapore and Brunei are already on a currency board, which effectively means de facto currency union. Malaysia is the natural extension of the Brunei-Singapore union because of its proximity and the massive interlinking between the three economies.

Then, there is perhaps historical hangover on my part, given how the original Malaysian proposal was a 15-state federation, with both Brunei and Singapore in it. Indeed, prior to 1973, all three currencies were interchangeable freely. Even before that between 1953 and 1967, all three countries used the same currency.

One issue with the Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei currency union is that the Singaporean economy tends to be more volatile than Malaysia. Nevertheless, I think in many ways, the direction of both economies are more or less the same. In that sense, the challenge of a monetary authority is to be more flexible and responsive to a more dynamic economy.

Categories
Economics Politics & government

[2469] The United States of Europe, on the way

There are several stages of economic integration.

Free trade agreement is probably the lowest of all integrations. It seeks just free flow of capital and labor across borders.

The next step is either custom or monetary union together with a common market. Member states surrender monetary policy to a central authority while maintaining independent fiscal policy. Trade duties are harmonized across the union.

The next stage is fiscal union where individual governments cede their power over fiscal policy to a central authority.

The European Union is on the verge of becoming a fiscal union, making history less than just two decades after adopting a monetary union in all of its sense. Today at an important summit, a majority of European leaders voted for stricter fiscal deficit rules. They believed the best way to solve the debt crisis is to integrate further. Integration will eliminate the crisis of confidence Europe currently suffers from, much like how a troubled California will not trouble the United States by much.

This integrationist logic is persistent among Europeans. When Europe suffered from a serious currency crisis long ago, the then European leaders thought the best way to eliminate volatility between currencies that adversely affected trade in Europe was to have a monetary union.

This is really a big jump. Usually, debates on exchange rate mechanism gyrates between floating or fixed regime. Europe chose to not only have a fixed regime, they chose a fixed regime by marriage. You cannot get a more fixed regime than a monetary union.

Now, the thinking is that the best way to address the debt crisis to have a fiscal union.

Yes, it is an exaggeration to call the recent development in Europe as outright fiscal union. But the new agreement is a big push towards that direction, towards the United States of Europe.

Categories
Economics

[2316] Of would goldbugs support a large diverse monetary union?

I took a long hard look at a one-euro coin in my hand while I was on a train to Versailles from Paris. For a huge monetary policy controversy across the Eurozone, the coin does not look so special. It is a small unassuming bimetal. Not too many would take a second look at it. Everybody here in France uses it for mundane purposes. Yet, its link to Eurozone’s policy is there and is no small matter.

I was focusing on the coin to avoid thinking of somebody that I care a lot about. After awhile, I began to retrace the cause of the controversy with Eurozone and the weaknesses of monetary union in general. A question soon popped in my mind. Would some hard currency advocates — goldbugs and others — support a large monetary union?

A typical weakness of a large monetary union is its inflexible interest rate as set by its central bank.

A large area with diverse parts that economically grow or shrink differently. That demands different monetary policies and specifically, different interest rates to be pursued by different parts of the union. A monetary union prevents these different parts from pursuing individual rate however. There is only one rate by definition.

The politics between members of the union will inevitably decide the union’s single rate. Each representative at the table will promote the interest of the member who they represent.

The more diverse the members of the union, the harder it will be to achieve a consensus. It is hard because the rate cannot accommodate everybody easily, if ever.

The debilitating politics of a diverse monetary union discourages the rate from becoming flexible. It would be hard to change the interest rate at any one time, unless there is to be some kind of systemic shock that would make everybody to agree to some magnitude of rate change on top of individual needs, and unless the composition of the decision-making body is skewed to side that makes the body unrepresentative.

Through this, the central bank effectively loses control of the rate. This, I think, is a close equivalent of having a hard currency because the central bank loses its power to print money arbitrarily.

Given this, I think many advocates of hard currency will likely like the creation of a large and diverse monetary union. Or at least, they would prefer this to a normal fiat currency regime.

Categories
ASEAN Economics

[1677] Of greater trade with monetary union

It was one morning during one of those ugly winters in Ann Arbor when I found myself sitting close to the front row of an economics class. The professor sounded odd but then again, I am sure I sounded odd to my friends here.

Regardless, with me still half awake, I heard the professor say something about the amount of trade between Vancouver and Seattle corresponding to the distance between the Earth and the moon. Was the professor nuts or maybe I was dreaming?

That statement was so out of this world that it halted my descent to slumberland. It turned out that the professor was discussing the relationship between trade and currency. Yawning widely, I straightened my back to have another shot at staying awake.

On the screen up front, there was a table listing trade volume between various US cities and with cities in other countries. There was a typical regression model projected on the screen too. I do not particularly remember the exact equation but the conclusion was clear: monetary union encourages trade.

Trade volume between New York and Seattle was much higher than that between Seattle and Vancouver. This was despite the fact that New York is located on the East Coast while Vancouver is situated on the West Coast just a few hundred miles up north where the people speak rather strangely. New York and Seattle, of course ,use the US dollar while Vancouver uses something else entirely.

The whole class then mentally swam across the Atlantic to trace the evolution of the Euro. The conclusion was reinforced: trade substantially increased after the Eurozone countries adopted a single currency.

The virtue of a single currency was hammered home further by another graph indicating how fluctuation of exchange rates between countries within the Eurozone virtually disappeared: uncertainty eliminated. The professor with his New Zealand accent announced that the Europeans got tired of the exchange rate fluctuation so they decided to get rid of it altogether.

I was stranded somewhere in Minneapolis when the Euro was officially introduced to the public on Jan 1, 2002. Reactions to the introduction ranged from celebratory to bitterness at the loss of local currencies. Anecdotes by individuals having trouble adjusting to the new reality were amusing but I was merely a curious observer across the Atlantic.

Close to three years later, I found myself in a class undergoing official economic training in Ann Arbor. That particular class made me an Aseanist: I became a monetary unionist. I want to see Asean repeating the same experiment the Eurozone is undergoing, hoping this will bring on yet another halcyon period of prosperity for Southeast Asia.

The years leading to the late 1990s were great but those days are gone. Sure, we have learned one or two things from the Asian financial crisis but nothing beats the feeling of being on top of the world. When Deng Xiaoping visited Southeast Asia back in those days, he was expecting to see backwaters cities but boy, he had the shock of his life. Not only were the cities modern then, they out-rivalled those of China’s. Nowadays, the feeling is almost reversed.

The rise of Southeast Asia is a story of trade and it goes all the way back to the era of Srivijaya in the first millennium. The prosperity of this region has always been linked with trade. The prosperity of this country as a small open economy has always been linked to trade.

Asean already has a regional free trade agreement in place and progress so far has been encouraging, especially when compared to the disappointing Doha Round. We could probably see the full effect of the FTA by 2015 when all tariffs imposed on almost all Asean-based goods must be lowered to 0%. That should fuel inter-Asean trade but as demonstrated by the experience of the Eurozone, trade could be enhanced further with the introduction of a monetary union.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s — the article was first published by The Malaysian Insider.