There was an opportunity, one meeting at Osaka for world leaders at the recent G20 summit. A valuable starting point for the policy-makers, faced with a menu of economic theories, is trust in each other and a new inter-disciplinary approach with an emphasis on ethics and economics. Climate change, migration and displacement, IoT and 5G, global income inequality, household mortgage debt, value of drinking water and food shortages present a grand ethical challenge. In 2015 we asked has economics become an illusion? An era of wistful economics: http://www.patrickmcnutt.com/blog/wistful-economics-201516/.
Taylor Principle
This time, however, global economic policy should be less about money supply and demand, less about central banks modelling and the private sector and more about the strategic interaction between these ethical challenges. There is an urgent need for coordinated action to stimulate the global economy with fiscal and monetary measures. The EU is fragmenting. Whither the Euro? http://www.patrickmcnutt.com/news/whither-the-euro-the-liars-paradox/. Today, Federal debt is projected to jump to a record 144% of US GDP by 2049. There is a debt mountain in China reported at 250% debt-to-GDP. As the Scylla of the Taylor principle (of high interest rates when there is high inflation and low interest rates when unemployment is high) causes a modelling whirlpool with the Charybdis of the Ramsey approach to optimal monetary taxation, the appropriateness of an ethical fiscal policy as a stabilisation tool may calm the waters. So, more fiscal stimulus is required.
RMB v US$
On a macro level, world politics is more about China’s transition to greater exchange rate flexibility and the internationalisation of the Chinese RMB. We had presented on this point in Shanghai in 2012. It’s a long game. In other words, RMB v US$ is an infinite game of playing the game not a finite game of first mover advantage. http://www.patrickmcnutt.com/news/latest-news-eu-as-off-shore-hub-for-rmb/ . A weaker RMB would probably mean a stronger US dollar and vice versa. We are reminded of Japan’s exit from its dollar peg in 1971 as today the game is one of reserve currency competition, whether or not the US dollar is destined to lose its standing as the preeminent international currency to Sterling, the Euro or the RMB. Trade wars, competitive devaluations, Brexit, military conflict create sudden disruptions to growth at a moment in time.
Productivity Bonus
As a countermove we become risk-averse on currency fluctuations. But there is a curved ball from the EU and the US regulators as their antitrust focus on big tech. Based on the presumption of a negative effect on competition it relies wholly on an attack on monopoly rents as a reward to innovators. Nonetheless, shareholders and investors and pension funds gain too. However, if the model builders could adapt the McKenzie model of classical general equilibrium theory so that technology is available to any company who can supply the resources required, ultimately, by happenstance, competition and innovation will coalesce into a productivity bonus. Big tech and technology could then be viewed as a way to escape classical monopoly by innovating to compete. To do so would require the equivalent of the 1919 Colgate doctrine for big tech, facilitating the introduction of new technology by allowing each of the big tech companies to decide, on its own, with whom to do business. They exercise discretion on innovation and technology; we, as onsumers, decide. Our behaviour, after all, is less measured by prices, supply and demand but more influenced by small changes in innovation and technology over shorter time periods.
Onsumers & Complexity
Albeit, our policy advisers and central bankers are less likely to ever move away from the standard Ricardian DGSE models of economic analysis. There is a sunk cost to the modelling. A key assumption in this model is that households like you and I are a homogeneous family of infinitely lived individuals. Really? This is 2019 and a more realistic and heuristic approach would address the fact that individual’s behaviour changes over shorter time periods with innovation and technology. Our well-ordered lives bring the occasional disturbance that can be characterized by an unmanageable degree of complexity. In our real world, we as onsumers, for example, shopping online, continue to bid against ourselves in the search for the best algorithmic deal. In practical terms we do not behave as hyper-rational beings. At every G20 there is a risk-bucket and world leaders may get a chance to try again at another meeting; at this G20 there was one chance to try: ichi-go ichi-e. The ethical challenges of climate change, mortgage debt, migration and displacement, IoT and 5G, global income inequality, value of drinking water and food shortages all collapse into a generalized ultimatum game in which we as players must agree or we all get nothing.