Interest Rate Conundrum

C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh

Across the developed world the persistence of a phenomenon that was initially seen as a freak occurrence—negative interest rates—is now a cause for concern. One form the tendency takes is for central banks to set their policy rates, which signal their monetary stance, below zero. The process was triggered by the European Central Bank (ECB). Under pressure to forestall deflation in the region, the ECB reduced its deposit rate to (minus) 0.1 per cent in June 2014. Since then, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), till January 2016 four national central banks, from Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan, have moved the interest ‘paid’ on part of their deposits with them to negative territory.

After the Great Recession began in late 2008, there was a widespread trend observed for policy rates to be cut to stall and reverse the economic downturn. This process has now gone so far in some countries, that rates have breached the zero-barrier. The ECB itself has in three steps cut its deposit rate to (minus) 0.2, (minus) 0.3 and (minus) 0.4 in September 2014, December 2015 and March 2016 respectively (Chart 1).

Chandrasekhar-Ghosh--ECB interest rate

Underlying this trend is a much more pro-active role for monetary policy in countering deflationary trends. Thus, in March 2016 the ECB reduced the interest it pays on deposits (or further lowered the negative rate from -0.3 to -0.4 per cent). In addition, it offered zero interest loans to banks, with the promise that if they use that money to lend 2.5 per cent or more than they were previously doing, then the ECB would pay them the equivalent of 0.4 per cent of what they borrowed from it as interest. In sum, the central bank is promising to pay banks that borrow from it, as long as they increase their lending to households and firms.

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Political Integration and Fiscal Policy in the European Union

Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer

The recent negotiations between the UK and the EU concluded with a series of decisions on the position of the UK within the EU (European Council, 2016). Following these decisions, whether the UK remains or leaves the EU will now be put to a referendum on June 23. Whatever the outcome of that referendum, the recent negotiations have implications for the future of the EU, and more perhaps for the Economic and Monetary Union.

The agreed document reaffirmed “the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe,” but in effect recognized that “Treaty provisions also allow for the non-participation of one or more Member States in actions intended to further the objectives of the Union … Therefore, such processes make possible different paths of integration for different Member States, allowing those that want to deepen integration to move ahead.” This document also acknowledged that “in order to fulfill the Treaties’ objectives to establish an economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro, further deepening is needed.” We have long argued that monetary union without political union has a chequered history, and that steps in the direction of de facto political union will be required if the euro is to be consistent with economic prosperity.

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Live Stream: Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought

Annual Leontief Prize Ceremony
Development and Equity
Amit Bhaduri and Diane Elson
Thursday, March 10 at 4:00
Coolidge Room, Ballou Hall, Tufts University

Live Stream Available Below

2016 Leontief Prize ceremony and lectures by Amit Bhaduri and Diane Elson on the theme “Development and Equity.” The award recognizes these researchers for their contributions to our economic understandings of development, power, gender, and human rights.

2016 Leontief Prize Winners

Dr. Amit Bhaduri is Professor Emeritus at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and is currently the Visiting Chair Professor in Political Economy at Goa University. His research spans several important fields including capital and growth theory, Keynesian and Post-Keynesian macroeconomics, and development economics. He has published more than 60 papers and has written ten books. Learn more about Dr. Bhaduri.

Dr. Diane Elson is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex and a member of the UN Committee for Development Policy, and an adviser to UN Women. She has published on gender equality, economic policy, and human rights. A prolific writer, she is currently writing a book entitled Economic Policy for Social Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights. Learn more about Dr. Elson.

Leontief2016LivePlay

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Sustainability Goals to Get Action Going

Martin Khor

The newest fashionable term coming from the United Nations system is “sustainable development goals”.

These are goals that all countries, represented by their top political leaders, have signed up to strive to achieve by the year 2030.

There are 17 goals altogether, and they cover three main aspects – economic, social and environmental, which are the components of “sustainable development”.

There is also the global partnership for development, in which developed countries pledge to assist the developing countries to fulfil their goals.

The SDGs were adopted at a UN Develop-ment Summit in New York in September 2015, attended by top political leaders.

The Summit adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Its centrepiece is the SDGs.

These goals may seem like something obvious, which few can quarrel with.

In fact, it took a long and arduous process of negotiations to agree on them.

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A Note on Development Under Risk in the Arab World, Part 3

Ali Kadri

The Failure of Resource-Based and Finance-Based Development

(Part 3 in a Four-Part Series)

In every Arab summit since of the early 1980s, one could hear the refrain that development required diversification away from primary products. However, transforming countries into regional building-blocs to expand markets requires investment in intraregional infrastructure. Given the low rate of regional integration (intra-regional trade and investment are quite low, by global standards, UN 2011), moving away from oil appears to have never been a seriously pursued goal.

Other palpable indicators of diversification would include nurturing national industrialisation through protection and market expansion, and complementary development of physical and human capital. Both, however, exhibited declining rates. (Industrialisation, as measured by manufacturing, declined (UNIDO 2014), while structural unemployment rose (ILO 2014).) Once a merchant or extractive mode—as opposed to an industrial mode—takes hold of an economy, the extraction of surplus does not depend on value added. Exchange-based trade alone creates little added value—and entrepreneurs become economic introverts whose spoils arise from raising their income shares within their own fiefdoms.

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Could this Lawsuit be the Straw that Breaks the TPP’s Back?

Robin Broad

In November 2015, just after President Obama finally stood up to the fossil fuel industry and rejected the TransCanada Corporation’s application for its tar sands pipeline through the United States, I issued a warning: In The Hill, I applauded the Obama decision and laid out the reasons why, under current trade and investment rules, TransCanada had grounds to sue the United States under the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  I hardly need remind readers that NAFTA launched the modern era of corporate-biased investment rules, and serves as the model for the investment chapter in the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) that now awaits votes in the U.S. Congress and in the legislative bodies of the 11 other TPP countries.

Lo and behold, TransCanada came to the same conclusion that I did.  They hired a giant corporate “K Street” law firm, Sidley Austin, and in January 2016, the fossil-fuel giant put the U.S. government on notice of a potential lawsuit under the investment chapter of NAFTA.  To get the U.S. government’s attention, they claimed to have suffered $15 billion in losses because of the rejection.  In TransCanada’s “notice of intent,” they argue that the United States has never before rejected a cross-border pipeline and that repeated studies by the U.S. State Department showed that the pipeline would not have a deleterious environmental impact on climate.  They conclude that the U.S. rejection of their pipeline, some seven years after their application, is a political decision and is not permitted under the NAFTA rules.

It is vital that people pause and ponder:  TransCanada, in its legally justified yet totally outrageous reaction, is reminding us of the reality of the investment rules our governments, under heavy pressure from global corporations, have inserted into thousands of trade and investment agreements.   And, we need to contemplate the assault on democracy that these rules and the TransCanada complaint represent.

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World Bank Must Push for Greater Transparency in PPP Projects, Urge CSOs

María José Romero

María José Romero does research and analysis on private finance and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) at the European Network on Debt and Development.

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) are not transparent enough, and face criticism from civil society organisations (CSOs) and others for being too expensive, and a risky use of taxpayers’ money. On Monday (29 February) more than 50 CSOs have written to the World Bank Group asking the institution to push for more financial transparency around PPPs.

The organisations, which come from more than 20 countries in addition to regional and international networks, have written to the Bank as part of a consultation process in response to the publication of A Framework for Disclosure in Public-Private Partnerships. The submission calls on the Bank to explicitly endorse practices that ensure that all costs of PPPs are made public – in other words are put “on balance sheet.” Currently a lot of the associated costs, such as contingent liabilities, are “off balance sheet,” hiding the true costs to governments – which encourages bad decision-making, hampers oversight by parliaments and others, and can store up major problems for the future.

A Note on Development Under Risk in the Arab World, Part 2

Ali Kadri

Politics, Economics, Industry, and Trade

(Part 2 in a Four-Part Series)

It is true, but more so a truism, to assert that reviving the debilitated economies of the Arab World requires an end to conflicts and the creation of a politically stable environment, conducive to both domestic and foreign investment—investment of the higher output to capital ratio type—along with rising internal demand. Yet, as true as this assertion may seem, the regional security/insecurity arrangement is now anchored in a bellum americanum, or continuous war condition, emerging from more acute international divisions over regional control. The spinoffs of war on the political and economic side are regressive. On the national political scene, a process of “selective democracy” similar to the one practiced in ancient times—as opposed to universal or popular democracy—enshrines the right of the few at the expense of the many. On the macroeconomic side, policies may have taken a turn into a sort of extreme neoliberalism, as in lifting subsidies on essential commodities in countries that already experience a high rate of child malnutrition (Everington 2014).

Politics and Economics

The current policy interface between external shocks/conflicts and the national economy is based almost entirely on the unrealistic assumptions of an even playing field, a risk-free environment, and a market that works best with little government intervention. Not that demanding a limited role for the government in the economy would be necessarily functional anywhere, but to propose a small government under war or war-like conditions, as did the international financial institutions (IFIs), is beyond the pale. When the elephants in the room–the wars or their resonances and the lopsided institutional context–are overlooked, then it is no longer myopia which is causing the past errors to be repeated, it is rather its marked lack of will to carry out development.

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The Modi Government and India’s Economy

Jayati Ghosh

Most of the news in India today is not really about the economy. Instead, the dominant narrative is about social discord: The ongoing turmoil in universities in different parts of the country resulting from high-handed central government behaviour that has even resulted in the death of a Dalit student in Hyderabad. The unprecedented (and unwarranted) attack on students of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi based on unsubstantiated charges of “sedition” for shouting supposedly “anti-national” slogans, an accusation based on doctored videos aired by compliant media and followed by physical attacks on students and teachers by lumpen elements that have gone unpunished. The spectacle of members of the Jat caste in Haryana on the rampage, destroying property and allegedly gang raping women while demanding reservation for their caste in government employment. Other threats of personal and sexual violence from those closely or loosely affiliated with the ruling coalition, freely directed at anyone who disagrees with the imposition of “Hindutva” ideology or speaks up for the rights of marginalised victims of discrimination.

There are those who believe that much of this is tolerated and indeed encouraged by the Modi government so as to distract attention from other failures, most spectacularly the failures on the economic front.

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Some Real Costs of the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Lost Jobs, Lower Incomes, Rising Inequality

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Jomo Kwame Sundaram was an Assistant Secretary General working on Economic Development in the United Nations system during 2005-15, and was awarded the 2007 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

Originally published as a Global Development and Environment Institute Policy Brief explaining GDAE’s recent working paper on the economic impacts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and the debates over its critique of prevailing economic modeling of the pact. The paper and other materials on the debates are available here.

The Trans-Pacifc Partnership (TPP) Agreement, recently agreed to by twelve Pacifc Rim countries led by the United States,1 promises to ease many restrictions on cross-border transactions and harmonize regulations. Proponents of the agreement have claimed significant economic benefits, citing modest overall net GDP gains, ranging from half of one percent in the United States to 13 percent in Vietnam after fifteen years. Their claims, however, rely on many unjustified assumptions, including full employment in every country and no resulting impacts on working people’s incomes, with more than 90 percent of overall growth gains due to ‘non-trade measures’ with varying impacts.

A recent GDAE Working Paper finds that with more realistic methodological assumptions, critics of the TPP indeed have reason to be concerned. Using the trade projections for the most optimistic growth forecasts, we find that the TPP is more likely to lead to net employment losses in many countries (771,000 jobs lost overall, with 448,000 in the United States alone) and higher inequality in all country groupings. Declining worker purchasing power would weaken aggregate demand, slowing economic growth. The United States (-0.5 percent) and Japan (-0.1 percent) are projected to suffer small net income losses, not gains, from the TPP.

This GDAE Policy Brief is intended to help clarify the differences with other modeling studies and to present our findings in a less technical manner.

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