Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Are Useful Projects Really Better than Useless Ones?

In my last post I argued
...the general purpose of stimulus packages is to mobilize the economy's unused resources, and, in this particular case, to...prevent prices from plummeting. Does the presence of pork in a package...in any way hinder the pursuit of such purposes? As far as the deflation issue is concerned, useless projects are precisely the place we should be putting our power. Useful projects will augment aggregate supply and thus push against the attempt to arrest falling prices. Instead of one bridge to Nowhere, let's have two! Just so the builders of those bridges can use up labor and make it harder for others to hire, thus halting the hemorrhage of wages and helping stabilize the price level.
An anonymous commenter replies:
I think we need useful projects. Can you explain how this works with the aggregate supply thing you mention? I don't understand why we would favor useless projects over useful ones.
All things considered, I will also tend to prefer useful projects over useless ones, but there really is a respectable case to be made for deliberately wasting the government’s money (recognizing, of course, that under the current circumstances, the government can create the money out of thin air, so the only real cost is opportunity cost).

The underlying premise is that deflation is very bad and reasonably possible, or, more precisely, that it is bad enough and possible enough to be a greater concern than productivity and, to some extent, a greater concern than employment. (I could be even more precise by talking about integrating across multidimensional probability distributions the convolution of the social welfare function with the aggregate supply function, or something like that. I’m too lazy to figure out how to say it right, and I doubt anyone cares anyhow.)

First, to justify the underlying premise: why is deflation very bad? Deflation means that money increases its purchasing power over time, which is to say, it becomes more valuable over time. Under those circumstances, people will prefer to hold their wealth in the form of money rather than investing their wealth in real capital such as computers, buildings, and research. The decreased demand for real capital goods will cause prices to fall further. Even prices for other types of goods and services will fall: workers who make capital goods (computers, buildings, &c) will be laid off, and employers in other industries will be able to hire them for lower wages, or use them to increase bargaining power over current employees, thus lowering their costs, whereupon competition from other cost-reducing firms will force them to lower prices. When prices fall, there is (by definition) more deflation, and we get a vicious circle between declining real investment and declining prices. Also, with deflation and widespread layoffs, people will choose to save as much as possible to prepare for the possibility of job loss, and consumption will decline, and with lower demand, prices will fall, and thus there is another vicious circle. Really, deflation is very bad. (As to whether deflation is reasonably possible, I think TIPS yields tell the story.)

So let’s suppose the government has a choice between two projects, a Bridge to Nowhere, which is completely useless, and a Bridge to Somewhere, which is useful. What happens if they choose to build the Bridge to Somewhere? It becomes cheaper to ship goods to Somewhere, so the people of Somewhere can get those goods for lower prices, and goods in the stores of Somewhere have lower price tags. We can quibble about the definition of deflation, but certainly we should expect the Bridge to Somewhere to result in falling prices, at least in Somewhere. If the government undertakes similarly useful projects of various types in various places, the result will be broadly declining prices. That is deflation. And deflation is very bad. Spend money on useless projects such as the Bridge to Nowhere, and we avoid that deflationary impact.

One way to think about this is in terms of the monetarist quantity equation, which I learned as

MV = PQ

where

M=quantity of money
V=velocity of money
P=general price level
Q=quantity of goods and services produced

If the product of M and V is constant, then if Q goes up, P must go down. So if the government expects that product to be constant, and it wants to avoid declines in P, it should choose projects that don’t increase Q, which is to say, useless projects.

You might ask why anyone would expect the product of M and V to be constant. If Q is going up too quickly, wouldn’t the government just increase M and thus avoid declines in P? That is usually the right answer, since V doesn’t usually depend heavily on M. The late 1990s are an example. Q was rising quickly, and V was reasonably stable, so the Fed wisely chose to increase M quickly to avoid declines in P.

But things are different today, because we are in a liquidity trap. People (and, more to the point, institutions) are so eager to keep their assets safe and available that they will save any money the government can create. If all the new money is saved, it goes nowhere: it has zero velocity, so the average velocity of money goes down. Thus, with increases in the money supply, the (average) velocity of money declines in such a way as to exactly offset those increases, and the product MV remains constant. The only way to get P up is to decrease Q.

Well, OK, you could also try to increase V, which is the point of a stimulus program: the newly created money goes to the government, which spends it, so it has some positive velocity, and the increase in M is no longer entirely offset by the decrease in V. But while increasing M is easy, increasing V can be difficult, since in this case it requires an act of Congress, which may be hesitant due to concerns about government debt and the like. So it would help to try decreasing Q, or at least limiting its increase, at the same time as trying to increase V.

As I said, all things considered, I would still favor useful projects, but I don’t think this argument for useless ones is just academic sophistry. After Franklin Roosevelt was elected during the Depression, he didn’t deliberately spend government money on useless projects, but he did something with a similar effect: he spent money on useful projects, but he offset the overall macroeconomic effect of their usefulness by creating government-sponsored cartels to keep prices up. The majority of economists have now decided that cartel-sponsorship programs such as the National Recovery Act were counterproductive, but there is still a significant minority who disagree (and I should say, I’m rather sympathetic to their point of view). I have to ask that minority (and I’m serious; this is not an attempt at reductio ad absurdum): rather than going to the trouble of setting up the cartel-sponsorship apparatus, wouldn’t it be easier, and just as effective, to spend the government’s money on useless projects instead of useful ones?

27 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks knzn. I'm the anonymous person who asked the question. Your answer was a bit long and difficult to follow (confusing and complicated come to mind), and I feel pretty bad that I got you all busy with that. I'm wondering whether you don't have an opportunity cost :)
Well, on a more serious note, I think that there are soooo many useful projects that the government could be involved in, projects that it abdicated responsibility for over the last three decades, and frankly, we desperately need to retool for the children. Of course that implies a major restructuring, which is easier said than done.

Wed Nov 26, 04:21:00 PM EST  
Blogger Richard H. Serlin said...

"As far as the deflation issue is concerned, useless projects are precisely the place we should be putting our power. Useful projects will augment aggregate supply and thus push against the attempt to arrest falling prices."

Ok, but come on. You have to be careful about statements that may be literally true, but are very likely to mislead, even if you love how cute they sound. First, the spending on the useful bridge comes soon, during the deflation risk, while the increase in production comes mostly years and decades later after the deflation problem should be over. And second, there are much better ways to fight deflation anyway, like if it doesn't respond enough to massive building of positive NPV government projects -- and there are tons and tons of those due to well established market problems like externalities (including the pink elephant of economics, positional/context/prestige externalities, see http://www.robert-h-frank.com/PDFs/WP.1.24.99.pdf), asymmetric information, etc., etc. -- the Fed can start massive printing of money and buying medium and long term bonds, or directly lending. You do this enough and the deflation will end. People may hoard the new money for a while, but at some point they will spend a lot of it. I guarantee you if the typical family gets to a point where it has hoarded $10 million of newly printed money, and prices are still the same, they're going to start buying cars, a house, new furniture, etc., etc.

Thu Nov 27, 11:05:00 AM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Goods and services ultimately have to be paid for with other goods and services. Extracting goods and services from the public to pay bridge to nowhere builders decreases the standard of living of the public.

Thu Nov 27, 11:15:00 AM EST  
Blogger Richard H. Serlin said...

To expand a little bit, there are a lot of ways the fed can print massive amounts of money and get it to people to combat deflation -- they can plunge long term interest rates on government debt, making the federal government a lot less concerned about increasing spending due to defecits; they can essentially monetise government debt, to encourage government largess. The Fed can print up tons of money and has many ways to get it to people.

A counter is what if due to pessimism people just hoard it. If they don't spend it, they won't pressure prices up. The response is that this may occur for a while, but if you keep getting them money eventually they will spend -- a lot, because think about it, If you kept getting money to the median family, to the point where they have $10 million and prices are the same or lower, are they going to keep not spending it becasue they're concerned about the economy? No, no matter what happens to the economy, they have enough saved that they can live well for life just on that savings, so they're going to start enjoying it, buying a nice house with it, cars, etc.

What if they get concerned that they can't live their whole life off of it because inflation may set in big? That's all the more reason to buy the house, furniture, cars, now, while they are super cheap compared to the family's $10 million stash.

Bottom line: You can end a deflation by increasing the money supply enough. At some point people will feel financially secure enough from their hoarding/saving that they will spend a lot of the newly printed money. And the Fed can inject this money extremely quickly if it wants to. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has a great classic Slate article, Vulgar Keynesians" at: http://www.slate.com/id/1917/. In it he writes, "the Fed can double the money supply in a day, if it wants to".

In a famous address on deflation in 2002, Bernanke said the Fed wouldn't run out of ways to fight it even after interest rates were cut to zero: "The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press ...that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost". Of course, the question is why hasn't Bernanke printed even more, even though he has printed a great deal, and just added about $800 billion more. I have a post on this at: http://richardhserlin.blogspot.com/2008/11/us-has-technology-called-printing-press.html.

Thu Nov 27, 11:42:00 AM EST  
Blogger knzn said...

Richard H. Serlin:

...the Fed can start massive printing of money and buying medium and long term bonds, or directly lending. You do this enough and the deflation will end. People may hoard the new money for a while, but at some point they will spend a lot of it. I guarantee you if the typical family gets to a point where it has hoarded $10 million of newly printed money, and prices are still the same, they're going to start buying cars, a house, new furniture, etc., etc.

You're making an unwarranted logical leap here. You're implicitly assuming that monetary policy, if pursued aggressively enough, could get the average family to the point where it would be able to hoard $10 million dollars of newly printed money. That assumption is false (unless you include "helicopter drops" in monetary policy, but in my mind those by definition include a fiscal policy component).
The average family doesn't have $10 million dollars worth of assets to liquidate. Monetary policy consists of the buying of assets by the Fed. Monetary policy cannot directly create wealth where none previously existed.

You could argue that the Fed can bid up the price of a family's assets to $10 million (if the family has any net assets, which is not something you can count on). But this is not true either. Assets by definition are a store of value. Money is also a store of value. Since holders always have the option of holding money, the Fed can only bid asset prices up to the point where their expected return is no higher than that of money.

James Hamilton has a recent post that takes a position similar to yours, but I think he's wrong, too. I may do a post about that soon.


...the spending on the useful bridge comes soon, during the deflation risk, while the increase in production comes mostly years and decades later after the deflation problem should be over.

The timing of the deflation risk is unclear. If you look at Japan's recent experience, they would have had plenty of opportunity to enjoy their Bridge to Somewhere if they had built it, and it would have contributed to the continuation of their deflation. I acknowledge that the bridge is not the best example, since it's a capital good whose utility comes mostly in the future. But the general point about P and Q applies quite strongly if the government is considering projects that will have immediate utility. (One thing that comes to my mind now is aid to state and local governments, which are likely to spend the money on something immediately useful, but I'll have to think about it some more.)


Anonymous:

Goods and services ultimately have to be paid for with other goods and services.

Not true. During a time of actual or threatened deflation, goods and services can be paid for with seignorage. The people who make those goods and services would be idle otherwise, so there is no cost to society in making them.

Thu Nov 27, 11:56:00 AM EST  
Blogger knzn said...

Richard, I skimmed your second comment (which you posted as I was writing mine), and I think my criticism still applies. As I said, I may do a whole post on the subject in response to James Hamilton's post.

Thu Nov 27, 11:59:00 AM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No depression was ever caused by mild deflation. Depressions are caused by money not being paid back. A highly leveraged stock market in the 1920s caused loans to default, and a highly leveraged real estate market in the early 2000s caused loans to default.

Stop paying attention to red herrings, and concentrate on the real problem. People lend for business expansion only if they get repaid.

Thu Nov 27, 12:12:00 PM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Not true. During a time of actual or threatened deflation, goods and services can be paid for with seignorage. The people who make those goods and services would be idle otherwise..."

The newly employed people consume most of the goods/services they produce. Inflation regressively extracts goods/services from the general public, not the new workers. This lowers the general standard of living if bridges to nowhere are built. Inflation lowers the standard of living of the bottom the most. Fixed income retirees et al never recoup what they lost to build the useless bridge.

Thu Nov 27, 12:23:00 PM EST  
Blogger knzn said...

The newly employed people consume most of the goods/services they produce. Inflation regressively extracts goods/services from the general public, not the new workers. This lowers the general standard of living if bridges to nowhere are built.

If the choice is between deflation and moderate inflation, I would suggest that deflation will reduce the general standard of living by a greater amount, by the mechanisms I discussed in this post. Inflation, to the extent it is fully anticipated, affects only those who hold money balances. Bondholders will be compensated for anticipated inflation with higher nominal rates. Deflation is an unfair subsidy to those who hold money balances, and unanticipated deflation is an unfair subsidy to those who hold safe fixed-income assets.

Inflation lowers the standard of living of the bottom the most. Fixed income retirees et al never recoup what they lost to build the useless bridge.

Fixed income retirees are hardly "the bottom." Even among retirees, the bottom are those who live on Social Security payments, which are adjusted for inflation. And retirees in general are better off than many of the younger poor who are not eligible for social security. Generally those people are helped by unanticipated inflation, because they have no fixed income assets and typically owe money.



Other Anonymous, you may be right; it's a reasonable alternative theory, but I'm going to stick with mine (well, James Tobin's, really) until I see some clear evidence. In any case, part of not being paid back is the direct result of deflation: it's harder for your creditors to earn money if the cost of that money in terms of goods and services is constantly rising. So even under your theory, deflation is still a vicious circle.

Thu Nov 27, 01:43:00 PM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I still cannot understand the problem with deflation. As a consumer, it means I can buy more for less. As an investor, it means I get higher returns on my money. The economists are fixated on the absolute values, but in reality, it's all in the ratios. How quickly are wages declining against prices? If prices move more quickly, then people get to buy more. How quickly can we lower the minimum wage? If it takes a year or two, then the minimum wage becomes an economic driver.

As an investor, I see the problem as stagnant wages. American income has been flat since the Carter administration. Investment opportunities since have involved credit arrangements, so investing in productive assets, as opposed to lending to consumers, has gotten the short end of the stick. If wages start rising again, or if there is a big rise in public goods investing, then I might be able to get some better returns.

Sure, I know, this is all crackpot economics, but it is the basis for good investment strategy. I say, deflate, but make sure the money gets pumped from the top to the bottom so I can get a piece of it on its way up.

Thu Nov 27, 03:14:00 PM EST  
Blogger Richard H. Serlin said...

The Fed can, one way or another, get massive money into the hands of families, businesses, and other parties, at least in cooperation with the fiscal branches. They can essentially monetize federal debt (Everytime they drive down long term federal interest rates they drive down greatly the future defecits), freeing up the government to do massive tax cuts for typical families if it wants, including non-refundable ones, which is the equivalent of helicopter drops of money.

With regard to long term investments by the government -- the vast majority of the highest NPV ones are, and there are tons of them due to free market problems. The costs of these are basically in the present and the increased production is over decades. Examples are upgrading and smartening the power grid and almost all alternative energy and infrastructure investment, almost all education investment, almost all basic scientific and medical research, a lot of which requires a great deal of plant and equipment, and on and on.

Thu Nov 27, 03:25:00 PM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is all very interesting.

Thu Nov 27, 08:12:00 PM EST  
Blogger knzn said...

Kaleberg:

I still cannot understand the problem with deflation....As an investor, it means I get higher returns on my money.

But that's just the problem. As a society, we don't care what return you get, but we care what you invest in. If you expect deflation, you're going to invest maybe in Treasury bonds but probably not in anything that creates jobs or helps to increase production. You won't buy stock in a corporation if the prices of their products are going down, because by the time they sell a given cohort of products, the products may sell for less than they cost to make. And you won't want to buy a corporation's bonds either or to lend money to them, because under the circumstances, it's doubtful that they'll be able to pay you back. So corporations won't be able to get financing, and even those that have enough cash to finance themselves won't see any point in using that cash to create jobs or to build something, for the same reason that nobody would want to buy their stock.


Richard:

The Fed can...at least in cooperation with the fiscal branches.

I will never deny that, in a world with no political constraints (and no major misjudgments by policy analysts), the combination of monetary and fiscal policy will be able to stop deflation without resorting to deliberately wasteful spending. But when you introduce fiscal policy, you do introduce political constraints. The Fed can give Congress money to drop from a helicopter, but Congress won't necessarily be willing to drop it.

Useful spending obviously has certain advantages (by definition, really). But to the extent that your objective is to stop deflation, you get a little more bang for the buck with wasteful spending, because it works on both the demand side and the supply side. If the bucks are constrained by the misguided prudence of fiscal conservatives, then if you're trying to maximize the effectiveness of fiscal policy in stopping deflation, at the very least, you should not worry about whether the expenditures are useful. You might worry about the timing of the utility for the ones that are useful -- mostly to avoid becoming too useful too quickly, but long-term benefits might be an attractive side effect of projects that have a slow payoff.

Thu Nov 27, 09:36:00 PM EST  
Blogger Richard H. Serlin said...

I think a key point is that in the complicated world we live in you never have just one objective or concern. Of course it can be very useful for learning to ask what would be best to optimize just one, or a few, particular objectives; that's what models are about, but it's also why a model is only as good as its interpretation. people are often mislead by models, usually because they take them too literally (act as though they are exactly reality).

Thus, with models you have to explain them carefully, so that people aren't mislead. And when talking about what would optimize just the alleviation of deflation, you also have to be careful so as not to mislead.

When optimizing societal utility in general, spending on wasteful projects as a way to combat deflation is far from optimal. Long term useful projects and other things are much better.

There may be some political fiscal constraints here, but with the brain-dead, anti-thinking, evidence-resistant, ideological Republicans leaving soon, to be replaced by pro-thinking and far more competent Democrats in the White House and congress, these constraints will not be great. Look at already what the Democrats are proposing. Plus, budget related legislation cannot be filibustered; it only requires 50 votes, and the Democrats will have 60, or close to that.

But even without the fiscal branches, the Fed can drive not just short term rates to zero, but also medium and long term interest rates to zero -- even for extremely risky projects -- they have that kind of power. It would be hard to imagine that a deflation could survive that. Plus, if they eliminated the entire Federal debt, that would certainly encourage fiscal spending.

There are just far better ways to combat deflation than purposely wasteful spending, and it's important to make sure readers understand that. A huge worry I would have about purposefully wasteful spending is that it would really hurt the reputation of government spending and investment when already there's so many super high NPV government spending projects that can't get funded, and are of the type that are grossly underprovided by the free market due to well established market problems like externalities, etc.

Fri Nov 28, 02:08:00 PM EST  
Blogger Richard H. Serlin said...

For more on when a bill can and can't be filibustered, see my post at: http://richardhserlin.blogspot.com/2008/07/hugely-important-little-known-fact.html

Fri Nov 28, 02:12:00 PM EST  
Blogger Jonathan said...

this blog rocks! thanks very much.

Fri Nov 28, 03:18:00 PM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Economic growth is based on the underlying stock of useful capital. So if you subsidize useless capital to keep useful capital functioning (pay an unemployed security guard to guard a desert so he has money to buy bread), that is better than nothing. But if you pay him to do something useful, say guard a bakery that keeps being broken into by raccoons, you are growing the underlying stock of useful capital. Worse in the 1st instance, you may get an embedded lobby or embedded skills of guarding a field. Cheerleading a partial solution when there are so many full solutions is dangerous with neocons looking for any excuse to trumpet the deadend supremacy of 100% market forces.

Wed Dec 31, 01:14:00 PM EST  
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