I’ll be talking about fiscal policy during and after the pandemic at a Resolution Foundation/MMF event in a week’s time: https://www.mmf.ac.uk/resolution-foundation/ I have written quite a few posts on the relationship between policy and expertise, and between expertise and the media. The better ones are in my book, but they were all written before the COVID pandemic. How does the relationship between experts on the one hand and politicians and the media on the other that we saw with economists over austerity and Brexit play out with medics and the pandemic? All three cases are different from each other. Although the evidence set out in my book suggests that the majority of academic economists opposed austerity (a majority that got… [Read More...]

You would think, after so many countries were taken by surprise by a pandemic caused by a new virus in the Spring of this year, these countries would resolve to never let it happen again. They would be mad, knowing what they now know, to let cases explode in a similar manner to they did earlier this year. In what we call the West we like to think we have reasonably rational governments that listen to expert advice on matters of life and death. Well at least some of us thought that. I am prepared to make an exception of the UK and US. The UK is run by fantasists who thought we would hold all the cards in any negotiations with the EU and there would… [Read More...]

One of the myths perpetuated by mediamacro is that management of the public finances is all about controlling our debt by keeping deficits down. As with so much of mediamacro, this is something no academic macroeconomist would say. Econ 101 (first year undergraduate economics) tells you that the deficit should rise and fall with the economic cycle. In particular in major recessions deficits rise rather a lot, and that is exactly what they should do. Econ101 also tells you that in a recession caused by collapsing demand, it makes sense to increase the size of an already large deficit through fiscal stimulus. It becomes absolutely necessary to do so when interest rates can no longer stimulate the economy because they are stuck at their lower bound. Fiscal stimulus… [Read More...]

The distinction between the short run and long run traditional Phillips curve (not the New Keynesian variety) is so ingrained in economists that it seems obvious to us. We sometimes forget that it took many years for policymakers to understand it. I think something similar is happening with the economics/health trade-off in this pandemic. There is undoubtedly a short term trade-off between imposing greater restrictions (in extremis, lockdowns) to improve health outcomes (a good) and the negative effect that has on the economy (a bad). In much the same way as there is generally a short term trade off between expanding the economy to reduce unemployment (a good) and getting higher inflation (a bad). But in both cases that is not the end of … [Read More...]

If anyone still doubts that Brexit was our Trump moment, look at some of the same characters (Tory MPs, newspapers, even voters) who supported Brexit getting behind what has become an anti-lockdown crusade. I use the word crusade deliberately. Rather than religion it is ideology that drives most anti-lockdown proponents. That ideology is libertarian, although to borrow a phrase from Chris Dillowon mask phobia, this libertarianism is just solipsistic narcissism. What the crusade isn’t, for most of the anti-lockdown brigade, is evidence led. That is not to say that some scientists may genuinely believe that lockdowns are never worthwhile. Science shouldn’t be closed to heretical ideas, and there will always be scientists who put forward such ideas. Occasionally the heretical turns out to be… [Read More...]

This post follows on from my posttwo weeks ago, where I argued that there was a degree of inevitability that led us to governments led by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. To summarise that argument, it is that right wing neoliberal governments in both countries have pursued policies that benefit the few rather than the many, and so to win elections they have pushed socially conservative ideas. But that push has been limited by a knowledge that some socially conservative policies can damage business interests: so in the US immigration control was not on the agenda and in the UK targets were missed. However neoliberalism also encouraged and legitimised wealthy individuals to meddle in politics, and some chose to push for even greater redistribution and less regulations. … [Read More...]

It is well known and generally accepted that despite warnings from China, Italy and elsewhere, the UK government were late in imposing a lockdown that reversed the march of the virus . That mistake cost tens of thousands of lives, and a severe hit to national output. You might have thought that this colossal error would have made the government fear the virus. Surely mistakes would not be repeated. But as Harvard epidemiology professor William Hanage notes, having not learnt the lessons from its neighbours its now failing to learn the lessons from itself. The Prime Minister, despite getting the virus in a life threatening way himself, is predisposed to tell good news stories, and so was too eager to relax the lockdown. Sunak egged him on, thinking… [Read More...]

Is it a coincidence that the two countries that first championed neoliberalism (under Thatcher and Reagan), should end up with autocratic, populist and incompetent leaders (Johnson and Trump) in what is best described as a plutocracy? The thoughts below are, to use a phrase that Philip Mirowski once used about something I wrote, untutored, so comments via twitter (or DMs, or emails) will be gratefully received. Before addressing that question, there will be some who will think I am exaggerating. Both countries are still democracies after all. But being a democracy did not stop both Johnson and Trump being elected. Both leaders are undoubtedly autocratic, in the sense that they or a tiny group around them wield far more power than their predecessors did, and they spend… [Read More...]

Testing failureSo for many visits to grandparents are off. No one should dispute that the government needed to do something after a sharp increase in the number of positive tests. However there is also no doubt that one of the factors pushing them to act was the partial collapse of the test and trace infrastructure. Stories of people being told their nearest test was tens or even hundreds of miles away, or that no tests were available, abound, and now we have leaks of hundreds of tests being thrown away because they cannot be processed and cases returning to care homes. The specific reason for this failure remains unclear. Keir Starmer tried repeatedly at PMQs to get some explanation from the Prime Minister, but the best Johnson … [Read More...]

The UK Treasury bears some responsibility for the disaster of 2010 austerity, yet it has not accepted or understood the mistake it made. As a result it risks repeating the mistake, albeit in a milder form.The problem is that fiscal prudence is basic to the way the Treasury operates, and with few exceptions other priorities, including the macroeconomic health of the nation, are not allowed to get in the way of that goal. Only the most determined Chancellor can change that. It is a longstanding problem. Back in the 1960s Harold Wilson tried to solve it by creating a separate ministry, but the Treasury maintained its power.This was a key issue for the Kerslake review, of which I was a member. As we noted, the problem … [Read More...]

I would normally have commented on what the Chancellor announced last Wednesday, but much of it was covered in my post last Tuesday where I talked about vouchers, VAT cuts on social consumption, green investment, and unemployment support. The only issue with what he did was that he should have done more of all those things. I did not, in that review of interesting policy options, talk about his cut to stamp duty or his £1000 bonus if firms re-employ a furloughed employee, because the former is tried and tested and the latter is not a good policy. The number of firms where that £1000 will make a difference is likely to be very small. The main beneficiaries are companies that do not need help to … [Read More...]