Month: April 2017

A leading academic weighs in on immigration

Michael Reddell Immigration, Uncategorized

When the head of the economics department of New Zealand’s leading university takes to the op-ed pages of New Zealand’s most widely-circulated newspaper, readers might reasonably suppose that what the author has to say will be authoritative and well-worth reading for anyone interested in the issues upon which the author is opining.

Last Thursday, Professor Ananish Chaudhuri, head of the economics department at the University of Auckland, had a piece in the Herald headed Immigrants are a gain, not a drain .

Chaudhuri’s own background isn’t in the economics of immigration, nor is he an expert in issues around productivity, economic geography, or New Zealand’s economic history of sustained underperformance.   He is, as the article notes, professor of experimental economics.  I’ve only heard him speak once, and found his work fascinating.  You can check out his list of publications here.  He seems to be highly-regarded in his own specialist areas, and as an immigrant himself one might safely conclude he has been a net (economic) gain to New Zealand.

I’m not holding against him the fact that he isn’t an academic specialist in the economics of immigration and in New Zealand’s economic history and performance.  Few people (arguably none) are.  Ideas should stand on their merits, not on the CVs of those holding them.   But lay readers, attracted by the title “head of economics department, University of Auckland”, might have assumed a degree of specialist expertise that doesn’t seem to be there.

Chaudhuri’s op-ed has three main strands, before concluding with an astonishing assertion.

He begins with a bit of a rant against Donald Trump and somehow manages to wrap in, as part of a single phenomenon, the recent decision to deport some Indian students whose applications for student visas –  many no doubt hoping to use that as a stepping stone to residence –  were based on demonstrably, and admitted, false information.  They (signed statements which) lied.    One might, or might not, have some sympathy with them as individuals, but whatever one thinks about the appropriate levels of immigration to New Zealand (a) people are more likely to have confidence in it when the rules, whatever they are, are enforced, and (b) there are few defenders of the rort the student visa system had become over the last few years, often aided and encouraged by a government keen to maintain a story about the success of the export education industry.    We could sell more of almost anything if there were points towards a residence offered as well.  That is how export subsidies work.  They were a bad idea in the 1970s, and they are a bad idea now.

But what of the substance?

His first question is “are immigrants a drain on the economy”.     His answer to that question is no, and to do so he relies exclusively on the BERL estimate of the differential impact on (a portion of) government finances of natives and immigrants.    Nigel Latta made a TV documentary on immigration last year that relied wholly on the same study –  and if that was questionable (and I questioned it here) at least he wasn’t an economist.

As even the authors of the BERL study noted

2. The study concentrates on fiscal rather than economic impacts. Due to this the study is limited to estimating the direct monetary impacts on the government’s operating budget.

Fiscal impacts can be interesting, if done well, but they don’t tell us –  can’t tell us, aren’t designed to tell us –  whether natives are made better off, worse off, or left largely unchanged –  by the sort of level/composition of non-citizen immigration we’ve had.

As it is, the BERL study covered only some parts of the government’s finances, and the bits they omitted –  not through bias, but because they are hard –  would be likely to change materially even the fiscal assessment, as would a full intergenerational approach to the issue (again, BERL was not paid to do something state of the art).   For anyone who wants to look at some of the problems  with the fiscal estimates, I wrote about some of them in one of my posts responding to the New Zealand Initiative’s recent immigration paper.  As I noted, even if the average migrant is a net fiscal gain –  which is plausible –  it is very unlikely that all classes of migrants are.

In short, Chaudhuri offered readers nothing shedding light on whether New Zealanders’ living standards, or the productivity of the New Zealand economy, have been improved by our immigration programme.

Chaudhuri’s second question is “do immigrants displace native workers”.  Actually, on this point he went further than I would have, noting “yes to an extent”.     But after only a handful of words on immigration effects, he devotes the rest of that section of his article to discussing some interesting material on other forces that might (globally) be “driving blue-collar wages downwards”.  That may very well all be true, and even important, but what we were promised was an economic analysis of immigration (presumably focused on New Zealand), and it just isn’t there.

His third question is “do immigrants fail to assimilate”.  In his view “arguments about assimilation are usually a cover for aversion to ethnic diversity, so it is difficult to provide a cogent counter-argument”.  In other words, “back in your box racists”.  He seems unaware of, or uninterested in, literature on trust, national identity, social cohesion or any of the range of conflicting evidence on the implications of different types of diversity.  Perhaps he could walk down the road and have a chat with AUT academic Bart Frijns, whose work I wrote about here last year.   Issues around assimilation aren’t my focus, but there are reasonable debates to be had.

As he gets towards the end of his column, Chaudhuri offers quite a balanced perspective.

There is no doubt that while immigration increases the size of the national pie, it does create winners and losers. For workers suffering from stagnating wages, the sense of displacement and disillusionment is real.

So even on Chaudhuri’s assessment, it isn’t all a rosy story.  All else equal, some natives are being made worse off.    But apparently it doesn’t really matter, because the learned professor knows that….

…the bottom-line is clear: The net gain to society from immigration outweighs the losses and, therefore, there must be ways of providing a safety net for displaced workers in a way that makes all of us better off.

But no shred of evidence – global, let alone anything specific to New Zealand – was offered in the entire column to show that there are overall gains.  One might guess that he is relying on some general international academic pro-immigration consensus, but he shows no sign of having engaged with the specifics of the New Zealand experience, past and present, at all.    (And, for what it is worth, he also offers no specifics on these redistributive measures that might help ensure that even the “losers” actually end up made better off.  That isn’t surprising, as I’m not aware of any advanced economy where such measures have been put in place.)

Chaudhuri then wraps up with an astonishing claim

In the meantime and leaving cultural arguments aside, those who suggest immigrants are a net drain on society in economic terms are purveying “alternative facts” that should not be part of informed discussion.

Wow, so no debate should be entered into because the learned professor has decreed  –  not even argued, or demonstrated,  but just decreed –  that the economic case is closed.  Economies benefit, New Zealand’s economy benefits, and any suggest to the contrary is right up there with Trumpian claims about numbers in the Inauguration parade.   I disagree with the people at the New Zealand Initiative on immigration, but they weren’t that dogmatic –  and were pretty open about the lack of New Zealand specific empirical studies on the overall contribution of immigration policy to New Zealand’s economic and productivity performance. For them, the conclusion that New Zealanders’ benefit was a judgement –  probably held strongly, but an informed judgement nonetheless.  It wasn’t revealed truth, into which no subsequent debate could be tolerated

When the 27 prominent New Zealanders came out the other day with their open letter on free speech, I didn’t pay much attention. I was generally sympathetic, but in my observation the issue of attempts to close down debate (on all manner of topics) seem to be becoming a serious issue in the US (especially in academe) but not, at present, in New Zealand.  If one takes him at his word, Chaudhuri seems keen on having New Zealand catch up down that slippery slope.   I hope I shouldn’t take him at his word, and he is more open to debate –  specific debate, concentrated on New Zealand’s experience, and New Zealand’s programme –  than his op-ed suggested.  Perhaps the Herald could offer him another column, in which this time he could get specific about the nature of the evidence he believes –  as head of the economics department of our leading university –  makes it such an open and shut case that New Zealanders as a whole are reaping economic rewards with our huge decades-long grand immigration experiment?

Joyce requests review of Reserve Bank governance structure

Michael Reddell Governance, Rennie review, Reserve Bank, Uncategorized

Some will have seen Hamish Rutherford’s Stuff article reporting on the review the Minister of Finance has commissioned (to be undertaken by former State Services Commissioner, and former Treasury deputy secretary  responsible for macroeconomics,) Iain Rennie) on two aspects of Reserve Bank governance:

  • whether something like the existing internal committee in which the Governor makes his OCR decisions should be formalised in legislation, and
  • whether the Reserve Bank should remain the “owner” of the various pieces of legislation (RB Act, as well as the insurance and non-bank legislation) it operates under.

This is very welcome news.  As I noted in a post a couple of months ago on governance issues,  Steven Joyce has previously been on-record less averse than some to changing the model.

 

Who knows if the new Minister of Finance is interested, but flicking through some old posts, I was encouraged to find one from September 2015, reporting an exchange in the House between then Associate Minister of Finance Steven Joyce and the Greens then finance spokesperson Julie Anne Genter.  In response to a question on governance, Joyce responded

Hon STEVEN JOYCE : The suggestion that the member makes, of having a panel of people making the decision, is, I have to say, not the silliest suggestion in monetary policy we have heard from the Greens over the years, and many countries—

A backhanded dig at the Greens at one level, but not an outright dismissal by any means.

And with the Governor confirming that he is leaving in September, and a year now until a permanent new Governor is in place, it is good time to have such a review, so as to be open to the possibility of reform, including in discussion with potential candidates for Governor.   Treasury tried to interest the previous Minister of Finance in legislative reform before Graeme Wheeler was appointed, but were knocked back (even though Treasury had found support for reform from market economists).   Graeme Wheeler also sought to initiate reform –  legislating for his Governning Committee –  in 2013 (although he still keeps all the relevant papers hush-hush), and was also knocked back by the Minister of Finance.  So, I’m encouraged that Steven Joyce has initiated the review.

That said, it is a pretty small step.  Iain Rennie will bring some relevant background to the issue, although his track record as State Services Commissioner might not command much confidence in circles other than those who appointed him.  And the Minister of Finance is not committing the National Party to supporting change.  But with almost all other political parties favouring change, and Rennie likely to point out the simple fact that no other New Zealand public sector entity is governed the way the Reserve Bank is (all power formally in one official’s hands), and no other central bank and financial regulatory agency in other advanced countries puts so much power (monetary policy and banking etc regulation) in one person’s hand, it is likely to set in place momentum leading towards some legislative reform next year.

I spoke to Rutherford about this yesterday and am quoted in the article

Michael Reddell, a former special advisor to the Reserve Bank who says he sat on a committee on OCR decisions for 20 years, said formalising the current structure would make only a marginal difference, as the members all reported to the governor.

“If your pay and rations are determined by the governor, then the extent that you’re willing to stand up is questionable, particularly to a tyrannical governor,” Reddell said.

“If the minister [of finance] were appointing the people on the committee, it would be a material step forward.”

All three Governors who have operated under the current legislation have operated pretty collegially.  For a long time, the OCR Advisory Group (OCRAG) was the forum in which the Governor took formal written advice and recommendation, and then made his decision (I was part of that group for a long time).  Mostly his decision was in line with the (usually) clear-cut majorities of advice.  All members of that committee were appointed by the Governor, including two external advisers.   The current Governor has put in another layer of hierarchy, taking advice from a wider group and then making his decision in a smaller group (him, his two deputies and the chief economist).

I should stress that the reference to “tyrannical” Governors was not intended as a reflection on anyone who has served as Governor.    But you need to design institutions around poor or insecure Governors: good ones will want, and will encourage, debate and alternative perspectives.  Poor ones will squash it, and if they control all the members of the statutory committee, it offers little or no protection  –  and actually puts monetary policy decisionmakers at a further remove from the voters and Minister of Finance.   As I’ve argued previously, we need more involvement of the Minister in appointing monetary policy (and financial regulation) decisionmakers, and also need external perspectives brought into the process, in the form of full formal participation in the decisionmaking.  As, for example, it is in Australia, Canada, the UK, the US, Sweden and so on.

Rutherford’s report doesn’t say whether the Rennie review will also look at the formal decisionmaking structure for financial regulation.  Those issues will have to be considered in any legislative reform, and it is probably more important to get collective and external decisionmaking processes formalised, since in these areas the Bank does not operate to something like the PTA, but rather exercises huge amounts of barely-fettered discretion.

The second half of the review –  looking at whether the Bank should stay responsible for its legislation – is not one of the (long list) of reform issues I’ve focused on.  It will probably have many people at the Reserve Bank spitting tacks, and looking at all sorts of bureaucratic tactics to retain something as close as possible to the status quo.  I favour change (but will openly acknowledge that until perhaps the last five years I had the same insider hubris that affects many RBers –  a belief that “we are different” and no one else in positioned to do the legislation-ownership role well).  That is simply wrong –  and if the expertise isn’t there right now, it could be developed over time (probably in Treasury) without too much difficulty.  Again, it would bring the Reserve Bank into line with other Crown entity types of bodies, few (if any) of which are now responsible for their own legislation (altho in years gone by some important ones –  eg ACC – were).  It might seem to many readers like an “inside the Beltway” issues, that doesn’t really matter to citizens.  That would be a mistaken view.  Reform in this area is just one part of the overall agenda to improve the accountability of the now very-powerful Reserve Bank, and bring its goverance more into line with that for other Crown agencies, and with central banks and financial regulatory agencies abroad.

And so for the second time this week, I commend Steven Joyce.  It is only an unambitious start, but the start matters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tradables sectors in New Zealand and Australia

Michael Reddell Australia, New Zealand economic performance

I have to spend the morning on the gruesome business of trying to make progress in unpicking 20 years of mismanagement of the Reserve Bank pension fund, dating back in some cases almost 30 years.  So this morning’s post will be short.

First, the latest update of my quarterly chart of real per capita tradables and non-tradables GDP.  Regular readers will recall that this is a rather rough proxy –  first developed by the IMF when they were highlighting New Zealand imbalances more than a decade ago.   For these purposes, the tradables sector is the primary and manufacturing components of production GDP, plus the exports of services from expenditure GDP.   The rest of GDP is treated as non-tradables.  Both series are indexed to 100 in the first quarter of 1991, which is when the official quarterly population series begins.

T and NT components NZ to Dec qtr 16

It isn’t a pretty picture.  There has been no growth in real per capita tradables sector GDP (on this proxy) for 17 years.   The peak in the series was in 2004, and if anything it has been trending down since then.  A year or two ago, it looked as though some sort of rebound was underway –  all those tourists and foreign students –  but even some of that growth has been reversed in the last few quarters.  Successful economies –  ones that catch up with the leaders, which record strong productivity growth –  tend to be those with relatively fast-growing exports, and strongly-performing tradables sectors.   A reasonable interpretation of what has gone on is that whatever factors led to the exchange rate being so persistently high –  since around 2003/04 –  will have accounted for the weak tradables sector performance.

Once upon a time, while I was at Treasury, we had someone do similar charts for a wide range of OECD countries.  I’ve only done one for Australia.  Here is what it looks like –  same definition,  based to the same date as the New Zealand one, and on the same scale.

Aus T and NT to Dec 16

Australia didn’t see much growth in real per capita tradables sector output over the 2000s.   In a way, that wasn’t surprising.  They had a huge terms of trade boom, which gave them more income to spend, without needing to produce any more tradables to sell abroad.  And they also had a massive business investment boom –  increasing future production capacity in the minerals sector –  which will have squeezed out tradables sector production during the investment phase.   But over the last five years, growth in real per capita tradables GDP has resumed again – even growing a bit faster than the non-tradables sector.   Perhaps (but only perhaps) there is some connection with the divergent labour productivity performance in the two economies in recent years.

real gdp phw dec 16 release

And for anyone wondering if the performance in the 1990s, when tradables and non-tradables production more or less kept pace, was unusual, in Australia (but not in New Zealand) there is the data to do the tradables/non-tradables GDP chart all the way back to the mid 1970s.  Here it is.

aus t and nt to 74

The sort of pattern we’ve seen –  17 years of no per capita growth in the tradables sector –  doesn’t look like the sort of feature one expects in a successful economy, poised to catch up with the rest of world, reversing decades of relative decline.  Sadly, of course, New Zealand hasn’t been such an economy.  On current policies, there is little reason to expect anything very different in the foreseeable future.

Appointing an Acting Governor: what the documents show

Michael Reddell Governance, Reserve Bank, Uncategorized

I had an email the other day suggesting that I should reduce my coverage of Reserve Bank issues.  No doubt the topic isn’t that interesting to that particular reader, but the main criterion for coverage here is what I’m interested in, and as I noted in response I’m interested in Reserve Bank issues, know something about them, and am fortunate to be much less constrained in what I can say than many other economists (often employed by entities the Reserve Bank regulates).   (As it happens, for any Wellington readers interested in monetary policy issues, I will be speaking briefly as a discussant responding to a presentation by Grant Robertson at Victoria University next Monday lunchtime.)

Which is by way of introducing a post which may not be of great interest to some readers.

For much of the time this blog has been running I had been pointing out, every few months, that the Governor’s term was due to expire almost three years to the day since the last election, and thus any replacement would normally be taking up the role right in the middle of a possible change of government.   As the Governor is the most powerful unelected public official in New Zealand, and there is currently no political consensus on monetary policy and Bank issues, it seemed inappropriate for the current government to be making an appointment to take effect just around the time of the election, materially tying the hands of a possible alternative government.     I’d suggested asking the current Governor, Graeme Wheeler, to stay on for, say, one more year (it was widely understood that Wheeler was not seeking a second full term).     There would have been no doubt about the lawfulness of that option, and had he been offered and accepted such an extension there would have been a new Policy Targets Agreement signed, as the Act provides.  Ever since 1990, the PTA has been the centrepiece of monetary policy arrangements in New Zealand, and the benchmark against which the Governor’s performance is to be assessed.

On 7 February, the Minister of Finance announced that (a) Graeme Wheeler would leave office at the end of his term, and (b) that because of the election the current Deputy Governor Grant Spencer would be appointed acting Governor for six months, allowing a permanent appointment to be made under whichever government takes office after the election.  It was also confirmed that Spencer would not seek appointment as permanent Governor.

In my post that day I welcomed the fact that the Board and the Minister had recognised the significance of the issue around the election, and raised no concerns about Spencer personally (he was my boss for two periods earlier in my career and I always got on well with him).   But I raised questions about whether such an appointment was lawful, under the terms of the Reserve Bank Act.

The Act allows for the appointment of an acting Governor –  and it has been done once before, when Don Brash resigned with immediate effect to go into politics –  but it appeared to provide for such an appointment only to cover a vacancy that arises during a Governor’s term, not to allow the Minister and Board to delay making a substantive appointment at the end of a Governor’s term (such an option would increase potential  political leverage over the Bank).     Consistent with that reading of the law is (a) that the Act makes no provision for agreeing a PTA with an Acting Governor (in a case like that when Rod Carr temporarily replaced Don Brash there was already a PTA is place –  which there will not legally be once Graeme Wheeler leaves office) and (b) that the PTA plays such a central role in the governance provisions around monetary policy (even in the event of a ministerial override of the Bank, a new PTA still needs to be put in place quickly.    But, technically, Grant Spencer will be conducting monetary policy with no PTA, and thus no (formal) checks and balances.

I was curious about (a) how this appointment came to be, and (b) how confident officials and ministers were of their legal ground.  So I lodged OIA requests with the Bank’s Board, with the Minister of Finance, and with the Treasury.   I didn’t really expect them to release the legal advice each agency might have obtained (although the Ombudsman has made clear that legal advice is not always absolutely protected, and (eg) this isn’t a matter of contractural dispute etc) but I assumed that the insights from that advice would be reflected in the policy advice and analysis that officials provided.

The Reserve Bank was about as obstructive as ever.   It took them seven weeks to release a single two paragraph document, the short letter from the Board chair to the Minister recommending the appointment of Spencer as Acting Governor.     There is no mention at all in that letter of the legal issues, not even a specific reference to the provision of the Act governing acting Governor appointments.  Clearly, and perhaps not unexpectedly, a lot else had been going on behind the scenes.

I had asked for

copies of all papers of the Reserve Bank Board relating to the end of Graeme Wheeler’s term as Governor, the process for appointing a permanent replacement, and the appointment of Grant Spencer as acting Governor.   This request includes papers on the Board’s agenda, minutes of relevant discussions, papers/letters sent to the Minister of Finance or Treasury, and filenotes of any relevant meetings.

The Board’s response suggested that the only other relevant material was (a) some advice from the Bank’s Human Resources, and (b) some internal legal advice.

It is simply incredible that there are no minutes of the Board meeting (even if it was just a teleconference) at which they made the recommendation to the Minister of Finance, and highly unlikely (as we shall see) that there are no minutes of earlier discussions, or even email filenotes of discussions that, for example, the Board chair might have had with the Minister of Finance on the forthcoming appointment.    If any of this is written down, it was covered by my request.  And if it is not written down, it might be operationally smart in the short-term (bureaucrats often say to each other, “be careful what you put in writing”) but it is particularly poor governance.  Both the head of the Prime Minister’s Department and the Ombudsman have been explicit that the provisions of the Official Information Act don’t justify taking a slapdash approach to documenting advice, decisions etc.

As I’ve come to expect, there was a much more helpful and fuller response from the Treasury.  It took some time, but there was 63 pages of material.    They haven’t yet put the response on their website – I’ll link to it when they do, and if anyone wants the material sooner just email me.  (Link to the released documents.)

I won’t bore readers by attempting to step through every paper, but what is clear is how late in the piece the decision was made to go the Acting Governor route, and that credit for that decision goes to the new Minister of Finance Steven Joyce.

The first papers are from August last year.  At that point, Treasury was aware that the expiry of the Governor’s term would fall in the period not far from the likely date of the 2017 election.  They didn’t seem to see the issue as a substantive one, and advised the Secretary to the Treasury that it might just mean that the appointment of a new Governor should be announced quite early (eg May 2017), which  in turn would mean the Board would have to begin the search process relatively early.

A month or so later they were specifically highlighting the convention under which governments are quite restrained in making significant appointments in the three months prior to the election. By this time, it is clear from the documents that the Bank’s Board was already actively planning their search and recommendation process.  Treasury note that it would be desirable to have an appointment announced by the end of May, but to do that a recommendation from the Board would have to be available by early-mid April, but “their current timeframe is to provide a recommendation to the Minister in May”.

By mid November, Treasury had taken formal advice from Cabinet Office, whose “legal and constitutional adviser” informed them that simply announcing an appointment early would not get around the pre-election conventions.  What mattered was the effective date of the appointment, not when it was announced.    That prompted an approach to staff in the Minister’s office highlighting the potential problem.  They note that one way around it would be to extend the current Governor’s term, or appoint an acting Governor for six months, but there is no discussion of whether the Act really allows for that latter option. (The other option was simply to barge ahead and make an appointment anyway, with or without consultation with opposition parties).

On 29 November, the Minister of Finance (still Bill English) held a meeting with Neil Quigley, chair of the Reserve Bank Board.  Treasury provided a briefing note.  It noted that “the Board is running the process….we understand that the recommended candidate for your consideration will be provided in May 2017” but flagged the issue around the pre-election period, and noted the possible options (as above).  Suggesting that they still hadn’t looked that carefully at the details of the legislation, they advised the Minister that a new PTA would be required, even if an acting Governor was appointed.

Among the documents is a note for the new Minister of Finance, which was in the end not sent.  But it states that “the previous Minister of Finance met with Professor Quigley on 29 November 2016 and indicated comfort with the Board continuing their appointment process as outlined to him”, and noted that Treasury had no further advice planned on this appointment.

Things seemed to move quite quickly from late December.  In a 20 December note to Gabs Makhlouf, staff pass on reactions to the news that “Hon. Joyce might look to delay the appointment of a new RBNZ Governor until after the election”

Staff themselves remain “neutral” about such an approach –  it is not at all clear what credible alternatives they saw there as being –  but noted the need to engage the Board quite quickly, noting “the Board’s original plan was to put out a job advertisement in late January, the Board has already engaged headhunters, and the previous Minister had signalled a preference for proceeding to appoint a new Governor next year”.

Christmas holidays intervene, and the next paper is a briefing for the Minister in advance of a 20 January meeting with Neil Quigley, which again notes the options of extending the current Governor’s term or appointing an acting Governor for six months (again, incorrectly noting that either option would require a new PTA).  Even at that meeting, the Minister does not appear to have communicated a decision, as there is then a (not very informative) note suggesting another discussion on the issue with Treasury officials on 24 January.   Only by 1 February is there a formal Treasury report providing the information to facilitate the Minister’s preference to appoint Grant Spencer as Acting Governor (which, according to the paper, had not yet been discussed between Spencer and the Minister).  Only at this point is Treasury uncertain about the PTA position, noting that they were seeking Crown Law advice.

It all went to Cabinet on 7 February –  with no hint of any issue as to whether an acting Governor could legally be appointed –  and was announced later that day.

I’m not usually a big fan of Steven Joyce, but as far as I can tell from these papers (and a very similar set I got from his office) he is the only one to emerge from this process deserving credit.  The Bank’s Board had seemed to see no problem at all in making an appointment pre-election to take office in the midst of a possible change of government.  The Treasury didn’t either –  they would have been happy, if they could, simply to have had an appointment announced early.  And as late as the end of November, the then Minister of Finance (now Prime Minister) was apparently happy to carry on towards appointing the most powerful public official to take office just (as it turns out) a few days after the election.    It was only very late in the piece that Treasury realised that there was no provision for a PTA with an acting Governor (Crown Law presumably confirmed that, as there will be no PTA with Spencer) and there is no sign that any officials ever seriously considered whether an acting Governor appointment was strictly legal.

But shortly after taking office, Joyce seemed to cut through most of this, eventually presumably instructing/requesting the Board not to proceed with the planned process that had already begun, and instead to recommend him an acting Governor appointee.   In a sense (whatever the formal legalities) they were lucky to find Spencer willing –  I have heard that he was planning to have left the Bank by now.

To repeat, my concern isn’t that something will go badly wrong in the six months Grant is in charge.  It is a practical solution to a problem that is made so severe by the fact that so much power is vested in one person’s hands.  That should be changed by whoever becomes the Minister of Finance after the election (and the role of the Board in making appointments should also be revisited).   But the practical outcome they have adopted still looks rather dubious on legal grounds, and we are supposed to be ruled by laws, not by what is opportune.   I’m not a lawyer, and some of the doubt could have been resolved if the Board and Treasury had pro-actively released any legal advice they obtained on the points, but it doesn’t look clear-cut that the chosen path was strictly lawful.

And perhaps as concerning is that key figures – including the current Prime Minister –  saw no problem in an outgoing government making a long-term appointment to such a powerful position, to take office in the midst –  or immediately after –  an election campaign, especially one where there is the potential for material changes of policy emphasis and legislation in areas directly the responsibility of the Governor.

 

 

NZSF tries to debunk “common myths”

Michael Reddell NZSF, Uncategorized

The Herald yesterday gave over a full page to an unpaid advertorial from a public servant.    Of course, it wasn’t quite described that way, but that is what New Zealand Superannuation Fund chief executive Adrian Orr’s lengthy opinion piece amounted to.  Perhaps we should just be grateful to the Herald that they didn’t charge the NZSF –  and thus the taxpayer – for the advertising space.

It is a strange piece in many ways.  It is unfortunately becoming more common to have public servants take to the media to defend political decisions.   Public servants are there is advise and administer, but politicians are the ones who make the policy decisions and should be called to account for them.     And that is quite clear in the NZSF case.  Parliament set up the NZSF and associated provisions.  Included in those provisions is the ability for the government of the day to (openly and transparently) contribute less to the Fund in any year (and thus possibly for a succession of years) than the formula would otherwise imply.  Given all that, NZSF’s responsibility is simply to invest the money placed with them, and comply with any ministerial directions they are given.  The chief executive works for the Board (the grandiosely-named Guardians) and really has an operational role only.  Neither policy –  whether to have a Fund, how much should be contributed to it, whether the country is better off or not for having NZSF –  nor the actions of The Treasury, are his affair.   Treasury itself has a chief executive, and is responsible to the Minister of Finance.  Policy matters are for the Minister.

And yet yesterday we find a lengthy piece from Adrian Orr billed as “an explanation of The Treasury’s role and how the Fund operates”, although in fact as much space is devoted to championing the case for the Fund.     If there is a case to make on either of these points, surely it is one that should be being made by Gabs Makhlouf or, better still, Steven Joyce?

The article is set up to look like a response to what Orr regards as misleading or erroneous points (“common myths”) from recent media coverage (can we then assume that various other points critics have made are quietly accepted as valid?).  His list is as follows:

• the fund is soon to be “sold down” and would not be effective at smoothing future tax payments;

• capital contributions were intended to only come from Government operating surpluses, with their size and frequency variable and discretionary;

• NZ would be better off paying down Government debt;

• NZ would be better off managing the NZ Super Fund as a passive fund; and

• the fund has missed the investment good times (post-GFC), future returns won’t be as good and hence the fund’s chance of success is compromised.

I’m not sure who has been running either the first or fifth points.  I haven’t seen the first  argument made at all, although I’m one of those who thinks the Fund should be soon closed down and the assets liquidated.  Sadly, there is no sign of it happening.  And as for the fifth argument, the criticism I’ve seen –  and made to some extent –  is that the NZSF total returns have been flattered by strong global equity markets in the last decade or so, and that even so the returns don’t look particularly attractive to the taxpayer once the high-risk nature of the Fund is taken into account.     As it happens, the Fund’s own documents confirm that they also expect much lower returns in future.

It is our expectation, given our long-term mandate and risk appetite, that we will return at least the Treasury Bill return + 2.7% p.a. over any 20-year moving average period.

I noted last week that if one thinks of a neutral Treasury bill rate of even as high as 4 per cent (which is very long way from where we are now) that is consistent with expected future returns of only around 7 per cent.

Reassuringly, in his advertorial Orr outlines very similar expectations

As demonstrated in Treasury’s modelling, we estimate the fund will return 7 per cent to 8 per cent p.a. over the long term

If that is the best he and his team can reasonably expect to do (and it probably is), then it is for us –  voters and taxpayers –  not for him to decide if that is a worthwhile business line for the New Zealand government.

Against the Treasury’s own recommended discount rates, it would fail that test.  At present, their default rate is 6 per cent real.  Add 2 per cent inflation (the midpoint of the target range) to that and you get a required rate of return of 8 per cent.  If Orr doesn’t think he and his team –  using their best professional expertise –  can exceed that, that is useful information for us in assessing whether a high-risk investment management subsidiary is something the New Zealand taxpayer should be owning.

What about his other “myths”?   Orr objects to a view that

capital contributions were intended to only come from Government operating surpluses, with their size and frequency variable and discretionary;

Sure, the legislation sets out a formula, but it also quite explicitly provides for deviations from that formula, and sets no cap on how long those deviations can last for.   And the NZSF legislation was passed at a time when the government accounts were in surplus, and were expected to remain in surplus pretty much indefinitely.   But why does he suppose that Parliament provided for contributions to deviate from the formula?  Quite probably because they recognised that bad stuff could happen –  be it severe recessions, banking crises, natural disasters or whatever, pushing the government accounts into deficits.  Since the macroeconomic point of the NZSF is to be a vehicle to hold and invest increased overall government savings, reasonable people might think it wouldn’t make much sense to undertake government borrowing just so that the government could increases its high risk exposure to international equity markets.   Those who devised the legislation probably didn’t think of the budget drifting back into deficits for years at a time, but it did –  and the legislation was resilient to that change of circumstances.

Of course, Orr and other advocates of the Fund constantly argue that the purpose of the Fund is to, in some sense, reduce the future cost/burden of New Zealand Superannuation.   It does no such thing.   The cost of NZS is, and will be, what policymakers at the time determine it to be –  they can, and often have in the past, changed those parameters.   NZS isn’t a funded defined benefit pension scheme and it isn’t a contractural claim either.  It is simply a choice, made by Parliaments of the day, as to how much, and on what terms, the government will pay to older people at a particular time.

And thus, although the legislation talks of the purpose being

to establish a New Zealand Superannuation Fund with sufficient resources to meet the present and future cost of New Zealand superannuation

it does nothing of the sort.     NZS spending is met out general budgetary resources.  There is certainly a default formula for calculating how much would go into the NZSF and how much be withdrawn from it, and those numbers are tied to some estimates of future NZS expenditure.   But tying bows around money, and putting some of it into an entity labelled “New Zealand Superannuation Fund”, then transferring some of back in future decades to the general account, doesn’t alter that affordability one iota.  Of course it designed to look that way –  NZSF was always substantially a piece of political theatre  –  but it doesn’t.

Two things (in this area) can improve overall government finances.  First, higher taxes (than otherwise).   That is what happened during the years in which the Crown was contributing to NZSF (when large surpluses were being run).  But those higher taxes could just as easily have been devoted to repaying government debt.   And second, prudent management of the resources the Crown coercively (“taxes”) takes under its control.   And that latter is really the case for NZSF.  If the Crown can take your money, put in a high-risk investment management subsidiary, and make more money than you could then, possibly, taxpayers as a whole are made better off.  But even there the test isn’t whether they do a bit better than a government bond interest rate.  After all,

  • the money has been taken coercively in the first place, and there are large (perhaps 20 per cent) deadweight costs of taxation,
  • the government’s investments will typically be risky (high variance),
  • over time, the quality of governance of public entities tends to corrode,   and
  • in the private sector the evidence of revealed behaviour is that people don’t take discretionary high risk investments on without a considerable margin above the cost of debt being in prospect (thus private sector hurdle rates of return typically seem to exceed 10 per cent).  Risk has a (high) price.

But in his determination to defend his empire, Orr simply ignores most of this.    And as we know, over the period both funds have been operating the other big pool of government financial assets –  those of the ACC –  has been managed to achieve better risk-adjusted returns than NZSF has managed.

He also continues to ignore the international evidence that casts severe doubt on the ability of fund managers to add value by active management.    This isn’t my main concern about the NZSF –  although their “active management” returns are overstated, by the way they construct their so-called benchmark –  but simply continuing to recite actual results from a short period (recall that, although Orr never mentions it, their own documents talk about a 20 year horizon being necessary to evaluate performance) proves nothing.

I was also rather astonished at Orr’s apparent attempt to claim the tax the Fund has paid as a net gain to New Zealand. Perhaps it looks that way to someone paid to manage a particular dollop of Crown money.  But Orr is smart enough to have heard of opportunity costs.  Had NZSF never been set up, the money would have been used for other things.  Some of it might have been used, through lower business tax rates, to build new private sector businesses (the economy itself would be bigger as a result).  Some of it might just have ended in private savings vehicles.  And some of it probably would have been consumed.  All of those alternatives would, in turn, have given rise to additional tax revenue.  It probably wouldn’t have been as much as NZSF has paid –  larger fiscal surpluses and higher taxes probably did slightly raise national savings rate –  but it would verge on dishonesty if a public servant were to claim that tax as a net gain to New Zealanders.

Orr wraps up his piece with the claim that

The Super Fund is an independent, non-political, for-profit entity with a specific purpose: to partially pre-fund the cost of retirement benefits for future generations of Kiwis.

Actually, it was a piece of political theatre, set up to help the buttress the political case for doing nothing about the parameters of NZS, in the face of large increases in life expectancy.  Running surpluses is one thing (and a quite different thing), but NZSF is simply a high risk investment management subsidiary of the New Zealand government, dressed up in gaudy rhetoric about future pensions.   There probably should be many more political questions asked than there are being posed at present.   Questions for policymakers –  not ones that Orr, as an operational public servant, apparently keen to grown his empire, has much to offer on – should include those around how attractive it is for the Crown to own a high risk fund that will generate particularly large losses –  and perhaps pressure to liquidate the fund at the trough of world markets –  at just the sorts of times when government finances will typically be under most stress from other sources.

(Someone drew my attention the other day to the average remuneration of NZSF staff.   The 2016 Annual Report tells us they paid $29.632 million to 112.2 FTE staff, which works out to an average of $264000 per employee –  over everyone from Adrian to the support staff.  Yes, funds management tends to be a high-paying industry, but I found it a surprisingly large number for a New Zealand government agency, that –  looking forward, and on the chief executive’s own numbers – doesn’t expect to exceed a realistic weighted average cost of capital.)

My bottom-line assessment remains that I ran in my earlier post

And so my bottom line is that we should be thankful for the reasonable returns we’ve had from NZSF to now (through some mix of luck and skill), but that since we can’t count on anything like those sorts of returns in future (even NZSF say so), and even the returns to date are really only sufficient to compensate us for the risk run on our behalf, we’d be better off locking in the gains we’ve had, closing down the Fund,  liquidating the assets over a couple of years, and using the proceeds to repay public debt.    Our government does not need to be in this game –  unlike, say, the governments of Norway or Abu Dhabi, with genuine wealth to manage and smooth –  and the returns to doing so don’t look that attractive.   As the Crown is already heavily exposed (both through the tax system and its other extensive asset holdings) to the ups and downs of the domestic economy and global markets, strategies that reduce risk, rather than increase it, seem intuitively more appealing.  The NZSF logic is the opposite of that.

In the meantime, if the government believes in the case for NZSF, it would be good to hear it from the ministers we elected, not the operations guys we pay to manage the money parcelled out to the Fund.

 

The New Zealand Initiative’s manifesto

Michael Reddell New Zealand economic performance, New Zealand Initiative, Uncategorized

I mentioned yesterday that the New Zealand Initiative had released its Manifesto 2017: What the next New Zealand government should do.   When I sat down and read it I came away with mixed feelings.   There are quite of lot of specifics I agree with, which shouldn’t be a surprise: the Initiative is variously described as pro-business, neo-liberal (both, for different reasons, unhelpful descriptions –  they are generally pro-market rather than pro-business) or just plain “right wing”.  And I was summed up a few weeks ago by one journalist as being on the ‘dryish right of the spectrum’, which sounded roughly correct.   We have our (large) differences over New Zealand immigration policy, and I’m a conservative while they often tend towards a libertarian view of the world, but there is often a lot of overlap in the sorts of policies we would favour.   In fact in some areas I think they are far too trusting of central and local government.

I said I had mixed feelings.  That is mostly because of the elephant in the room which in the Manifesto they almost entirely ignore –  our long-term economic underperformance.  The author  –  Initiative director Oliver Hartwich –  is a recent migrant, clearly enraptured by New Zealand.   That’s nice, but it rather ignores the things – the underperformance –  that has led to such a large exodus of New Zealanders over the last 40 years or so.   The relentlessly upbeat tone often comes across as almost delusional –  which isn’t a good start to what he claims is “more than a collection of randomly assembled policies –  it is an intellectual guide for imminent challenges”.

But what do they propose –  drawing on many of the studies they have put out over their first five years of operation?   As another (interesting – left wing) commentary on the Manifesto noted it is all “divided handily into six different sections and 28 different proposals”.

The first set are about housing

• abolish all rural-urban boundaries;
• abolish all height and density controls;
• strengthen property rights by introducing a presumption in
favour of development into the Resource Management Act;
• incentivise councils for development by letting them capture
the GST component of new buildings; and
• introduce MUDs but ideally give them a more appealing name
(maybe Community Development Districts).

I’m sympathetic to the broad direction of what they propose, but

  • I don’t agree with abolishing all height and density controls on existing urban land (as distinct from newly developed land).    Were it not for council rules, private landowners would in many cases have negotiated such restrictions themselves (as we see in the covenants in many new subdivisions) –  waiving or trading them as and when mutually beneficial opportunities arose.   My preference would be to devolve  most existing restrictions to groups of existing landowners, and allow them to transact among themselves to permit (or not) greater height and density.
  • I’m very sceptical of the Initiative’s support for disbursing GST revenue to local authorities.  It seems like an opportunistic response to current pressures, which would quite dramatically overturn the sort of fiscal arrangements we’ve had since 1876 (and the end of provincial governments).    Local authorites have their own revenue base –  one generally favoured by economists as, in principle, less distortionary than most –  and I’m not aware of provisions preventing differential rates.

The second set of recommendations is around education

• create an attractive career structure for teachers;
• provide tailored professional development for teachers;
• monitor teacher performance and introduce performance based
appraisals;
• evaluate systematically the impact of interventions on
school performance; and
• expand school clusters as a means of sharing best practice.

I haven’t read all their material on education, so perhaps I’ve missed something.   The general direction seems fine, but this is one of those areas where they seem to be too ready to trust governments to get things right.    I imagine that in the Business Roundtable days there would have been a lot more talk about genuine school choice –  not just a few charter schools for targeted groups at the bottom, but much more genuine choice (public vs private, religious vs secular, non-profit vs for-profit etc) of provider for all parents, including greater choice about what is taught  I probably shouldn’t be surprised, but as I’ve listened to my children over the years I’ve been surprised at just how much ‘indoctrination’ –  of conventional left-wing/’progressive’ causes –  goes on in our state schools; some of it conscious, much of it no doubt unconscious.   The Initiative seems more focused on making the state behemoth work better –  not necessarily a poor goal in its own limited way –  rather than backing what I’d have thought would be a belief in markets, civil society etc.

Then they move on to foreign direct investment (where Bryce Wilkinson did some really useful work over several reports).  Here they recommend

• Abolish the Overseas Investment Act. There should be no
FDI regime.
• Subject all investors, domestic and foreign, to the same rules.
• Protect New Zealanders’ property rights, including the
freedom to sell to whoever they wish. In cases of public
interest, appropriate compensation must be made.

I’d mostly agree with them, with four caveats:

  • having gone to great lengths over the years to put in place good governance arrangements for our own SOEs, and in many cases to privatise them, I’m much less relaxed than the Initiative seems to be about allowing foreign SOEs –  particular those from countries with, shall we say, weak governance traditions –  to take on substantial roles in New Zealand.  We might not suffer the poor returns to capital, but we still face potential efficiency losses.  I have a strong prior that genuine private sector entities investing here will, on average, be mutually beneficial.  One can’t extend the same presumption to organs of foreign states.
  • in certain extreme circumstances – but they are extreme and rare – I’d be uneasy about allowing concentrated foreign ownership of New Zealand land.  Had the Soviet Union during the Cold War wanted to buy up, say, most of Northland, it would have been dangerous and reckless to agree.  It is fine to counter with “but the land is still New Zealand, subject to New Zealand law”.  But one has to have the capacity to enforce that law.  Geopolitical threats are, at times, real.   My own halfway house would be to abolish controls on any investments from OECD member countries, and add to that list on a case-by-case basis.
  • while I largely agree with the Initiative on FDI, I suspect it is a less important issue (in terms of potential economic gains) than they do.  Why?  Because the restrictions seem to bear most heavily on land purchases (not the sort of high-tech industries often touted as the way of the future –  or even banks or oil explorers), and we already put so many other restrictions on land use (eg restrictions on GE products) that I’m sceptical that there is currently much in the economic case for liberalising foreign land purchases.
  • I’m not totally averse to restrictions on non-resident foreigners purchasing residential properties in New Zealand –  at least as some sort of third best, if governments can’t/won’t fix up land supply issues or the (aggravating) population pressures.

The next section is about better regulation (or better law).  They propose

• No new law or regulation shall be introduced without a
cost-benefit assessment that demonstrates real gains for the
public and costs fairly shared.
• Regulatory reform cannot be delegated to a junior minister
but needs real commitment from the prime minister down.
• The regulatory culture should shift from one of ticking
boxes and managing risk to encouraging greater flexibility
and innovation.

and they repeat a line from a previous report

Over-reliance on primary legislation: New Zealand’s overreliance
on primary legislation is unusual by international
standards. Other countries use more secondary and
tertiary legislation to amend outdated rules. Most
regulatory changes in New Zealand require amendments
only Parliament can make.

In general, I’m sympathetic to the direction they propose, but

  • I’m all for good cost-benefit assessments, but am less convinced of the argument that it should have to be demonstrated that “costs are fairly shared”.  After all, it is rare legislation (primary or otherwise) that affects most people equally, and part of politics is differences in views of what is “fair”,
  • Is anyone in favour of “tick boxes” approaches?  I doubt it, although actual regulation often drifts towards that sort of outcome.  Flexibility and innovation are laudable goals, but so is predictability and certainty when citizens are dealing with the state,
  • I strongly disagree with them when they want to reduce reliance on primary legislation. For too much law-making power is already delegated by Parliament to ministers and official agencies.  It is a technocrat’s dream, but a citizen’s nightmare.

They then move on to social policy

• Social policy is not a silo and should be regarded as a whole-of-
government task.
• Fixing New Zealand’s housing affordability crisis is crucial
to addressing both income-related poverty measures and
inequality concerns.
• To provide all New Zealanders with good life opportunities,
special attention needs to be paid to education. More
targeted support for students from lower deciles should take
precedence over untargeted programmes such as interest-free
student loans.
• Taxes and regulations should not choke off employers’
incentive to create jobs for the available skills or deprive
those with those skills of the incentive to work.
• The government’s plan to trial new ways of delivering social
services such as social bonds is laudable.

My thoughts?

  • I’m rather sceptical –  but open to persuasion –  on the merits of “social bonds”.
  • I’m more than sceptical of the big-government first bullet.   The logic sounds compelling at first blush –  and if fiscal savings were the only focus it might be persuasive –  but it is a path that undermines privacy and autonomy, delivering more and more information to an overweening state.
  • It is striking how the Initiative –  like the government, and no doubt the Opposition –  are reluctant to ever go near the role public policies have played in corroding cultures and giving rise to the welfare-dependency and other social problems joined-up government is now supposed to be trusted to deal with.

And then they turn to local government

• Local communities should share the benefits that accrue
to central government from extractive industries and
growth. Local government should receive financial benefits
for creating economic growth (and suffer a loss when it
does not).
• Central and local government need to better define their
responsibilities to preclude cost-shifting and blame games,
and enhance accountability.
• Special economic zones would increase flexibility and
regional variability of economic policy.

Here I largely disagree with them (and probably side more with the former Business Roundtable, which favoured restricting more tightly the activities of local government).

  • the second bullet is vacuous.  It is what politics is.
  • I documented my scepticism about their special economic zones idea in a post in 2015.
  • For all their talk of how many local authorities France or Germany have, it is worth remembering that this country has a total population not much different from that of a typical US state.  Do we really think we have the policy capability for dozens of different economic policies?  And what do we make of the demonstrated capability of local bodies?  I know the Wellington City Council is one of the members of the Initiative, so perhaps they have to be polite, but it is a local body that hankers after uneconomic runway extensions, expensive convention centres and film museums, extraordinarily expensive town hall refurbishments, all while then going to cap in hand to government to sort out the water supply risks in an earthquake (a fairly basic function I’d have thought) I simply don’t understand why the Initiative wants to give more scope to local bodies.  Perhaps it worked in Germany, but there is little sign it does here.
  • I was also a bit flabbergasted when the Initiative seemed to lament local council reliance of property taxes.  Local body rates aren’t a pure land tax, but they are probably further towards the non-distortionary end of the spectrum than most other possible taxes.

Their final section is about economic growth.  There is plenty to agree with them on there.

Imagine if we could achieve an annual productivity
growth of 2% per year from now until 2060 instead of, say,
1.5%. Half a percent may not sound much. But through the
power of compound growth, it makes a substantial difference
to economic output.

By 2060, GDP per capita would be 22% higher (or about
$22,000 per person in today’s dollars) if we achieved 2%
productivity growth instead of 1.5%.    ……

Creating a dynamic, growing economy is essential if we do
not want to end up like some European countries that have not
generated enough growth over the past decades, and are now
paying a heavy social and economic price for it.

All good stuff, but…….there is not a single policy recommendation in this section of the Manifesto. Not one.

I suppose their defence will be that the earlier report they were drawing from was about making the case for economic growth, as against those who doubt it is something worth focusing on.   But this is a policy manifesto, you are an (economics-based) think tank, and you have nothing specific to offer on diagnosing the causes of New Zealand’s disappointing long-term economic performance, and nothing on remedying it.    It seems quite a large gap in the manifesto.    No doubt, the Initiative would argue –  and fairly –  that some of their other proposals would lift productivity and per capita GDP, but I doubt any serious observer would think that list –  even if all the items on it were adopted –  would be more than modestly helpful in reversing our decline.  After all, we did much more ambitious reforms –  in the same general spirit –  in the 1980s and early 1990s and they didn’t.  (And for those about to comment  “so what would you do”, I dealt with a list of things I’d favour in a post last year.)

Various omissions from the Manifesto struck me.  Having just launched a major report on immigration, it was surprising to see almost nothing on that topic, not even on ways to improve the current system.  Writing about the Manifesto at Spinoff, Simon Wilson noted

Still, I’ll give them this: they don’t believe cutting taxes is the cure for all ills and they don’t bang that old privatisation drum much either. For neoliberals, both those things are revolutionary. Credit where it’s due.

In fact, as far I could see there was nothing about lowering taxes at all, even though our company tax rate is towards the upper end of those in OECD countries.  I guess the Initiative hasn’t done a report about the tax system –  perhaps it will be a topic if there is a change of government, given that the Opposition parties propose a tax working group.  Perhaps too there are no votes in arguing for lower company tax rates –  in an overheated climate of angst about multinationals and tax –  but, as the Initiative note, the role of a think tank shouldn’t be to be popular.

And now to revert to my earlier comments about the tone of the scene-setting introductory chapter.  It is relentlessly upbeat.  Apparently

New Zealand is not just doing well but doing spectacularly well on many measures.

And

Instead of taking this performance for granted, we need to celebrate it.

Ending on tones that could have been taken from Land of Hope and Glory

Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet,
God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

Or, as the Initiative puts it

the Initiative takes great pride and satisfaction in helping make our great country greater still.

Of course there is a lot to like about New Zealand.  Most countries in the world have far lower material living standards, however one wants to assess them.

But what the Initiative seems to want its readers to forget – and perhaps it is just because many of their staff are so new to New Zealand that that history hasn’t yet made much impression –  is that not long ago,  New Zealand wasn’t just better than most countries, it was a better place to live than almost all of them.  Norway was somewhere well down the scale, as were France and Germany, let alone Singapore and Japan.  One can’t put too much weight on single estimates for single years, but 100 years ago we vied only with the US, Australia and perhaps the UK and Switzerland for top ranking.  My grandparents were just starting out in the workforce then.  Even in early 1950s –  when my parents were starting out –  we were still in the top handful, helped a bit by escaping the direct ravages of war.      And now?     Now, whether you look at GDP per capita or GDP per hour worked, or dig down and look at NNI (net national income) measures, we don’t score well.  Of the OECD countries, we are perhaps 23rd, and showing no signs of improving.  In the league tables, and depending on your precise measure, we vie with places like Slovenia and Slovakia (still regions of communist countries when we were doing our liberalising reforms in the 1980s) and Greece, Israel, Korea and Spain.   In our European history, New Zealand has never before been as poor and relatively unproductive as these countries.   And as the Initiative rightly stresses, economic growth –  and surely even they mean it in per capita terms –  matters.    We haven’t delivered it, and there is no point pretending otherwise.

Is GDP everything? No, of course not.   But if you want a balanced assessment of New Zealand –  and such hardheaded asssessments are the only sensible starting point for good diagnosis and prescription –  one could also point to things like:

  • a homicide rate that is around the middle of OECD countries,
  • an incarceration rate (a “fiscal and moral failure” as the Prime Minister put it) far higher than most,
  • shocking domestic violence rates,
  • wide disparities between Maori and Maori economic and life outcomes,
  • as well as more mundane, but ubiquitous, scandals like the housing market.

Oliver Hartwich is glad to have come to New Zealand.  He’s found a good niche here and I wish him all the best.  Life is comfortable for upper income people in central Wellington.     But what have New Zealanders been doing?

Here is the chart, since 1950, of the cumulative net immigration flow of New Zealand citizens.

net plt flow of nz citizens

In the 50 years to 2016 that was a net outflow of 963000 New Zealanders.   The average population over that 50 years was about 3.7 million.  Roughly a quarter of all New Zealanders have left (net) and not come back.  It is a staggering symptom of failure and underperformance here, that so many people –  in a relatively rich country –  saw what they regarded as  better opportunities abroad and went after them.      Well-performing countries just don’t experience that sort of exodus.  Most of us don’t want a repeat, or a resumption of larger scale outflows once the Australian labour market picks up.  But to read the New Zealand Initiative’s report, one wouldn’t even know it was an issue.

Nearing the end of his rhapsodic introduction Hartwich observes

For policy experts such as my colleagues at the Initiative, New Zealand does not provide the same challenges one faces in solving the Greek debt crisis, organising Brexit, or fighting home-grown extremism.

It should.  After all, that sort of outflow of our own people, that sort of sustained economic underperformance, is unknown in reasonably well-governed countries in modern times.  If I can end on my own modestly upbeat note, we aren’t Argentina, Venezuela or Cuba……and yet we’ve experienced the staggering slippage that shows no sign of reversing itself.    There are plenty of challenges for the next manifesto, if they interested in actually engaging with the specifics of New Zealand’s experience.

Housing, governments, and public opinion

Michael Reddell Housing, Immigration

There have been a couple of interesting polls that caught my eye lately on the government’s handling of specific issues.

The first was from Newshub on housing

newshub housing.jpg

Taking the wording literally, the last thing I’d want is the government “controlling” the housing market.  They (this government and its predecessor) have done quite enough to mess it up as it is.    It looks as though real house prices nationwide will have risen by around 50 per cent in both the previous Labour-led government’s nine years in office, and in the current National-led government’s nine years in office –  a bit more in the earlier government’s term (which included a 10 per cent fall in nominal house prices in 2008) and a bit less in the current government’s term.

We simply didn’t have today’s problems before governments (central and local) took powers to “plan” –  something that seems to have worked about as well as Eastern European planning more generally did during the Communist decades.  But I don’t suppose the respondents were interpreting the question quite that literally.  It looks like an overwhelming expression of a sentiment that something (probably quite a lot) needs to be done.

At the time of John Key’s early resignation from Parliament last month, there was some UMR polling reported on how well Key had handled various issues.   On most of the issues, we can probably treat it as a proxy for how the government had handled those issues.    This was the main graphic.

UMR john key

I found it a bit easier to read if I converted it into a chart of net balances –  the difference between of those saying “good” or “very good” and those saying “poor” or “very poor”.

Key UMR poll resultsIn some areas, Key rated very well, as one might expect (he did after all lead his party to three election victories).   Relationships with foreign leaders scored as highly as you might expect from someone who seemed generally to be regarded as “the sort of person you want to have a beer with”.       And if the government didn’t do anything much in the wake of the “global financial crisis”, arguably it didn’t have to –  after all it was mostly a North Atlantic crisis, and when the crisis ended there, so did the worst of the backwash in the rest of the world.   But if you are in office, you tend to get the credit.

Of the other answers, the only one that really surprised me was the quite negative Pike River score.  Perhaps more people than I appreciated really did think the mine should have been re-entered to try to retrieve the bodies?

But of course the two results that really caught my eye are the ones I’ve highlighted in red.  Respondents clearly didn’t think, on balance, that John Key had done well in “getting the level of immigration into New Zealand right”,   and were really really negative on how well the “housing crisis” in Auckland had been handled.  Perhaps the phrasing was a bit emotive, but when 61 per cent of people thought Key had done a bad job, and only 14 per cent thought he’d done a good job, the overall message is pretty clear.   The public just don’t buy the profoundly dishonest line that Key and his successor have run, that somehow unaffordable house prices (and some of the worst house price to income ratios anywhere in advanced world) are “quality problems“.  They are, quite simply, a scandal, and a sign of near-total failure (economic and moral) of policy in this area.  And this from a party that once prioritised home-ownership, and notions of a property-owning democracy.

Instead, we now have a governing party (notionally from the centre-right) that can’t or won’t do anything much about freeing up urban land supply, and can but won’t do anything much about cutting back the flow of non-citizen immigration that aggravates and amplifies the housing affordability problems.   It looks a lot like a deliberate attempt to skew wealth towards those who already have it, away from those who don’t.  I don’t suppose it is quite so deliberate, but the effect is the same.

I happened to have the 1975 National Party manifesto on my desk.  They had some really flaky stuff to say about housing –  a bit of that below –  but at least there was some realism on this specific point.

“The first way we will do this is by admitting honestly that we cannot create a better environment when people are pouring into the country faster than anybody can provide houses –  any kind of houses.  Thus immigration will be cut from the current rate of 30000 per year to around 5000.  This will give us the breathing space we so desperately need.”

National was in opposition then.  But it would be a good line for Opposition parties this year –  or for the government –  even if they all think they are really serious, this time, about sorting out the dysfunctional, over-regulated, urban land supply market.

As I said, that 1975 National manifesto had some astonishing stuff on housing.  I suspect it wasn’t unique to them.  The Values Party –  sometimes regarded as the world’s first environmental party –  did rather well in the 1975 election, getting 5 per cent of the vote in an FPP election.   And I doubt the Labour Party’s stance then would have been that much different.  But here is what the National Party –  just about to score a huge landslide victory –  was promising:

National has developed a complete plan for “the cities”.  And in doing so has become the first political party in New Zealand to include a serious urban development programme in its election policy.

…..

First, we will make moves to limit urban sprawl.  Second, we will set out to save the beauty that already exists.  And third, we will ensure that all new buildings contribute to an improved environment, at all times remembering that cities are people and that the social factors are all-important.

When a city sprawls, it destroys productive farmland and inevitably this also leads to decay in the inner city.  But sprawl can be stopped.  It has been done overseas and we will do it here.  We will change the Town and Country Planning Act to provide legal powers to literally “fence off” the cities.

….

….the government will encourage and finance new and better forms of high density housing.  This will not mean high rise apartments. We will build not just houses, but whole new communities. Ones in which people will want to live.

And so we have metropolitan urban limits, rural/urban boundaries, and all the associated restrictions that have given a land-abundant country some of the more expensive suburban and urban-periphery land around.  It was bad policy then, as it is now, but for the 15 years or so after those words were written New Zealanders were protected from the worst of it because population growth was very sluggish –  between the exodus of New Zealanders to Australia, and the reduced inflow of non-citizen immigrants.

What worries me now is that both main parties seem to believe, in principle at least, in freeing up urban land supply.  But it remains a great deal easier to pledge allegiance to that principle, than to do something serious about it.  Eight and half years into this government and very little has been done, even though the rhetoric has been roughly right since before they came to office.  Perhaps a Labour-Greens government really will be different, but if one is to take that prospect seriously perhaps it would be a good to see some agreed “Housing affordabilty and land use rules”, to match the recent welcome budget responsibility rules.      Not much has been heard from the Greens on this since their co-leader last year courageously advocated a substantial fall in house prices.     And the Greens historically have had a lot of sympathy with lines like those in that National Party 1975 manifesto.

I’m all for liberalising the urban land market.  But there needs to be a lot more realism about the prospects of substantial change.  I don’t favour cutting our immigration targets mainly for house price reasons –  in principle at least, that problem could be better dealt with in other ways –  but given the scale of the housing problem, the clear public discontent over housing unaffordability, and the much greater ability for governments to adjust immigration targets than to put in place new planning laws, it simply seems reckless –  and frankly ideological –  not to wind back quite substantially our target rate of non-citizen immigration.    For the Greens, who put a lot of emphasis on the physical environment, and for Labour –  historically the party of the working class New Zealanders –  it should really be a natural policy call.   I’m not sure why it seems not to have been so far.    Perhaps it is just fear of being tarred as somehow like Trump or Le Pen or whoever, even though our rate of legal immigration is typically far higher than those in almost any OECD country (a bit ahead of even Canada).    But even if your own natural biases are somehow pro-immigration, surely it is now past time to take a hard look at the New Zealand experience:  New Zealanders’ incomes haven’t been boosted by large-scale immigration, and housing for their children is rendered ever-more unaffordable by the toxic mix of planning restrictions and rapid population growth.  It is well past time to be cutting the immigration targets quite severely.

Of course, not everyone agrees.  I notice that the New Zealand Initiative has a new report out, Manifesto 2017 , outlining in very upbeat style their recommendations for what the next government should do.  It is 80 pages long, and I might offer some thoughts when I’ve read it, but I did do a quick search of the document for references to immigration policy, especially in light of the very recent Initiative report on that topic (which I reviewed in a series of posts).  There wasn’t much, but I did find this

Our report The New New Zealanders argues few countries have as successful
migration and integration policies as New Zealand.  It is yet another aspect of New Zealand to be proud of and celebrate.

If only it weren’t for those pesky unaffordable house prices, and levels of productivity that languish far behind those of other advanced economies.  It would good, just once, to see the evidence of the “success” –  for New Zealanders –  of our immigration policy.

In passing, this weekend has brought up the second anniversary of my move to become a stay-at-home parent, and thus the effective second anniversary of this blog.      I’ve been thankful for all the readers and the various comments/challenges various of you pose at times.  A while ago my 13 year old son asked me how long I’d keep going with the blog.  I responded that it might be two years or it might be 30 years, depending on whether I still had things to say, still had readers, and whether doing the blog came at an opportunity cost, to other things I might want to do, that outweighed the fun and stimulus I’ve had from continuing to do it.    There are rare days when I wonder if I still have much to say, that hasn’t been said 10 times already.  Then again, the other day I found a list on my desk dating back to 2015 of various topics I could usefully cover.  Many of them I still haven’t got to, and indeed I noticed this morning a book in a pile by my bed that I’ve been meaning to write about since I began.  So, for the time being at least, I’ll keep on as I have been.

Fiscal policy: in defence of the last Labour government

Michael Reddell Fiscal policy, labour party

Bryce Wilkinson of the New Zealand Initiative was out yesterday with a comment, in the Initiative’s weekly newsletter, on the Labour/Greens proposal to establish a fiscal council.  I wrote about –  and welcomed – that proposal a week or so back.

Until I saw Bryce’s note, I had forgotten that the New Zealand Initiative had proposed the establishment of a fiscal council.   So add their names to the list of supporters:  the OECD (the technocratic wing of the European centre-left) favours a fiscal council, the Treasury’s independent reviewer of fiscal policy (a long-time senior IMF official) recommended a fiscal council, the New Zealand Initiative favoured a fiscal council, and even the (fairly right wing) 2025 Taskforce (of which Bryce was a member) favoured looking at something like a fiscal council.  And now our Labour Party and Green Party also do.   As many other OECD countries now have something of the sort, it all seems to amount to a reasonably strong case.

Of course, doing it well would be a challenge –  getting a succession of the right people would really matter.  But that is true of many of our public watch-dog and monitoring roles.

As Bryce notes, the current National-led government hasn’t adopted the recommendation.

Why not? Probably, it sees little need given its proven commitment to restoring fiscal surpluses. True virtue is its own witness. Establishing a superfluous agency to attest to its virtue would undermine it. To which our churlish response is that fiscal virtue is as ephemeral as the political winds and John Key’s promise to steer clear of New Zealand Superannuation was less than fiscally virtuous.

And he then asks

So why are Labour and the Greens on the virtuous side of this issue? After all, the last Labour government left National facing fiscal deficits for as far as the average geriatric eye could see.

That observation likely answers the question. Newly found virtue lacks credibility. Governments that can’t make credible commitments are weak governments. However, we hasten to add that this does not make it less of a virtue. A commitment to fiscal virtue is a fine thing.

I’ve already pointed out privately to Bryce that that seemed more than a little unfair to the previous government.   Let me explain why.

It is certainly true that when the current government took office in November 2008, official fiscal forecasts showed large deficits for many years into the future.  But the last fiscal initiatives of the outgoing Labour government had been the 2008 Budget, the parameters for which were set out in the Budget Policy Statement released at the end of 2007.

Throughout much of the previous Labour government’s term of office, a key theme of fiscal policy developments had been the surprising strength in revenue.  It was, in many respects, why the fiscal surpluses were so large during those years –   Treasury and the government kept being taken by surprise, and Treasury was (prudently) cautious about treating the surprises as permanent.  If it was just a series of one-offs, or something cyclical, it wouldn’t have made sense to increase spending or cut taxes in response.

The Treasury gradually revised upwards their assessment of the underlying fiscal position.  Unfortunately, they took a particularly optimistic stance by the end of 2007.  I can recall the then Prime Minister making much of the fact that Treasury was now assuming that most of the revenue gains would prove permanent (and thus could support some mix of increased spending and lower tax rates) without the risk of dropping back into deficits.  I joined Treasury on secondment in mid-2008 and I have seen documents written to the Minister of Finance during early 2008 stating that reassessment.  I was under the impression that some had been released, perhaps as part of the pro-active release of 2008 Budget papers, but on checking that link on the Treasury website, I couldn’t see the paper in question.

But the facts of the reassessment aren’t in dispute.  Several Treasury staff produced a paper last year on the process of getting back to surplus, including the background to the deficits.  Here is what they had to say

Over the period 2005-2008, the Treasury increased its estimates of structural revenues by around 1 percentage point of GDP each year, and by 2008 the Treasury considered most of the operating surplus was “structural”

and

When the tax reductions [along with further spending increases] were announced in Budget 2008, the Treasury was still predicting the operating balance to remain in surplus through the forecast period, albeit at a lower level.

With the benefit of hindsight, the degree to which the surpluses were structural was overestimated. Although the tax reductions announced in 2008 turned out to be well-timed from the perspective of stabilising the economy following the GFC, their permanent nature added to the subsequent structural deficits.

Here is the chart from the 2008 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update.

Figure 2.6 – Total Crown OBEGAL

Figure 2.6 - Total Crown OBEGAL.

Source: The Treasury

That document was signed off  by the Secretary to the Treasury as representing his best professional assessment of the economic and fiscal outlook, incorporating the effects of announced government policy.  In New Zealand –  unlike many countries – the forecasts are those of the professional advisers, not those of the Minister of Finance.

On the basis of the economic and fiscal information available to it, the Treasury has used its best professional judgement in supplying the Minister of Finance with this Economic and Fiscal Update. The Update incorporates the fiscal and economic implications both of Government decisions and circumstances as at 9 May 2008 that were communicated to me, and of other economic and fiscal information available to the Treasury in accordance with the provisions of the Public Finance Act 1989.

John Whitehead
Secretary to the Treasury

14 May 2008

The projected surpluses by the end of the forecast period were tiny –  essentially the budget was projected to be in balance by then.  The economic and revenue outlook had worsened over the first few months of 2008, after the broad parameters of the Budget had already been sketched out in the BPS.   As we now know, New Zealand was already in recession by May 2008.   But on best Treasury advice, the then Labour government thoiught they were leaving an essentially balanced budget, on top of an already very low debt level, not deficits.

Of course, the government was wrong in that assumption.  But, specifically, Treasury was wrong in its best professional advice.    Perhaps the government would have run quite expansionary discretionary fiscal policy anyway, even if Treasury had been less optimistic about how permanent the revenue was.  They were, after all, behind in the polls, and the PM’s office –  didn’t Grant Robertson work there? –  would no doubt have been putting a lot of pressure on the Minister of Finance.  But that hypothetical didn’t arise.    They didn’t have to make such awkward political choices –  their own professional advisers told them they could have tax cuts and spending increases, and still keep the budget in (modest) surplus.  The Opposition National Party shaped its, more generous, tax cutting promises on much the same sort of Treasury forecasts and estimates.  (And a few years earlier, the 2005 election had partly been a bidding war as to how best to spend the surplus –  not whether there really was a structural surplus).

It wasn’t Treasury at its finest.  It is, perhaps, a reason to be cautious about just how much a fiscal council might add.   Would such a body, faced with similar circumstances –  a long succession of revisions upwards in revenue –  have really reached materially different judgements about the outlook then?  Perhaps.  We can’t know, but back in 2008 Treasury was using its best professional judgement, and the mistakes were still made.

There is a bit of a tendency afoot to suggest that the current National-led government has done a better job of fiscal management than the previous Labour government did.  I’m not really convinced by that story.   I’d accept that the previous government might have had an easier job than the current government has –  since one inherited modest but growing surpluses, while the other inherited deficits.  The current government had some nasty shocks (earthquakes) but also some of the best terms of trade in decades and the weakest wage pressures.      But if we expect our politicians to be guided by professional advice in areas like this, the previous government did what most orthodox opinion advised them to, keeping on delivering surpluses and reducing outstanding debt.  Probably they should have emphasised tax cuts more than spending increases, but this particular debate is about overall fiscal balances.

By the end of Labour’s term, government spending as a share of GDP was rising a lot –  but then Treasury was telling the government the money was there to spend.  And for all the talk of how the new Labour/Greens rules commit a new left-wing government to keep spending at around current National government levels, that level is around the average level that prevailed under the previous Labour government.

core crown expenses

There are things I’d criticise about the previous government’s policy. Allowing big structural surpluses to build up, as happened in the first half of the term, set the scene for a big spend-up later (which would have been big tax cuts if National had won in 2005). It is probably better to recognise the limitations of knowledge and typically keep both surpluses and deficits small. But it is easier to say in hindsight than it might have been at the time.  And in 1999, the severe fiscal stresses of 1990/91 were pretty fresh in everyone’s memory.

Of course, this note has been a defence of the previous Labour government.  The Greens don’t have experience in government, and don’t have the same degree of historical credibility.    So in that sense, no doubt Bryce Wilkinson is right to argue that part of the motivation for the recently announced package is the desire to use commitments like this to help establish some credibility (even at the expense of burning off some of their own loyalists).

And I can only endorse Bryce’s final observation on the fiscal council proposal.

So three cheers to Labour and the Greens for this initiative. May they stick to it.