“Whichever is less”

Michael Reddell Governance, Reserve Bank

I’ve done a few posts over the last couple of months about the lawfulness of the Minister of Finance’s decision to appoint an acting Governor of the Reserve Bank for six months after the expiry, just a couple of days after the election,  of Graeme Wheeler’s term.  As a reminder, I had several times argued that making a substantive five year appointment, to commence just after the election would be inappropriate –  indeed, as Treasury officials advised, it would also be inconsistent with the long-established conventions that govern behaviour in the period close to a general election.  As a further reminder, I have no particular concerns about Grant Spencer; if the appointment is lawful I’m sure he will mind the store capably until a permanent appointment is made by the incoming government.

This post was written on the day the acting appointment was announced, this one following responses to my OIA requests for information relevant to the appointment, and this one from last week on an appeal to the Ombudsman, on the grounds that the public interest (including because of the extent of the powers that rests with any appointee) should lead to the release of any legal advice the Minister, the Board, and officials received on the legality of the appointment.

And there I would have left it, with perhaps a repeat post the day Spencer took office.  My main concerns were about (a) the lack of transparency about an unusual appointment (even if it is lawful), and (b) about the importance of laws being followed, even if the legally questionable appointment was, on the face of it, quite a pragmatic response to the clash of dates (election, and end of Governor’s term).   But they weren’t necessarily points of general interest.

But then a reader got in touch.  The reader wasn’t sure, reading the legislation, whether or not Spencer’s appointment looked lawful, but pointed out that the Reserve Bank Act vests all the powers of the Bank in the Governor personally.  Thus, if there were doubts about the validity of the appointment of a Governor (or in this case an acting Governor), that would appear to raise doubts about the validiity, and potential enforceability, of any actions taken by the Bank during the term of the acting Governor.  That got my attention.

After all, the Governor wields a great deal of power.  He sets the OCR, he sets much of prudential regulatory policy, he authorises enforcement actions against regulated entities, and the Bank –  under his authority –  undertakes large volumes (and values) of financial transactions in domestic and international financial markets.  All delegations to staff are delegations directly from the Governor.   And those are just the routine activities of the Bank.  But a big part of why we have a Reserve Bank is about crisis management –  whether in foreign exchange markets, the economy more generally, or some or all parts of the financial system.   Many of the crisis powers rest with the Minister of Finance.   But many of the operational bits rest with the Bank, in which, as already noted, all powers are vested in the Governor.  That is what a single decisionmaker structure means.  It was a deliberate and conscious choice by Parliament.   Of course, in any particular six month period –  the term of the acting Governor – one hopes the crisis management powers aren’t needed at all.  But crises can flare up quickly, and the last thing one wants is doubts about the powers of the Bank, or the authority of those purporting to exercise such powers, in the middle of a crisis.  Let alone legal action afterwards seeking to invalidate some or all interventions by our central bank.

So I want to go slowly and carefully through the reasons why I think

a) it is not lawful for the Minister of Finance to appoint an acting Governor when the full term of a previous Governor has expired, and

b) why any defects in the appointment of a Governor/acting Governor appear to raise serious doubts about the validity and enforceability of any actions take by the Reserve Bank during the term of any acting Governor.

And I will suggest two possible practical solutions.

The Reserve Bank Act clearly allows for an acting Governor in some circumstances.

Section 47 of the Act allows for the case where the Governor is absent or incapacitated.   If the Governor is on holiday, or indeed seriously ill, the deputy chief executive can act automatically.  But if both the Governor and the deputy chief executive are absent or incapacitated, an acting Governor must be appointed by the Minister on the recommendation of the Board.    There is no limit to the term of such an appointment, although by implication –  since it is to cover an absence of an appointed Governor –  it could last no longer than the expiry of the Governor’s own term.    This section of the Act has never been used, and is not relevant to the current appointment.

Section 48 of the Act covers a vacancy in the office of Governor.    The key bits read as follows

If the office of Governor becomes vacant, the Minister shall, on the recommendation of the Board, appoint….[a person] to act as Governor for a period not exceeding 6 months or for the remainder of the Governor’s term, whichever is less.

The critical phrase here appears to be “whichever is less”.      When Don Brash resigned as Governor in April 2002, there was about sixteen months to run on his term.  The then Minister appointed Rod Carr to act as Governor.    He could be appointed for as long as six months, because there was still sixteen months to run on “the Governor’s term”.  By contrast, on 26 September this year there will be no days left on the Governor’s term.  Graeme Wheeler’s term will have expired at midnight the previous day.   So an acting Governor can only be appointed for…….. zero days, since there are no days left on “the Governor’s term”.  In other words, the Act simply does not appear to allow an acting Governor appointment along the lines of the (purported) Spencer appointment.

This is all consistent with the fact that the Act makes no provision for a Policy Targets Agreement with an acting Governor (it isn’t needed within a Governor’s term, since there is already a PTA in place), even though the PTA is central to the monetary policy parts of the Act,  and that the Act requires all new appointments of a Governor to begin with a five year term.   The Minister and the Board can’t just appoint someone for a succession of short terms –  no matter how well-intentioned the reason –  and thus compromise the effective independence of that person.

It is also, perhaps, worth noting that the previous (1964) Reserve Bank Act –  the one in place when the policy and drafting decisions on the current law were being made  –  also made no provision for the appointment of an acting Governor after the completion of a Governor’s term  (section 18 here ).  Under that legislation there could be an acting Governor only during the term of an appointed Governor (if the Governor and Deputy Governor were absent or incapacitated).  And Governors had to be appointed for five year terms.

In other words, the drafting looks conscious and deliberate.   The 1989 Act explicitly added provisions allowing for an acting Governor when the Governor resigned or died, leaving a vacancy during his term.  But the Bank’s legislation has never, in at least 50 years, allowed for an acting Governor to be appointed to commence after the end of the previous Governor’s term.  But that is what the Minister of Finance, on the recommendation of the Reserve Bank Board, purports to have done (the Minister having received no advice from the Board on the legality of such an appointment).

Does it all matter?    Sometimes laws contain provisions stating that any problems in the appointment of an officeholder, or doubts about the validity of the appointment, don’t affect the validity of enforceability of the actions/decisions taken by that person.

In fact, the Reserve Bank Act has one of those provisions.    For the Board.  Under section 54(4)

The validity of any act of the Board is not affected by—

(a) any vacancy in its membership; or
(b) any defect in the appointment of a director; or
(c) the fact that any non-executive director is disqualified from appointment under section 58.

But there is simply nothing comparable for the Governor.

Curiously, there is protection for the Deputy Chief Executive when exercising delegated authority from the Governor.   Under section 51

The fact that the Deputy Chief Executive exercises any powers or functions of the Governor shall be conclusive proof of the authority to do so, and no person shall be concerned to inquire whether the occasion for doing so has arisen or has ceased.

But there is nothing like it for the Governor, or any acting Governor.  There is simply a requirement on the Board and the Minister to make a proper appointment, and to have that person in place once the previous Governor’s term ends (and presumably an expectation that Governor appointments are sufficiently high profile, and as all powers of the Bank rest with the Governor, no questions should ever arise about the authority of the Governor him or her self to make decisions.

(Again, it is perhaps worth noting that there are also no such protections in the 1964 Act – the one in place when the 1989 Act was being drafted.  The drafters presumably made conscious choices about what to add and what not to.)

Perhaps some legal expert has an authoritative interpretation of these statutory provisions suggesting that

  • an appointment like that of Spencer is legal, and
  • even if there are any doubts, nonetheless there would be no basis to question the legality of the actions of the Bank during his term as “acting Governor”.

If so, surely they now owe it to us to release that advice, or even a summary of the argumentation that led the Minister to conclude that, under the existing statutory provisions, he could appoint Spencer as acting Governor.  Failure to do so appears to leave real doubt about the authority for any actions the Bank takes, or purports to take, during Spencer’s term.     It isn’t a remotely satisfactory situation for such a powerful agency, especially when –  since many routine decisions could simply be deferred –  a big part of the Bank’s responsibility is crisis management.  That uncertainty should unsettle financial market participants here and abroad, it should unsettle Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee (charged with monitioring the Bank), it should unsettle entities regulated by the Bank, and –  given the pervasive reach of many of the Bank’s powers –  it should unsettle citizens more generally.  It simply isn’t a satisfactory situation.

But it is a relatively easily remediable one.    The first option would have been simply to have offered Graeme Wheeler a six month extension on his term.  There are no restrictions on the term of any reappointment of the Governor.  It is a common way to deal with difficulties –  whether logistic or political/constitutional –  in appointing a new chief executive.     Had this option been taken there would have been no doubts about the invalidity of any of the Bank’s actions during that term.   We don’t know whether the Board/Minister refused to countenance another six months of Wheeler, or whether Wheeler simply wanted to be out as sooon as possible.  Given the legislative restrictions, and the election-related constraints, neither would –  on the face of it – seem to have been a particular responsible, public-spirited stance.  Presumably the Wheeler extension option is no longer available, but if it is it should be revisited urgently.

The second option would be for Parliament to act.  With the agreement of the Opposition parties it would be easy and quick to pass a single substantive clause amendment allowing for the appointment of an acting Governor to cover the period 26 September 2017 to 25 March 2018 (the period envisaged for the Spencer acting appointment).   In this case, the acting appointment is a pragmatic solution, but done without legal authority.  So don’t rush to change the legislation permanently –  it looks likely to be back in the House next year whoever wins the election –  but the acting “appointment” itself could easily be validated. It might be a little embarrasing to do so, but it would be a one day wonder, and a small price to avoid any doubts about Bank actions during the acting Governor period.

Of course, the other way would be to appoint Spencer to a five year term as Governor, on the implied expectation that he would resign after six months.   But that is how we got into this situation in the first place.  The conventions around election periods strongly discourage making substantive appointments to powerful public offices, when the appointee would take up the position close to, or shortly after, a forthcoming election.

(This is one of those issues on which I would really like to be wrong.   But I’m increasingly uncomfortable that an error was made by the Minister of Finance and the Bank’s Board.)

What to make of the CPI?

Michael Reddell inflation

The media headlines make a lot of the fact that yesterday’s CPI puts annual headline inflation above the 2 per cent target midpoint (and contractural focal point) for the first time since 2011.  The Governor has almost completed his five year term, so it is a first sight for him.

Of course, current headline inflation isn’t the focus of monetary policy.  The almost-expired Policy Targets Agreement (PTA) explicitly tells the Governor to focus on “future” inflation, and the “medium-term”.  In longstanding words:

For a variety of reasons, the actual annual rate of CPI inflation will vary around the medium-term trend of inflation, which is the focus of the policy target. Amongst these reasons, there is a range of events whose impact would normally be temporary.

There are almost always plenty of those.  There are genuine market prices that are quite volatile – oil/petrol prices and fresh fruit and vegetables are the two most obvious examples.  There are discretionary government charges –  eg ACC levies –  developments in which have very little to do with underlying pressures in the economy.  And there are straight out consumption taxes that appear directly in the CPI, but again have little or nothing to do with real resource pressures (or even rates of money and credit creation).   GST changes – we’ve had them about once a decade –  are the best example, but the repeated large increases in tobacco excises this decade are another.  Exchange rate changes can also muddy the waters.

As I noted in a post a few months ago, monetary policy works –  which shouldn’t surprise anyone, but apparently does –  and we’ve seen this as part of the explanation for an increase in inflation over the last year or so.   Some increase should be very welcome, since the various core measures had been dropping further below the target midpoint, and people appeared to becoming more used to treating as normal inflation outcomes well below 2 per cent.  Reversing the ill-judged OCR increases of 2014 seems to have dealt with that problem/risk for now –  although we (like most other advanced countries) remain quite exposed when the next recession hits.

Quite how much core inflation has really increased is a bit of an open question.   In various previous posts I’ve highlighted a selection of six possible measures.  Here they are again for the year to March 2017.

Annual inflation rate
Yr to March 2017
CPI ex petrol 1.7
Weighted median 2.2
Trimmed mean 2.2
Factor model 1.8
Sectoral factor model 1.5
CPI ex food and energy 1.6
Median 1.75

The sectoral factor model measure was the Governor’s avowed favourite measure.  A year or so ago, it was the highest of the six measures of core inflation.  Right now, it is the lowest.     Historically, it tends to be the most stable of all the measures, and although prone to revisions as new data are added, it probably does deserve more weight than the other measures.  That measure of core inflation picked up about 18 months ago, but has been steady at 1.5 per cent for the last year or so.

I am sensitive to the suggestion of cherry-picking data.  From memory, I was inclined to de-emphasise the core inflation number a year ago, so I don’t want to suggest now that it is the only variable that matters.  But in many countries, quite a bit of attention is paid to CPI ex food and energy measures as a proxy for core inflation, and the picture isn’t much different there.    It would be interesting to understand quite why the trimmed mean measure – one given quite a lot of attention in Australia – has moved around so much.  It was as low as 0.4 per cent (annual inflation) as recently as the end of 2015.

But if core inflation has picked up a bit, there is little in the data that suggests it is, or is about to, race away.    When I opened up the SNZ CPI tables, a few things caught my eye:

  • on the first page, I noticed that quarterly non-tradables inflation (and non-tradables tends to be more persistent, and hence attract more policy focus) had been 1.0 per cent.  That was exactly the same rate as in the March quarter of 2016, and a little lower than in the three previous March quarters.  (Non-tradables inflation is high in the March quarter because of the succession of tobacco tax increases.)
  • one of my favourite series is non-tradables inflation excluding central and local government charges and tobacco taxes.  March quarter inflation there was 0.6 per cent, lower than in the March 2016 quarter (and also lower than in the September and December quarters).
  • construction costs look like a potential pinch-point in the economy, and yet the seasonally adjusted data on construction cost inflation (and, in fact, property maintenance costs) both showed quarterly inflation rates for March quite a lot lower than we were seeing for much of last year.

Wage inflation measures are probably also relevant here, not so much through some sort of “cost plus” model of inflation, but because developments in the labour market will also be a good reflection of overall resource pressure (and the wage aggregates aren’t so affected by tax changes, government charges and similar one-offs –  although they will be affected, in future, by arbitrary policy interventions like “pay equity” settlements).   In some ways, wage measures might be a better (if politically infeasible) policy target for monetary policy.

Here is a chart of the Labour Cost Index (LCI) inflation, using the raw “analytical unadjusted” series.

LCI analytical

There isn’t evidence of much, if any, pick-up there, and perhaps especially not for the private sector.   The headline LCI numbers aren’t much different and the (volatile) QES data are even weaker.

We’ll get another round of labour market data in early May.  Perhaps there will be more signs of an acceleration in wage inflation, or even a material drop in the unemployment rate (suggesting that excess capacity is dissipating and, hence, future inflation risks may be rising) but for now probably the best one can say is that macro outcomes are suggesting that the OCR set at current levels might have been about right.   With the unemployment rate still above estimates of the NAIRU, and most indicators of inflation suggesting that core is probably (a) still below target, and (b) not picking up very rapidly, it certainly isn’t time for hawkish talk about near-term OCR increases.

I’ve noticed some market economists talking of altering the timing for their first expected OCR increases.  I guess it is an occupational hazard for them having to make such calls, still mostly about the far future.  But such are the uncertainties –  about the global environment, the domestic economy, the inflation process, let alone about who will be Governor (or MPC) and what the PTA will look like –  that it seems something of a fool’s errand.  It would, in many ways, be good if the next warranted OCR move were to be an increase, but such are the limitations of our knowledge that probably the best we can say at present is that the current OCR is probably the best prediction of the OCR for the next year or two, with reasonably wide confidence intervals around even that prediction.

Finally, Paul Walker at the University of Canterbury had an interesting and useful post yesterday on his blog highlighting the way that relative price changes muddy reported headline measures of “inflation”.   As he notes, and I have already noted here, getting at the “pure” inflation rate is both important but not necessarily that easy.

Walker links to an old paper by a couple of US academics highlighting the possibilities of factor analysis to distill the underlying trends, the “pure inflation”.  That is much the same approach used in the Reserve Bank’s preferred sectoral core factor model.  Here is Walker.

Using US data Reis and Watson found that

… most of the movements in conventional measures of inflation like the Consumer Price Index (CPI), its core version, or the GDP deflator are due to relative-price changes. Only around 15-20% of the movements in these measures of inflation correspond to pure inflation.

Given that they had measures of relative price changes and pure inflation Reis and Watson could look for evidence of money illusion in their data. They found that once they controlled for relative price changes, the correlation between (pure) inflation and real activity is essentially zero. So,

… when we see that high inflation typically comes with low unemployment or high output, this is indeed driven by the change in relative prices hidden within the inflation measure. When there is pure inflation, that is when all prices increase in the same proportion independently from any relative price changes, nothing happens to quantities.

Which would be fine (and it is a while since I looked at that paper), but here is a chart for New Zealand showing the Reserve Bank’s sectoral factor model measure of core inflation, and the unemployment rate.

U and P

Of course, there are other things going on in both series (including changes in inflation targets and inflation expectations).   And the sectoral core measure probably isn’t a perfect representation of core inflation.  But it is pretty clear that, in New Zealand, there is a (expected) short to medium term relationship between real activity measures (indicators of excess capacity) and developments in inflation even when many (if not all) of the “pure” relative price changes are stripped out.

Immigration data

Michael Reddell Immigration

MBIE does a pretty good job of releasing annual immigration data, albeit with quite a long lag.   Their Migration Trends and Outlook publication is full of interesting charts, and the accompanying spreadsheets have a rich array of data about people applying for visas to live in New Zealand, temporarily or permanently.     But the 2015/16 issue, covering the year to June 2016, was released in late November last year.    But it is now late April 2017 and we won’t have any official data made generally available until, presumably, late November this year.   Given the significance of immigration in the New Zealand economy, let alone in the political and social debate, it is staggering that only annual data are available, and even then with quite a long lag.     I’m surprised that, for example, Statistics New Zealand does not put more pressure on MBIE to bring its immigration statistics up to the sort of standard we expect in other areas of the economy.  Apart from anything else, nature abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of good timely (readily useable) immigration approvals data, people fall back on using the Statistics New Zealand permanent and long-term migration numbers, which (a) aren’t that accurate, as SNZ research itself has found, and (b) aren’t a good basis for analysing immigration policy developments (immigration policy affecting only non New Zealanders).

And in this day and age, the data must be quite readily available internally –  it isn’t, presumably, as if they are using paper-based systems and only compile the aggregates once a year.   I’d urge MBIE to look at upgrading their publication of statistics.    Key data –  approvals under each visa stream and main category –  should be able to be made available monthly, within days of the end of the month, and should (as relevant) be published on a seasonally adjusted basis (as most other official economic data are).   The sorts of detailed tables published with Migration Trends and Outlook should be published quarterly, and again it is difficult to see why we should expect, or tolerate, a lag of more than four weeks after the end of the relevant quarter.  It takes SNZ much longer than that to calculate GDP, of course, but immigration approvals data is all generated inside MBIE.    All this data should, in turn, be made available on the Statistics New Zealand platform  Infoshare.    To the usual complaint, when better data is sought, that “there is no money” my response is twofold: first, this is a really major component of New Zealand and social life, and timely information would inform a better debate and analysis, and second, immigration (including the associated research and analysis) is supposed to be self-funding.  If the fees aren’t quite high enough to cover the regular production of good data (all from internal systems) put them up (a very little surely).    In the meantime, it is tempting (but would be tedious) to lodge an OIA request for the data on the last day of each month, which would at least ensure it was available 20 working days later.

As an inadequate, but perhaps convenient for them, substitute for good generally-available data, MBIE does seem from time to time to provide bits and pieces of data to selected journalists.   That is no way to run a democracy.

A small example leapt out at me as I read today’s Herald over lunch.   In an article on yesterday’s announcement we find that:

In figures released exclusively to the Herald, a Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment sample of more than 600 skilled migrant category applications being considered as at March 1 found more than two in five would not have met the new income threshold.

Just 42.5 per cent of applicants earned over the New Zealand median income of $48,859 per year and 14 per cent earned over $75,000.

The figures are staggering.  Recall that skilled migrant principal applicants make up only about half of those granted approvals for residence.  These are (the bulk of) the “best and brightest” of those we bring here –  others are partners, children, family members, refugees, and Pacific Access people, who themselves wouldn’t get over the Skilled Migrant category thresholds.

Now, sure, it is a small sample (600 of the SMC applications being considered) –   and there seems to be a potential contradiction between the two sentences in that paragraph –  but at best it seems that only around half of the skilled migrant applicants earned more than the new, quite modest, income threshold.   Sure, the median income numbers cover people of all ages, and most SMC principal applicants are between 20 and 40, but….these have been the transformative skilled migrants MBIE and successive governments have been counting on to help transform the economy, and lift our dismal productivity, and that is all they can command in the labour market?  Really?

I suspect the Reserve Bank and Treasury are now paying freshly minted 21 year old economists, with just an honours degree, at least that $48,859 per annum by now.  And those people will achieve significant pay rises in the following few years.   In fact, on checking teacher salaries, a primary school teacher with a BA starts on $48165 per annum.     These will all be able people, but they are 21 or 22.   How can it make sense –  if our immigration programme is really skill-focused –  to be letting in as residents so many people who at, say, an average age of 30 can’t even command what a starting primary teacher makes?

Even though the official rhetoric has long been skills-focused, it increasingly looks as though we’ve actually been somewhat closer to lower-skills end of the immigration spectrum.   There hasn’t been anything much in the way of productivity spillover –  which could really only come from the very able and innovative, and we’ve not attracted many of them –  and the evidence suggests that the low-skilled migration hasn’t done much for us either.  Recall that the advocates of high immigration both argue that high immigration of relatively low-skilled people hasn’t dampened native wages and that we benefit economically from low-skilled migration.   But if wages haven’t been dampened, it can’t –  under the totally orthodox neoclassical economic model –  have done any good for New Zealanders as a whole either.  And if they have….well, we know that despite all those inflows business investment has been weak (share of GDP) relative to population growth, the tradables sector has been weak, and we’ve seen little sign of any other sorts of gains.

Perhaps the data MBIE provided the Herald aren’t quite as bad as they look.  But we can’t tell, because MBIE provided the information simply to one media outlet and we rely on what their journalists made of it.   As a material piece of background to a major government policy announcement, that really isn’t good enough.

UPDATE: This interest.co.nz article, informed by MBIE, adds a bit of detail

An Immigration NZ spokesman told Interest.co.nz that the department undertook a random sample of more than 600 live SMC applications on 1 March. All applicants were claiming for employment at skill levels 1, 2 or 3 under New Zealand and Australian classifications (ANZSCO).

Of the sample, 57.5% were for roles offering less than the new threshold of New Zealand’s median wage, the spokesman said. That meant 42.5% were for roles with wages above $48,859. Meanwhile, 14% earned above $75,000. The results were given a margin of error of plus or minus 5%, the spokesman said.

 

Further thoughts on the immigration policy changes

Michael Reddell Immigration

Having had some more time to look at the details of the government’s announced changes to the Skilled Migrant category (the main stream under which residence approvals are granted) and the proposals they are consulting on for changes to the Essential Skills (temporary work) visas, I’m perhaps slightly more positive than I was yesterday.   Within the government’s overall vision of what immigration can offer New Zealand –  one that I think is profoundly incorrect, based not on a hunch about what might be,  but on decades of New Zealand’s actual experience with large scale immigration programmes – the changes look as though they will represent an improvement.    Even if one is sceptical about the overall vision, the changes (actual and proposed) are likely to modestly reduce the damage that high levels of non-citizen immigration is doing (holding back real productivity and earnings growth) to the material living standards of New Zealanders.   That is welcome.

What is there to like?     Take the Skilled Migrant category changes first (which are definite, not just proposals for consultation)

In future, applicants with jobs at ANZSCO skill levels 1, 2 and 3 (currently regarded as highly-skilled) will only be awarded points for their employment if they are paid at or above NZ$48,859 per year (or NZ$23.49 per hour).

Bonus points will be awarded for remuneration at or above NZ$97,718.00 per year (or NZ$46.98 per hour)

and, straight from the government’s document,

Work experience

  • More points will be available for work experience.
  • Points will be awarded for skilled work experience in ANZSCO skill level 1, 2 and 3 occupations.
  • Points will be awarded for skilled New Zealand work experience of 12 months or more. There will be no additional points for work experience of two years or more.

Qualifications, age and partner’s qualifications

  • Points available for recognised level 9 or 10 post-graduate qualifications (Master’s degrees and Doctorates) will increase.
  • Points for people aged 30 – 39 years will increase.
  • Partner’s qualifications will only be awarded points if they are a recognised Bachelor’s level degree or higher or a recognised post-graduate (level 9 or higher) qualification.

Which factors will applicants no longer be able to gain points for?

Points for the following factors will be removed:

  • qualifications in an area of absolute skills shortage
  • skilled employment, work experience and qualifications in Identified Future Growth Areas
  • close family support in New Zealand

The document is light on detail.  There is no sign of how many more points will be available for things like higher level qualifications,  but as I noted recently it did seem absurd that if one needed 160 points for residence, there was only 5 points difference between what was on offer for a basic qualification (in an age when bachelors degree are a dime a dozen) and those for masters or doctorates.  Academic qualifications aren’t everything –  I always remember a school teacher advising us of his view that “the PhDs are the plodders” –  but if we are aiming for skilled and innovative people, we probably should be more strongly differentiating between higher and lower level qualifications.   Similarly, I like the idea of more points for more highly paid jobs.

And if we considering giving people permanent rights to live here –  which is what the Skilled Migrant category is about –  we shouldn’t be preferencing people who happen to fit current shortages as judged by Cabinet ministers and MBIE officials.  We are taking people who, we hope, will contribute strongly over 30 or 40 years.

On the other hand:

  • the additional points on offer for jobs outside Auckland, added in last year, remain.   One understands the politics of those points, but they simply have the effect of lowering the average quality of the people who are granted residence (as people with lower skills etc who can get a job outside Auckland will beat out higher-skilled people with a job in Auckland,
  • the minimum wage in New Zealand is now $15.75 an hour.   I reckon that is too high –  it is one of the highest relative to median wages anywhere in the OECD –  but it is the government’s own choice, and they keep increasing it.    But to be regarded as doing highly-skilled work, under the changes announced yesterday, people will only have to be earning $23.49 per hour, or just under 50 per cent more than the minimum wage.    It is good that they have put a threshold in but it is a pretty undemanding one.  Of course, we don’t know how many people it will catch –  and neither apparently does the government –  but if it is many, the system to now has been working even more badly than most have realised.
  • relatedly, I’m not really sure why we are giving residence points to anyone with an skill level 4 or 5 occupation.  In fact, if one looks carefully at the ANZSCO skills lists (here – I suggest Table 5 on the first spreadsheet) it isn’t clear why many of the occupations in the skills levels 2 and 3 qualify for points.    Here is just one subset of the level 2 skilled occupations
Hospitality, Retail and Service Managers
141 Accommodation and Hospitality Managers
1411 Cafe and Restaurant Managers
141111 Cafe or Restaurant Manager 2
1412 Caravan Park and Camping Ground Managers
141211 Caravan Park and Camping Ground Manager 2
1413 Hotel and Motel Managers
141311 Hotel or Motel Manager 2
1414 Licensed Club Managers
141411 Licensed Club Manager 2
1419 Other Accommodation and Hospitality Managers
141911 Bed and Breakfast Operator 2
141912 Retirement Village Manager 2
141999 Accommodation and Hospitality Managers nec 2
142 Retail Managers
1421 Retail Managers
142111 Retail Manager (General) 2
142112 Antique Dealer 2
142113 Betting Agency Manager 2
142114 Hair or Beauty Salon Manager 2
142115 Post Office Manager 2
142116 Travel Agency Manager 2
149 Miscellaneous Hospitality, Retail and Service Managers
1491 Amusement, Fitness and Sports Centre Managers
149111 Amusement Centre Manager 2
149112 Fitness Centre Manager 2
149113 Sports Centre Manager 2
1492 Call or Contact Centre and Customer Service Managers
149211 Call or Contact Centre Manager 2
149212 Customer Service Manager 2
1493 Conference and Event Organisers
149311 Conference and Event Organiser 2
1494 Transport Services Managers
149411 Fleet Manager 2
149412 Railway Station Manager 2
149413 Transport Company Manager 2
1499 Other Hospitality, Retail and Service Managers
149911 Boarding Kennel or Cattery Operator 2
149912 Cinema or Theatre Manager 2
149913 Facilities Manager 2
149914 Financial Institution Branch Manager 2
149915 Equipment Hire Manager 2
149999 Hospitality, Retail and Service Managers nec 2

Plenty of good people do those jobs, no doubt. Such roles all have their place in a modern economy.  But this programme is supposed to be bringing in highly-skilled, able and innovative people who can help lift the overall productivity of the New Zealand economy.  If we were simply interested in getting ever more people then a coarse sifting like this might be fine, but the goal of the programme –  and this is the residence programme, not a short-term skill shortages programme –  is more ambitious, and supposedly transformative, than that.    Simply requiring a beauty salon manager to earn more than 1.5 times the average wage bears no relation to that ambition.

In a sense, the problem with the programme is that New Zealand just isn’t that attractive to very many of the sorts of people who might genuinely make a difference.  It is a nice place to live –  if you don’t mind being far from anywhere else –  and the living standards aren’t bad, but if you are young, energetic, innovative, and genuinely highly-qualified you are more likely to be interested in a lot of other places before New Zealand –  all the other Anglo countries (including Ireland) for a start, and probably most of Europe too (some places in Asia –  Singapore, Dubai – probably attract some too).  Mostly they are richer than we are, mostly they have bigger domestic markets, and all of them are closer to other places (home, other countries, other markets etc).    It is part of the reason why I argue for markedly pulling down our residence approvals target, because it would then help us focus on attracting the small number of people who might really benefit New Zealanders.

What of the proposed changes to the Essential Skills temporary work visa (details at the link above)?

They are a modest step in the right direction.   But –  seasonal roles aside perhaps –  it isn’t clear to me why we continue to grant “Essential Skills” visas for any one in any occupation at levels 4 and 5 on the ANZSCO list?    Perhaps people will be less inclined to come in future, especially if they have partners/spouses who themselves can’t qualify for a work visa.  Perhaps, but New Zealand wages are still well above those in –  say –  the Philippines, and there is a huge number of Filipino workers in a various advanced economies (eg Hong Kong, and various Middle East countries) doing relatively unskilled roles, even though they’ve had to leave families behind.   The proposed three year limit (at any one time) on how long people in these occupation groups could stay in New Zealand seems appropriate, to minimise the risk of people living here long term with no plausible path to residency.   But three years is a reasonable chunk of time for a short-term relocation (in my own career, I did three temporary roles abroad, each for two years at a time).    I’d also be more comfortable if even people in higher-skilled roles were only eligible for three year visas (instead of five years).  I’d happily allow a single three year extension for, say, jobs in skill level 1, but after that either the person should settle here permanently, or return home.

Sadly, there is also no sign of any real change in how the so-called labour market test is operated.   The most compelling labour market test isn’t that “an employer satisfy an immigration officer that they have made genuine attempts to recruit or train domestic workers” (or even that they have advertised at WINZ), but what has happened to the relative price paid for that sort of role.     If wages for a particular type of skill have risen, say, 10 percentage points more than the market average across the economy in the previous two years, it might be a pointer towards some sort of genuine “skill shortage”.  But in the whole immigration system, and particularly in the Essential Skills category, there is no hint that changes in wage rates should be a material indicator.   We should ue market price indicators more, and bureaucratic judgement (and the employer’s persuasive gift of the gab) less.

I noted yesterday that this announcement made no attempt to deal with the rort that is much of the student visa system.    That still appears to be true, but there might be some beneficial effects  nonetheless.   It may well be that foreign students, using the extensive right to work provisions the government introduced a few years ago,  may be  heavily represented among those doing notionally level 1,2 or 3 jobs are yet getting paid quite low wages (below than 1.5 times minimum wage threshold).  If so, you would expect that this package –  under which such jobs don’t count towards residence points –  might diminish the attractiveness of New Zealand PTEs.     Cutting back export subsidies is always a good thing.

Overall, I think my assessment yesterday was right.  This is a fairly modest unambitious package, that (deliberately) doesn’t attempt to seriously reduce the typical level of non-citizen immigration to New Zealand.  But it does take some steps that will help modestly raise the average skill level of those coming to New Zealand.  But the changes are small, and don’t address the medium-term challenges around non-citizen immigration to New Zealand.   Even given the desire to continue with large-scale non-citizen immigration, the government could easily have gone much further in increasing the focus on the really skilled and able people whom we might be able to attract.      I’m not sure why they won’t.  Probably they are too influenced by short-term employer pressures –  which are real, but which change if overall immigration policy is changed enough (because overall demand abates too) –  and by the siren call of high headline GDP growth.  All while the tradables sector, productivity, and per capita living standards do badly, and –  since the government refuses to do anything serious about freeing up land supply for housing, even when the votes are on offer  – the house price pressures just get worse.  It all works most against the younger and poorer New Zealanders, but isn’t helping most of the rest of us either.

A modest step that ignores the big picture

Michael Reddell Immigration

Many readers were probably expecting a post on the immigration announcement this morning.   I did an op-ed for Stuff on those changes, which is now up.

The leaders of our government are still, apparently, believers in the twin fallacies of (a) “big New Zealand”, which has been failing through decades of large scale non-citizen immigration, and (b) that somehow an increased supply of people in New Zealand eases (rather than accentuates) overall labour market pressures.  People generate demand as well as supply, and the New Zealand empirical evidence has long suggested that  –  as one would expect, from the increased capital stock requirements – those short-term demand effects outweigh the supply effects.    Consistent with those beliefs, today’s changes are at the margins only.  In general, they look like baby steps in the right direction, but since even they –  with all the analytical resource at their command –  won’t or can’t tell us how large an impact they expect, it is difficult to believe the effects will be large.

When I read the Minister’s speech I was briefly encouraged to find these words

“Today, I want to look at the benefits migrants bring to New Zealand”.

But I turned the page and found…..well…..nothing.    Still no empirical evidence –  narrative or more formal –  for the claims of benefits to New Zealanders.  And really not much more than the same old implication that more people expand the economy in total (well yes they do but that is hardly the point), no mention of productivity, and the same old firm-level stuff (that ignores overall economy perspectives) about easing labour market constraints.

I concluded my Stuff piece this way

Rapid population growth –  without great new economic opportunities – simply skews the economy inwards.  Successfully making it in global markets is the only reliable path for a small country to get and stay rich, and yet the relative size of our export sector is shrinking.   It is time to give up the “big New Zealand” or “big Auckland” ambitions that seem to have appealed to our political leaders for generations.  Focus instead on maximising what we can achieve with our own limited natural resources and our own abundantly talented skilled hardworking people.

As ever, in election year, the question is whether the main opposition parties will be prepared to offer something materially different.

Cosmetics (can) matter: Labour’s monetary policy proposals

Michael Reddell labour party, Monetary policy

I’ve already written a bit about Labour proposals on monetary policy (here and here) and, for now at least, I don’t want to write anything more about the proposed changes to the decision-making process or the plan to require the Monetary Policy Committee to publish its minutes.  If there are all sorts of issues around the details of how, I haven’t seen anyone objecting to the notion of moving from a single decisionmaker model to a a legislated committee, or objecting to proposals to enhance the transparency of the Bank’s monetary policy.    The Bank was once a leader in some aspects of monetary policy transparency, but is now much more of a laggard.

Where there has been more sceptical comment is around Labour’s proposal to add full employment to the statutory monetary policy objective.    At present, section 8 of the Reserve Bank Act reads as follows:

The primary function of the Bank is to formulate and implement monetary policy directed to the economic objective of achieving and maintaining stability in the general level of prices.

Responding to this aspect of Labour’s announcement hasn’t been made easier by the lack of any specificity: we don’t know (and they may not either) how Labour plans to phrase this statutory amendment.    There are some possible formulations that could really be quite damaging.  But there are others that would probably make little real difference to monetary policy decisionmaking quarter-to-quarter.  Probably each of us would prefer to know in advance what, specifically, Labour plans.  But this is politics, and I’m guessing that there is a range of interests Labour feels the need to manage.  In that climate, specificity might not serve their pre-election ends.  One could get rather precious on this point, but it is worth remembering that there are plenty of other things that may matter at least as much that we currently know little about.  Under current legislation, who becomes the Governor of the Reserve Bank matters quite a lot to shorter-term economic outcomes, and we have no idea who that will be.   The details of the PTA can matter too, and under the governments of both stripes the process leading up to the signing of new PTAs has been highly secretive (often even after the event).  For the moment, we probably just have to be content with the “direction of travel” Labour has outlined.

In some quarters, Labour’s plans for adding a full employment objective have been described as “cosmetic”, as if to describe them thus is to dismiss them.    That is probably a mistake.  When I went hunting, I found that cosmetics have been around for perhaps 5000 years (rather longer than central banks).   People keep spending scarce resources on them for, apparently, good reasons.     Why?  They can, as it were, accentuate the positive or eliminate the negative –  highlighting features the wearer wants to draw attention to, or covering up the unsightly or unwanted marks of ageing.    They (apparently) accomplish things for the wearer.

What is the relevance of all this to monetary policy?  Well, there has been a long-running discontent with monetary policy in New Zealand, especially (but not exclusively) on the left.  In the 28 years since the Act was passed there has not yet been an election in which some reasonably significant party was not campaigning to change either the Act or the PTA.  We haven’t seen anything like it in other advanced countries.   Personally, I think much of the discontent has been wrongheaded or misplaced –  the real medium-term economic performance problems of New Zealand have little or nothing to do with the Reserve Bank –  and many of the solutions haven’t been much better (in the 1990s, eg, Labour was campaigning to change the target to a range of -1 to 3 per cent and NZ First wanted to target the inflation rates of our trading partners, whatever they were).     But that doesn’t change the fact that there has been discontent –  and more than is really desirable.

I’m quite clear that there is no long-run trade-off adverse trade-off between achieving and maintaining a moderate inflation rate (the sorts of inflation rates we’ve targeted since 1990) and unemployment.  And since something akin to general price stability generally helps the economy function better (clearer signals, fewer tax distortions etc) there is at least the possibility that maintaining stable price might help keep unemployment a little lower than otherwise.  Milton Friedman argued for that possibility.

But I don’t think that is really the issue here.

Because it is not as if there are no other possible connections between monetary policy and unemployment.   Pretty much every analyst and policymaker recognises that there can be short-term trade-offs between inflation and unemployment (or excesss capacity more generally –  but here I’m focusing on unemployment).   Those trade-offs aren’t always stable, even in the short-term, or predictable, but they are there.    Thus, getting inflation down in the 1980s and early 1990s involved a sharp, but temporary, increase in the unemployment rate.  That was all but inescapable.  And when the unemployment rate was extremely low in the years just prior to 2008, that went hand in hand with core inflation rising quite a bit.  Monetary policy decisions will typically have unemployment consequences.    Unelected technocrats are messing, pretty seriously, with the lives of ordinary people.   It is all in a good cause (and I mean that totally seriously with not a hint of irony intended) but the costs, and disruptions, are real –  and typically don’t fall on the policymaker (or his/her advisers).

And it isn’t as if monetary policymakers are typically oblivious to the pain.   There was plenty of gallows humour around the Reserve Bank in the disinflation years, a reflection of that unease.  And yet often the official rhetoric is all about inflation –  as if, in some sense, what look like relatively small fluctuations around a relatively low rate of inflation, matter more than lives disrupted by the scourge of unemployment.

So perhaps that is why cosmetics can matter, and serve useful ends even in areas like monetary policy.     There isn’t that much difference, on average over time, in how the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Reserve Bank of Australia, or the Federal Reserve (or various other inflation targeting advanced country central banks) conduct monetary policy.   They each tend to react to incoming data in much the same way (again, on average over time).   In the financial markets, they probably each have much the same degree of “credibility” (people think the respective central banks are serious about their stated inflation targets).   And yet my impression is that the Federal Reserve, for example, talks much more about unemployment than the Reserve Bank of New Zealand does.   The Fed gives the impression that (a) it is aware, and (b) that it cares.  In the last decade or so at least, that has been much less so here.

In New Zealand, the problem has been compounded by a sustained period when the Reserve Bank turned out to have run monetary policy too tightly (including two tightening phases that had to be quickly reversed).  Over that period –  and today –  the unemployment rate (the number of people unemployed  – the phrase I always used to encourage staff to prefer when we replied to correspondence) has been persistently above estimates of the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment).

The Reserve Bank is entrusted with a great deal of discretion, in an area riddled with uncertainty and imprecision.  We don’t know exactly what the NAIRU is (nor does the Bank).  We don’t even know what “true” core inflation is, let alone what it will be over the 12-24 months ahead, the sort of period today’s monetary policy decisions affect. That makes signalling and symbols perhaps more important than otherwise.

It is also why lines like

“It is mathematically impossible to target two variables with one instrument.” 

while formally true, aren’t really the point here.   Voters –  or some subsets of them –  simply want to know that those other things matter –  and matter quite a lot –  to the people wielding the power.    And as there is quite a connection between monetary policy choices and fluctuations in the numbers of people unemployed, they aren’t irrational to do so.    After all, they might well note that the old argument –  “well if unemployment is too high, inflation will undershoot the target and the Bank will quickly correct that” doesn’t sound so compelling after years of an undershoot, and years when unemployment has lingered quite high.

There is a whole variety of ways to send the signals:

  • one can tinker with the PTA again (most of the changes of 28 years have had this quality about them –  including for example the current references to unnecessary variability in output, interest and exchange rates),
  • one can choose a Governor who is known to care (although typically technocrats won’t be much known at all),
  • one could require the Bank to publish estimates of the NAIRU and report regularly on how monetary policy was affecting the gap between actual unemployment and the NAIRU,
  • the Bank could regularly write about, or give speeches, highlighting the importance of unemployment (gaps) in its thinking, and expressing discomfort whenever unemployment has to be temporarily high.

Or one could tinker with section 8 of the Act and add a full employment reference.

Perhaps Labour actually has a combination of these sorts of approaches in mind.  Amending the Act is isolation might not do much (even in signalling and symbolism) in isolation, but it might encourage the appointment of a Governor who took seriously the concern (after all the Bank’s Board has to operate under the Act), and it might encourage the Governor, the Bank, and any future Monetary Policy Committee to address these issues more directly in their own communications.

And at a political level, if they are serious about prioritising full employment as one  over-arching goal of economic policy (which seems a worthy goal to me, even if there are good and bad ways of pursuing it), a change to the Reserve Bank Act might also signal –  what the monetary policy analysts already know – that in the medium to longer-term monetary policy and the Reserve Bank are no obstacle to full employment.

As I noted last week, in 1950 the incoming National government amended the Reserve Bank Act to specify an objective for monetary policy as follows

[The Bank] shall do all such things within the limits of its powers as it deems necessary or desirable to promote and safeguard a stable internal price level and the highest degree of production, trade, and employment that can be achieved by monetary action.

Something similar, in today’s language, seems at worst unobjectionable to me.  At best, it might strengthen public confidence in the Bank and encourage the Bank and its incoming Governor and Deputy Governor to convey with more conviction how seriously they take the overall economic environment –  real firms, real people –  within which the Bank exercises its considerable discretionary power.

Reflecting on all this over the weekend, another parallel struck me.  In wartime, the priority is to win the war.  In many ways it is as simple as that.  A single objective.   And yet combat generals, delegated power by political leaders, who become known as reckless with the lives of their men eventually forfeit trust, corroding the loyalty of those who serve them (and those who appoint them).   Wars involve losses of life, often heavy losses. No general can take on the role without being ready to see young men lose their lives, perhaps in very large numbers.  And yet –  at least in a free society –  we don’t want generals who are indifferent to the cost.  We want them to spend lives as if each one were precious.  Soldiers who believe that of their generals probably fight with more conviction and determination.  And societies give leeway and respect to those generals, allowing them to lead the battles that, in time, win the war.   It isn’t a dual objective –  in the end societies do what they need to to survive and prevail –  but it isn’t irrelevant either.

 

Bits and pieces

Michael Reddell New Zealand economic performance, OIA, Reserve Bank

As regular readers will know I have been uneasy about whether the Minister of Finance’s recent appointment of Grant Spencer as acting Governor of the Reserve Bank (while pragmatic) is in fact lawful.    I dealt with the issue first on the day the appointment was announced, and again when the Bank’s Board, the Treasury, and the Minister of Finance released material in response to my OIA request.

What made me most uneasy is that there was no suggestion in any of the papers –  whether the Board’s recommendation to the Minister, the Minister’s Cabinet paper, or in any of the various Treasury papers –  that officials, the Board, or the Minister had even considered seriously the lawfulness of such an appointment.  There is no summary of any legal advice in any of the papers, and no reference to the issue.  This is so even though the Act quite clearly makes the Policy Targets Agreement (PTA) the centrepiece of the balance between autonomy and accountability, and yet it makes no reference to the possibility of a PTA in a case where an acting Governor is appointed after a Governor’s term, and that Governor’s PTA, expires.   As an expression of good intent, the Minister of Finance and the incoming acting Governor have indicated that they expect policy will continue to be conducted according to the current PTA, but……(a) the whole point of the acting appointment is that Grant Spencer will take office a few days after the election (so the current Minister of Finance may be irrelevant) and (b) none of this is legally binding, even though the monetary policy provisions of the Act are built around quite detailed, and legally binding, rules.

All three agencies/people noted that they had withheld legal advice (from the Reserve Bank’s in-house lawyer and from Crown Law).  That wasn’t a surprise.   Protection of legal professional privilege is a grounds on which material can be withheld under the OIA.  But it is not an absolute grounds, and any possibility of withholding such material on that ground must first consider whether the public interest is such that the material should be released.  Recall that the whole point of the OIA is to allow more effective public scrutinty, accountability, and participation in public affairs.

I was initially inclined to let the matter lie.   But on further reflection, and having a look at some of the material the Ombudsman has put out in recent years (and a report of an even more recent decision), in which it has been ruled that either legal advice, or a summary of it, should be released, I have decided to lodge an appeal with the Ombudsman in this case.     It isn’t a case where, for example, the legal advice is contingent on facts known only to the parties commissioning the advice.  The relevant facts are all in the public domain already.  All that is being protected is the assessment of the interpretation of legislation on which powerful government entities are acting/advising.  If their interpretation of the acting Governor provisions is robust –  and it may well be –  then the Act is less robust –  in ensuring that the monetary policy decisionmaker is at arms-length from the Minister (not eg subject to six monthly rollovers), and yet is at all times subject to a legally binding accountability framework –  than had previously been thought.     There is a clear public interest in us being aware of any analysis the government, the Board, and the Treasury are relying on in making an appointment of this sort.  They act on those interpretations, and in so doing create “facts on the ground”.

I suppose it will take some considerable time for the Ombudsman’s office to get to this request –  perhaps even after the acting Governor’s term has ended –  but with the possibility of reviews to the Reserve Bank Act governance provisions in the next couple of years, it would still be valuable for this advice and intepretation (in full or in summary) to be put in the public domain. This is, after all, about the appointment and accountability provisions for the most powerful unelected public office in New Zealand.

On another matter altogther, I noted the other day that one of my readers, and periodic commenter, Blair Pritchard had published his own set of policy proposals for New Zealand.   Blair sets out seven policy goals and 15 policy proposals under the heading What’s a platform Kiwi Millenials could all get behind?    There is lots to like in his agenda –  and he graciously refers readers to some of my ideas/analysis –  although I’m sure most people, even non-millenials,  will also find things to strongly disagree with (for me, cycleways and compulsory savings –  although I’m also sceptical of nominal GDP targeting).      But I’d commend it to readers as a serious attempt to think about what steps might make a real and positive difference in tackling the challenges facing New Zealand.  And I really must get round to a post on a Nordic approach to taxing capital income –  one of the topics that has been on my list for two years now, and never quite made it to the top.   Cutting company taxes is the headline-grabbing option, and it would make quite a difference to potential foreign investors, but for New Zealanders pondering establishing and expanding businesses here, the company tax rate is much less important than the final rate of taxation on capital income which, in an imputation system, is determined by the personal income tax scale.   The Nordic approach quite openly sets out to tax capital income more lightly than labour income.   It isn’t a politically popular direction at present, but is the direction we should be heading, if we want to give ourselves the best chance of closing those persistent productivity chasms.

 

 

Still going nowhere: the government’s exports target

Michael Reddell Exports

The government’s target for a substantial increase by 2025 in the share of exports in GDP has been something of a hobby-horse issue of mine.  I’m sure it was well-intentioned (the thinking behind it probably recognises that successful economies, catching up with the most highly productive countries, typically experience a more rapid increase in exports than in GDP as a whole).  It isn’t that exports are special, just that (among other things) one measure of the success of one’s firms/industries is the ability to sell more and better stuff on the (much larger) wider world market.  That, in turn, enables us to import lots (more) of stuff from the rest of the world.

In parliamentary questions earlier in the week (number 8 here), Labour’s Finance spokesperson Grant Robertson was asking the Minister of Finance about that export goal, now expressed as aiming for real exports as a share of real GDP to get to 40 per cent by 2025.   Unfortunately, the government’s record on this item is so poor that one could almost feel sorry for the Minister, except that he devised the target and has repeatedly championed it.   He has also been the man behind such questionable “export subsidies” as the amped-up assistance to the film industry, and the large scale pursuit of foreign students attracted not so much by the excellence of our institutions as by the work and potential residence opportunities dangled in front of prospective students.   Export subsidies are just a bad idea, but export targets increase the risk of being tempted by such bad policies.

Statisticians (including those at Statistics New Zealand) advise against using ratios of real variables over long periods of time.  I know why the government and MBIE do it for exports (it abstracts from the direct effects of fluctuations in export prices and in the exchange rate), but it still isn’t really kosher.   Nonetheless, that is how they’ve expressed their target.    And here is the data, all the way back to 1987, and with the target level for 2025 highlighted in orange.

exports to GDP april 17

In his answer in Parliament, the Minister noted that the export share had been “remarkably stable for the last 10 or 12 years”.  Actually, make that more like 16 years.

Now somewhat oddly, in his answer the Minister of Finance kept referring to the recent drop in dairy export receipts as some sort of mitigating factor.    But that has been largely a result of the drop in prices, and the main reason for using the real exports to real GDP measure in the first place was to focus on volumes and abstract from the influence of fluctuations in global prices.   The drop in dairy prices is, for these purposes, simply irrelevant.

Incidentally, within that real exports measure we can break out the data on exports of services.  Between the political rhetoric around foreign students and tourism recently one might have supposed those bits would have been doing well.  And we are often told that “weightless” services exports are part of the way of the future.  But here are real services exports as a share of real GDP.

services exports apr 17

There was a bit of a pick-up a couple of years ago, but the current level is around a level first reached in 1995.

As the statisticians recommend, I prefer to look at ratios of nominal exports to nominal GDP.  There are no deflator problems, just the straight dollar value of what is exported from New Zealand and the dollar value of New Zealand’s GDP.  The trade-off is that there is bit more noise in the series.   Since neither series is mechanically controllable or even directly targetable in a market economy, I don’t think it is much of a loss.  Here is the chart of nominal exports to nominal GDP, again back to 1987.

exports to GDP nominal

Here the fall in global dairy prices does matter, but even then not in a straightforward way. After all, all else equal, when the price of our largest export falls one might expect the exchange rate to fall.   On this measure –  the simplest measure –  exports as a share of GDP are at a level not seen since the very last quarter of the 1980s.  A generation ago.

The Minister of Finance was also at pains to point out that over the last decade or so the pace of growth in world trade has slowed, and that is true (although a significant part of that has been the rebalancing of China’s economy).    So perhaps no one would hold it against him if the progress towards his own 2025 target –  now, as he notes, only eight years away –  was lagging a bit behind expectations.  But on his preferred measure there has been no progress at all.  On the better, if a little more volatile, measure things have been going backwards.     And yet this was the government that once had the ambition of closing the income and productivity gaps to Australia.

Australia provides an interesting comparison.  Here is the constant price ratio for them (the measure our government prefers for NZ),

aus exports to gdp.png

Historically, Australia had a materially lower export share of GDP than New Zealand – as one would expect in a larger country (where there is more scope for efficient profitable trade within national borders). And for a decade or so their real export share of GDP also went sideways, but for the last few years it has been rising again quite strongly.

They are also affected by changing commodity prices and exchange rates.  But here is the simple chart of nominal exports to nominal GDP.

aus exports to gdp nominal

It hasn’t been rising for some time.  But whereas our export share of GDP is back at 1989 levels, in 1989 Australian exports were about 15 per cent of GDP, now they are about 20 per cent.

That is the sort of change our government needed to be seeing (roughly a one third increase in the export share of GDP) if its 2025 exports target was to be met.   It looks exceedingly implausible at present.  There was no progress under the previous government, and has been none under the current government.  That strongly suggests something wrong with the policies both governments have been pursuing.

I like to think I’m an equal opportunity sceptic.  There is a little sign of the sorts of policies from the current government that will change this picture.  But while it is fine –  and no doubt fun –  to tease the Minister about the failure of his policies, we don’t yet know what policies, if any, Labour and the Greens will advance to have the economy change course, and shift to new higher levels of international trade.  Without something that does that, our prospects for closing sustainably any of the productivity or income gaps are slender to non-existent.

Slashing immigration really is quite easy

Michael Reddell Housing, Immigration, labour party

There is a story on the excellent new Newsroom site this morning on immigration.  When I printed it out at about 8am, it was running under the headline “Slashing net migration not easy”, although forty minutes later that had been revised to “Few answers to slashing net migration”.  [UPDATE: by 4:15pm the story is now running as “Slashing migration offers no easy answers”.]    Perhaps reflecting the preferences and presuppositions of the author, the URL for the story reads “immigration to rear its ugly head”, as if somehow there is something wrong with a serious discussion, in election year, about the number, and type, of people we allow to settle (or work) here.    But whether we should or not, if we (New Zealanders collectively) decided to cut back migrant numbers it is really quite easy to do so.  I’ll come back to that.

We are still waiting to see where Labour is going to land on immigration.   The other day housing spokesperson and campaign chair Phil Twyford was talking about what Labour might do on immigration.

Labour’s election chairperson Phil Twyford said Auckland was creaking under the weight of too many people and not enough investment in infrastructure.

and

Mr Twyford said details were still being worked out, but Labour policy would be to find a better balance.

“There is room to ease back particularly in the area of temporary work visas, and the blowout that has occurred in the so-called skilled migrant category.

“We think there’s flexibility there to ease back on the overall levels of immigration and that will take some of the pressure off Auckland.”

And yesterday Andrew Little was also commenting

Little said National had failed to manage immigration, especially by bringing in labourers when there were unemployed labourers here, and by the number of work visas issued.

But he said Labour would manage immigration, not cap it.

Bad as they are, stresses on Auckland –  housing or infrastructure –  aren’t the most compelling economic argument for cutting migrant numbers.  But if Labour is serious about making a difference there, it can’t just involve tweaks at the margin, or things that will affect numbers for just a year or two (since land markets, for example, will trade on expectations of future demand and supply pressures).  I guess we’ll see some details eventually.

What makes me sceptical that Labour’s talk in this area will amount to much is another comment from Andrew Little in the same article.

But asked if he welcomed signs Auckland house prices were falling, Little said no.

I’m sure there all sorts of political considerations about not scaring the (relatively small minority) of people who have taken on very large mortgages in the last few years, but really…….    When house prices in Auckland are ten times income a key marker of whether things are coming right will be a fall in house prices.   If all Little is saying is that prices will ebb and flow a bit, and that nothing structural has yet happened to reverse the inexorable trend rise in price to income ratios, then I agree with him.  But when houses are less affordable than they’ve ever been, we need politicians with the guts to say that they want to see house prices, especially in Auckland, a lot lower.

[UPDATE: In another report of the same interview Little confirms his reluctance to see prices fall    “Having the right number of houses, or closer to it, stabilises prices, it doesn’t collapse prices.”    That stance would be fine, if prices hadn’t got so out of whack over the last few decades. ]

It isn’t as if time will quickly take care of the problem if nominal house prices simply hold at current levels.  We have an inflation target centred on 2 per cent, so over time we can assume incomes will rise by around 2 per cent plus whatever growth in labour productivity the economy can manage.  For the last five years, that has been zero.     Here is what happens to price to income ratios, starting from 10 (around the current Auckland level) on three different productivity scenarios.

price to income scenarios

Depending on how optimistic you are, it could take 40 to 50 years to get house price to income ratios back to around three – the sort of level sustained over long periods in well-functioning US cities (and in many other places before land use regulation became the fashion). Perhaps you are sceptical New Zealand could get back to three. It would take 20 years or more just to get back to five.  That sort of adjustment makes the government’s NZS eligibility reform proposals look positively fast-paced.

But to revert to immigration –  which has the potential to play an important role in accelerating any adjustment that looser land use regulation, and perhaps even new government house building, might set in place –  Newsroom’s Shane Cowlishaw reckons there are few easy ways to cut immigration.    It is mostly quite a good article, made more difficult for the author by the refusal of either the Minister of Immigration or Winston Peters to be interviewed, and the fact that neither Labour nor New Zealand First have published any details of their policy in this area.

But, frankly, I think Cowlishaw’s conclusion is simply wrong.  It isn’t that hard at all, and actually the current government showed that with the baby steps they took last year (cutting the residence approvals target, and –  within that – suspending parent visas, and reducing the family category numbers).

I outlined what I’d do in a post a few weeks ago.   Here it is again, all focused on the bits of the net flow that are about immigration policy, the number of non-citizens we let in to live and work in New Zealand.

  1.  Reducing the residence approvals target from around the current 45000 per annum to, say, 10000 to 15000 per annum.  In per capita terms, that would be about the rate of legal immigration the US has, and would be similar to the rate we had in the 1980s.  Not exactly closing the door, but certainly pulling it over to some extent.
  2. Within that reduced target I would look to focus much more strongly on demonstrably highly skilled people (who offer the best chance of fiscal and productivity gains) and thus would
    • revisit, reduce and potentially eliminate the current Pacific access categories,
    • permanently eliminate parent visas, except (and even then capped) where there is an enforceable, insured, commitment to full financial support from the parent, or their New Zealand citizen child.
    • leave the refugee quota as it is
    • eliminate the additional points provided for job offers in regional areas (a measure that is tending to lower the average quality of the accepted migrants)
    • eliminate additional points for New Zealand specific qualifications,
    • eliminate additional points for jobs in areas of “future growth” or “absolute skill shortage”
    • more strongly differentiate points in favour of higher level qualifications,
    • perhaps establish a category akin to the US visa for those with extraordinary ability
  3. Eliminate the provision allowing foreign students studying here to work 20 hours a week.  If New Zealand tertiary institutions really have a product worth buying –  and some probably do –  they should stand on their own feet, as other exporters are required to.
  4. Reshape the work visa system with a view to (a) reduce the scope for lobbying and influence peddling, (b) reducing the total number of people here on work visas at any one time, and (c) provide much greater flexibility for employers to utilise work visa people for short specific periods in highly-skilled and well-remunerated roles.    Since there would be many fewer residence approvals places open (see above) this path would in any case be much less popular with prospective migrants.   Specific features might include:
    • no one could have a work visa for more than two three year stints
    • use an age-based matrix in which in normal circumstances no work visas might be issued to anyone under 30 for a role paying less than, say, (an inflation-indexed) $75000 per annum, increasing by (say) $25000 in each five year age window up to a cap so that for a person over 50 to get a work visas they would need to be in a role paying $200000 per annum or more.
    • no doubt there would need to be some exceptions to this, and it would not apply to say approvals for roles of less than perhaps three months, but the point is to get the focus not on official judgements of “skill shortages” but on attracting people, if we do, who are capable of commanding high salaries (loose proxy for skill) on market.

I’d also be rethinking (although this isn’t specific) the emphasis in the current points scheme on people who already have New Zealand work experience.  It was a well-intentioned reform –  a reaction against the experience in the 1990s of people coming in who for various reasons simply couldn’t get established in the New Zealand labour market using the sorts of skills/qualifications that got them entry in the first place.    But it has the effect of giving priority to relatively lowly-skilled people who managed to get in on temporary work or student visas, over people with much higher skills and much more potential to add value to New Zealanders over the long haul.

Little or none of these sorts of changes requires complex legislation. For better or worse, the details are mostly at the whim of the Minister or Cabinet.  They would make a substantial difference, and offer the prospect of a sustained reduction in the net inflow of non-citizens (although still lots of year to year variability in the PLT numbers, that include New Zealanders).   They would, among other things:

  • take immediate pressure off the housing market (current and expected future pressures),
  • lead to material downward revision in expected interest rates (possibly actual cuts, but at least pricing out any increases for a long time to come),
  • lead to a material fall in the nominal real and exchange rates, boosting the competitiveness of our struggling tradables sector,
  • force our export education industry to rely on the excellence of its product (or at least some mix of excellence and moderate cost) rather than what I’ve described as “export subsidies” from the immigration system.  Subsidies typically don’t build strong robust, sustainably internationally competitive, industries.  Rarely if ever have, rarely if ever will.
  • we’d strengthen regional economies relative to Auckland (an economy whose productivity growth has been underperforming even relative to that of the whole country),
  • get the government out of the business of picking winners in the labour market, or sectors/skills that somehow need a government hand on the scales to help them out, and,
  • over time, it would be likely to ease pressures holding down the wages of New Zealanders towards the lower end of the skill distribution.

Of course, the immediate response from much of the business sector is “but how will I get workers”.    It is a real and genuine issue for individual firms under current policy settings.   But individual firms simply don’t see the economy as a whole, or the adjustments that would take place across the whole economy if a policy package like the one I’ve outlined above was adopted.

Thus, individual firms treat migrant labour as increased labour supply.  And, for each of them, of course it is.  But migrants add demand as well as supply –  reasonable estimates (and the consistent historical view of New Zealand macroeconomists are that in the short-term the demand effects are stronger than the supply effects.  After all, immigrants have to live somewhere, shop somewhere, work in some building, and few bring their household appliances (etc) with them.  So an individual migrant might indeed ease an individual employer’s labour availability issues –  and if there are lots of migrants in a specific sector, they might even ease those constraints for the sector –  but for the economy as a whole:

  • in the short-term high inward migration exacerbates overall labour shortages in the economy, and
  • in the longer-term, high migration makes little or no difference to overall labour shortages (or, eg, to the unemployment rate).

That is true even if all the typical economist pro-immigration arguments, including those about potential productivity spillovers, hold  (which, of course, I don’t think they have in modern New Zealand).

So what would happen if a government were to announce a package like the one I’ve outlined above?  I’ve already sketched it out at a high level above.  But here is a bit more colour and flavour.

Whole sectors of the New Zealand economy employ many more people than otherwise because our population is growing so rapidly.   Activity in those sector would shrink, perhaps quite materially.   With a population growth rate around zero –  similar to those of many prosperous European countries –  not many people would be required to build new houses and road, and fewer people (for example) would be selling the stuff the stocks new houses (carpets, appliances etc).  Those people would need jobs elsewhere.  The prospect of lower interest rates would make more private investment attractive, but on its own that channel would take a while to work –  after all, overall domestic demand growth would weaken.  But the lower exchange rate –  actual and prospective –  would make a big difference to the competitiveness, and willingness to invest, of the tradables sector.   That investment will usually require workers –  to build it, and to staff it. So resources will shift within the economy.   Dairy farmers who couldn’t get Filipino workers could afford to bid up wages to some extent to attract potential New Zealand workers  (it doesn’t happen overnight, but markets work –  it will happen).  It would certainly be tough for (consumers of ) some domestically-oriented industries that have been heavily reliant on migrant labour (one could think of rest homes) but the whole point of an economic strategy that successfully reorients the economy towards a much more strongly-performing tradables sector is that tradables firms have it better relative to non-tradables firms.  (And non-tradables sector firms typically have pricing power that tradables sector firms don’t.)  It has been the other way round for too long, and we’ve seen the results (in eg, the charts I showed the other day).

Are there losers, even among New Zealanders, from such an approach?  Well, yes, of course.   It is almost impossible to re-orient the economy without there being losers.  Some of the people who will be worse off will be those holding urban land in or around our major cities (especially those who might otherwise have been thinking of selling).  Non-tradables firms often won’t find it attractive –  a business model geared to rapid population growth isn’t going to look so good under a model that no longer seeks to drive up population.  And there would inevitably be some workers in some firms/sectors who might find the adjustment difficult –  as is the case with any structural change, and as was the case as we moved (unconsciously no doubt) to skew the economy away from tradables firms towards non-tradables.

It is easy for economists to wave their hands and suggest big changes in economic structures and policies. It isn’t usually the economists themselves who are affected.  But our current strategy – the grand Think Big population experiment –  just isn’t working.  It wouldn’t be hard to change it, and in my assessment if we were to do so –  along the lines outlined above –  we put the New Zealand economy on a much better footing for sustained growth in productivity and real incomes/material living standards.  We’d also greatly ease those intense near-term stresses –  particularly housing and infrastructure in Auckland –  that rightly grab the headlines.

 

 

 

Possible Reserve Bank reforms: some reactions

Michael Reddell labour party, Monetary policy, Reserve Bank

Some of the media reaction to talk –  from both the government and the Labour Party –  of possible changes to the Reserve Bank Act  has been a bit surprising.  One leading journalist behind a paywall summed up both the review Steven Joyce has requested and Labour’s proposals as “utter balderdash”, apparently just because there are more important issues politicians should be addressing.  No doubt there are –  housing, the languishing tradables sector, non-existent productivity growth and so on –  but competent governments, backed by a large public service, can usually manage more than one thing at a time.    And although there are plenty of details to debate on Reserve Bank governance, they aren’t exactly divisive ideological issues.   A parliamentary under-secretary or Associate Minister handled most of the details of the 1989 Reserve Bank Act, in a government that did a great deal of other (often more important) stuff.

Bernard Hickey’s story on the government’s review and Labour’s proposals is headed Monetary Policy Reforms a Mirage.     That could be so.  If National is re-elected, they might advance no governance reforms.  Or they might just legislate for something very like the sort of internal committee that, in various shapes and forms, has been the forum in which the Governor made OCR decisions ever since the OCR was introduced.  But apparently at his post-Cabinet press conference, the Prime Minister –  who had rejected earlier Treasury advice in this area in 2012 –  opened up the possibility of a committee not just composed of insiders.

Meanwhile, English hinted Treasury might look at whether a rate-setting committee could include non-Reserve Bank personal. That would be a matter for the review, he said.

Beginning a process of discussing reform options tends to put a range of issues and options on the table.

The sort of decision-making and governance reforms being advanced by Labour and the Greens would be most unlikely to be “simply a mirage”.     There are number of concerns that what Labour is proposing does not go far enough, but again they are probably best seen as the starting point for a more detailed review if/when Labour and the Greens take office.  There is a risk that it could all come to not very much.   After all, even over the last 15 years the Reserve Bank has had a couple of Governor-appointed outsiders involved in the advice and decisionmaking process –  the Prime Minister’s brother is one of them at present –  and that hasn’t made much difference at all.  And requirements to publish minutes/votes can be subverted too.      But that it is why the appointment of the new Governor is so important.  If Labour and Greens are serious about reforming the way the Reserve Bank operates,  then if they become government they need to move quickly to find a person (perhaps a top team) they have confidence in, to work with The Treasury and the government to implement legislative reforms, and to lead the internal process changes to make the new, more open, vision a reality.    If they are serious about greater openness, they need to ensure they have a Governor who shares that reforming vision.   Such a Governor could make a considerable difference even if, for example, the new Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) were to have a majority of executive members.

In some ways, much the same goes for the, less substantively important, proposal to add some sort of full employment aspiration/objective to the statutory goal for monetary policy.    I’ve described it as virtue-signalling, but on reflection that might be slightly unfair.  In the narrow context of the Reserve Bank Act, it is probably about right –  if the Bank has had things a bit tight over the last few years, leaving unemployment higher than it needed to be, then often enough over the life of the Act, the unemployment rate has been below the NAIRU.   Changing the words of section 8 of the Act in isolation won’t make much difference. After all, Australia and the United States have wording Labour prefers, and yet the cyclical behaviour of their economies hasn’t, on average over time, been much different from New Zealand’s.

So I’m sure there is a bit of pure product-differentiation about Labour’s proposal in this regard.  That isn’t unusual. Most changes to the Policy Targets Agreements over the years –  from both sides of politics –  have been more about product differentiation than substance, about scratching itches rather than making much difference to how monetary policy is actually run.  For Labour there is probably is some perceived need to differentiate, and a desire to campaign (and govern?) on a whole-of-government commitment to promoting and facilitating full employment.   That is an unquestionably worthy goal.    If monetary policy choices aren’t going to make very much difference to the medium or long-term rate of unemployment, they can (and have) made quite a difference in the shorter term.  So one way of telling Labour’s story is that they want the word to get out to the public that they are committed to (medium-term) full employment, and they want the public to know that the Bank isn’t in any sense an obstacle to that, and to hear the Bank talking of the importance of the issue.  These are real people’s lives.   I noted yesterday

So the problem typically hasn’t been that the Reserve Bank doesn’t care about unemployment –  although they don’t mention it often, and there is little sense in their rhetoric of visceral horror at waste of lives and resources when unemployment is higher than it needs to be.

They probably should be talking about it more, with conviction.  The legitimacy of independent public agencies depends on part of people believing that those entities have the public interest at heart.  And everyone knows –  central banks acknowledge –  that in the shorter-term their choices do have (sometimes painful) implications for the numbers of people unemployed in New Zealand.  At a bloodless technocratic level, I’ve suggested Labour could amend the Act to require the Bank to regularly report on its estimate of the NAIRU, and how monetary policy is affecting the gap between the actual unemployment rate and the NAIRU.  But this isn’t just a bloodless technocratic concern.

So again, getting the right Governor matters –  someone who will talk convincingly and engagingly as if what they are about affects ordinary people, including those at the margins (vulnerable to unemployment and the resulting dislocation to their lives).

So, from the perspective of both strands of the Labour reform proposal, my concrete suggestion to them is that if they lead a new government after the election, they should quickly pass a one (substantive) clause amendment to the Reserve Bank Act.

Section 40 of the Act at present reads

40 Governor

(1) There shall be a Governor of the Bank who shall be appointed by the Minister on the recommendation of the Board.

(2) The Governor shall be the Chief Executive of the Bank.

Simply deleting “on the recommendation of the Board” would make our practice much more consistent with that in most other countries.  It would remove the controlling influence of a Board appointed entirely by the previous government, and it would allow Labour to have in place to lead the rest of their Reserve Bank reforms, someone of their choosing, someone in whom they have confidence.  That is how other advanced democracies do things.  It isn’t about appointing party hacks –  it is how Janet Yellen, Mark Carney, Ben Bernanke, Glenn Stevens and Phil Lowe were all appointed; capable people who commanded the confidence of the government that appointed them.

(Although it isn’t a priority for me, making this change might actually strengthen the effectiveness of the Bank’s Board in holding the Governor to account.  At present, when the Board (in effect) appoints the Governor they have a strong interest in backing their own judgement, and providing cover for the Governor.   If they were responsible for monitoring the performance of a Governor directly appointed by the Minister, they’d have less vested interest in the individual, and perhaps be more ready to represent the interests of the Minister and of the public).

As I was finishing this post, I noticed a highly critical article on interest.co.nz by Alex Tarrant.  Although he isn’t quoted, it reads in part as if Tarrant has been interviewing his father, Arthur Grimes, one of the designers of the current Reserve Bank Act monetary policy provisions, and former chair of the Reserve Bank Board.   There is a lengthy discussion of time-inconsistency issues –  a regular theme of Grimes’s.    I’m not going to attempt to respond in any detail now, but would just observe that whatever the explanations for the rise of inflation in the 60s and 70s (and I’m not persuaded by the story Tarrant quotes), what Labour seems to be proposing is something not far removed from the sorts of formal wording, and policy rhetoric, routinely used at the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Federal Reserve.  One can debate whether it makes much sense to use such langugage, or whether the formal statutory provisions in those countries make much difference, but it is hard for any detached observer to suggest credibly that the Reserve Bank of Australia or the Federal Reserve have suffered greater difficulties with credibility, or with the willingness of the public and markets to take their words seriously, than the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has faced with the current section 8 wording.   If anything, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has had rather more problems –  odd experiments like the MCI, and two quickly-reversed tightening cycles in the last decade –  even if those particular mistakes and problems don’t have their roots in the wording of section 8.  And unlike other inflation targeting countries, there has never been an election since the Act was introduced in which some party or other (and not just the remnants of Social Credit) has not been campaigning for changes to the Reserve Bank Act or the PTA.  You don’t find anything like it in other inflation targeting countries.