This is my last post in a series that uses the AS-AD model to describe US consumption during and after the Covid-19 recession. I wrote about US consumption’s broad categories, services, and non-durables. This last one addresses durable consumption.
During the week of thanksgiving in 2020, our thirteen-year-old microwave bit the dust. NBD, I thought. Microwaves are cheap, and I’m willing to spend a little more in order to get one that I think will be of better quality (GE, *cough*-*cough*). So, I filtered through the models on multiple websites and found the right size, brand, and wattage. No matter the retailer, at checkout I learned that regardless of price, I’d be waiting a good two months before my new, entirely standard, and unexceptional microwave oven would arrive. I’d have to wait until the end of January of 2021.
The aggregate supply & aggregate demand model (AS-AD) is nice because it’s flexible and clear. Often professors will teach it in levels. That is, they teach it with the level of output on one axis, and the price level on the other axis. This presentation is convenient for the equation of exchange, which can be arranged to reflect that aggregate demand (AD) is a hyperbola in (Y, P) space. Graphed below is the AD curve in 2019Q4 and in 2020Q2 using real GDP, NGDP, and the GDP price deflator.
The textbook that I use for Principles of Macroeconomics, instead places inflation (π) on the vertical axis while keeping the level of output on the horizontal axis. The authors motivate the downward slope by asserting that there is a policy reaction function for the Federal Reserve. When people observe high rates of inflation, state the authors, they know that the Fed will increase interest rates and reduce output. Personally, I find this reasoning to be inadequate because it makes a fundamental feature of the AS-AD model – downward sloping demand – contingent on policy context.
At the same time, I do think that it can be useful to put inflation on the vertical axis. Afterall, individuals are forward looking. We expect positive inflation because that’s what has happened previously, and we tend to be correct. So, I tell my students that “for our purposes”, placing inflation on the vertical axis is fine. I tell them that, when they take intermediate macro, they’ll want to express both axes as rates of change. I usually say this, and then go about my business of teaching principles.
But, what does it look like when we do graph in percent-change space?
Inflation is definitely here. The latest CPI release puts the annual inflation rate in the US at 8.5% over the past 12 months, the highest 12-month period since May 1981. That’s bad, especially because wages for many workers aren’t keeping up with the price increases (and that’s true in other countries too).
But what about other countries? Many countries are experiencing record inflation too. The same day the US announced the latest CPI data, Germany announced that they also had the highest annual inflation since 1981.
Using data from the OECD, we can make some comparisons across countries during the pandemic. I’ll use data through February 2022, which excludes the most recent (very high!) months for places like the US and Germany, but most countries haven’t released March 2022 data quite yet.
Let’s compare inflation rates and GDP growth (in real terms, also from the OECD), using the end of 2019 as a baseline. We’ll compare the US, the other G-7 countries, and several broad groups of countries (OECD, OECD European countries, and the Euro area). The chart below uses “core inflation,” which excludes food and energy (below I will use total inflation — the basic picture doesn’t change much).
The financial crisis recession that started in late 2007 was very different from the 2020 pandemic recession. Even now, 15 years later, we don’t all agree on the causes of the 2007 recession. Maybe it was due to the housing crisis, maybe due to the policy of allowing NGDP to fall, or maybe due to financial contagion. I watched Vernon Smith give a lecture in 2012 in which he explained that it was a housing crisis. Scott Sumner believes that a housing sectoral decline would have occurred, and that the economy-wide deep recession and subsequent slow recovery was caused by poor monetary policy.
Everyone agrees, however, that the 2007 recession was fundamentally different from the 2020 recession. The latter, many believe, reflected a supply shock or a technology shock. Performing social activities, including work, in close proximity to others became much less safe. As a result, we traded off productivity for safety.
The policy responses to each of the two were also different. In 2020, monetary policy was far more targeted in its interventions and the fiscal stimulus was much bigger. I’ll save the policy response differences for another post. In this post, I want to display a few graphs that broadly reflect the speed and magnitude of the recoveries. Because the recessions had different causes, I use broad measures that are applicable to both.
I remember people talking about Covid-19 in January of 2020. There had been several epidemic scare-claims from major news outlets in the decade prior and those all turned out to be nothing. So, I was not excited about this one. By the end of the month, I saw people making substantiated claims and I started to suspect that my low-information heuristic might not perform well.
People are different. We have different degrees of excitability, different risk tolerances, and different biases. At the start of the pandemic, these differences were on full display between political figures and their parties, and among the state and municipal governments. There were a lot of divergent beliefs about the world. Depending on your news outlet of choice, you probably think that some politicians and bureaucrats acted with either malice or incompetence.
I think that the Federal Reserve did a fine job, however. What follows is an abridged timeline, graph by graph, of how and when the Fed managed monetary policy during the Covid-19 pandemic.
February, 2020: Financial Markets recognize a big problem
The S&P begins its rapid decent on February 20th and would ultimately lose a third of its value by March 23rd. Financial markets are often easily scared, however. The primary tool that the Fed has is adjusting the number of reserves and the available money supply by purchasing various assets. The Fed didn’t begin buying extra assets of any kind until mid-March. There is a clear response by the 18th, though they may have started making a change by the 11th. One might argue that they cut the federal funds rate as early as the 4th, but given that there was no change in their balance sheet, this was probably demand driven.
March, 2020: The Fed Accommodates quickly and substantially.
In the month following March 9th, the Fed increased M2 by 8.3%. By the week of March 21st, consumer sentiment and mobility was down and economic policy uncertainty began to rise substantially – people freaked out. Although the consumer sentiment weekly indicator was back within the range of normal by the end of April, EPU remained elevated through May of 2020. Additionally, although lending was only slightly down, bank reserves increased 71% from February to April. Much of that was due to Fed asset purchases. But there was also a healthy chunk that was due to consumer spending tanking by 20% over the same period.
In the 18 months prior to 2020, M2 had grown at rate of about 0.5% per month. For the almost 18 months following the sudden 8.3% increase, the new growth rate of M2 almost doubled to about 1% per month. The Fed accommodated quite quickly in March.
April, 2020: People are awash with money
Falling consumption caused bank deposit balances to rise by 5.6% between March 11th and April 8th. The first round of stimulus checks were deposited during the weekend of April 11th. That contributed to bank deposits rising by another 6.7% by May 13th.
By the end of March, three weeks after it began increasing M2, the Fed remembered that it really didn’t want another housing crisis. It didn’t want another round of fire sales, bank failures, disintermediation, collapsed lending, and debt deflation. It went from owning $0 in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) on March 25th to owning nearly $1.5 billion worth by the week of April 1st. Nobody’s talking about it, but the Fed kept buying MBS at a constant growth rate through 2021.
May, 2020 – December, 2021: The Fed Prevents Last-Time’s Crisis
Jerome Powell presided over the shortest US recession ever on record. The Fed helped to successfully avoid a housing collapse, disintermediation, and debt deflation – by 2008 standards. The monthly supply of housing collapsed, but it had bottomed out by the end of the summer. By August of 2021, the supply of housing had entirely recovered. The average price of new house sales never fell. Prices in April of 2020 were typical of the year prior, then rose thereafter. A broader measure of success was that total loans did not fall sharply and are nearly back to their pre-pandemic volumes. After 2008, it took six years to again reach the prior peak. A broader measure still, total spending in the US economy is back to the level predicted by the pre-pandemic trend.
The Fed can’t control long-run output. As I’ve written previously, insofar as aggregate demand management is concerned, we are perfectly on track. The problem in the US economy now is real output. The Fed avoided debt deflation, but it can’t control the real responses in production, supply chains, and labor markets that were disrupted by Covid-19 and the associated policy responses.
What was the cost of the Fed’s apparent success? Some have argued that the Fed has lost some of its political insulation and that it unnecessarily and imprudently over-reached into non-monetary areas. Maybe future Fed responses will depend on who is in office or will depend on which group of favored interests need help. Personally, I’m not so worried about political exposure. But I am quite worried about the Fed’s interventions in particular markets, such as MBS, and how/whether they will divest responsibly.
Of course, another cost of the Fed’s policies has been higher inflation. During the 17 months prior to the pandemic, inflation was 0.125% per month. During the pandemic recession, consumer prices dipped and inflation was moderate through November. But, in the 16 months since April of 2020, consumer prices have grown at a rate of 0.393% per month – more than three times the previous rate. Some of that is catch-up after the brief fall in prices.
Although people are genuinely worried about inflation, they were also worried about if after the 2008 recession and it never came. This time, inflation is actually elevated. But people were complaining about inflation before it was ever perceptible. The compound annual rate of inflation rose to 7% in March of 2021. But it had been almost zero as recent as November, 2020. That March 2021 number is misleading. The actual change in prices from February to March was 0.567%. Something that was priced at $10 in February was then priced at $10.06 in March. Hardly noticeable, were it not for headlines and news feeds.
In the post-WW2 era, by many different measures the US economy performed better before about 1970 than after. You can apparently see this in many different statistics. For example, the productivity slowdown is a well-known and well-studied phenomenon. And even given the productivity slowdown, median wages don’t seem to have kept pace with productivity growth.
I think there are good reasons to doubt these particular statistics. For example, on wages and productivity see this working paper by Stansbury and Summers.
But even considering all these criticisms of the statistics, we do observe that overall GDP growth has been slower since about 1970. Why might this be?
In an NBER summary of his research, Nicholas Muller argues that a big part of the GDP growth slowdown is because we aren’t including environmental damage in the calculation. This is not a new argument (Muller is an important contributor to this literature), and the exclusion of environmental damage is a well-known flaw of GDP, but Muller’s paper does a great job of quantifying how much we are mismeasuring GDP. The following figure is a nice summary of what GDP growth looks like when we consider environmental damage.
If we use the standard measure of GDP, growth indeed slowed down after 1970. If instead we augment GDP for environmental damages, the period after 1970 was actually faster! The adjustment both slows down growth from 1957-1970, and speeds up growth after 1970.
There are lots of things we can draw from this, but if the results are close to accurate, there is a clear implication: environmental regulations (such as the Clean Air Act) do reduce GDP growth, as traditionally measured. So the skeptics of regulation are partially right: regulation reduces growth!
However, this seems to be a clear case where standard critiques of GDP (as you can find in just about any Econ 101 textbook — yes, really!) need to be incorporated into the complete cost-benefit analysis of the impacts of environmental regulation.
It’s pumpkin spice season. That means that not only can you get pumpkin spice lattes, but also pumpkin spice Oreos, pumpkin spice Cheerios, and even pumpkin spice oil changes.
The most important thing to know about “pumpkin spice” things is that they don’t actually taste like pumpkin. They taste like the spices that you use to flavor pumpkin pie. (Notable exception: Peter Suderman’s excellent pumpkin spice cocktail syrup, which does contain pumpkin puree.)
Last week economic historian Anton Howes posted a picture of the spice shelf at his grocery store and guessed that this would have been worth millions of dollars in 1600.
Just thinking about how much this shelf would have been worth in England in the year 1600. Presumably at least tens of millions in today’s money. pic.twitter.com/Vc9HDBlQxL
Some of the comments pushed back a little. OK, probably not millions but certainly a lot. Howes was alluding to the well-known fact that spices used to be expensive. Very expensive. Spices, along with precious metals, were one of the primary reasons for the global exploration, trade, and colonialism for centuries. Finding and controlling spices was a huge source of wealth.
But how much more expensive were spices in the past? One comment on Howes’ tweet points to an excellent essay by the late economic historian John Munro on the history of spices. And importantly, Munro gives us a nice comparison of the prices of spices in 15th century Europe, including a comparison to typical wages.
As I looked at the list of spices in Munro’s essay, I noticed: these are the pumpkin spices! Cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and mace (from the nutmeg seed, though not exactly the same as nutmeg). He’s even included sugar. That’s all we need to make a pumpkin spice syrup!
Last week in my Thanksgiving prices post I cautioned against looking at any one price or set of prices in isolation. You can’t tell a lot about standards of living by looking at just a few prices, you need to look at all prices. So let me just reiterate here that the following comparison is not a broad claim about living standards, just a fun exercise.
That being said, let’s see how much the prices of spices have fallen.
I’m a big fan of Milton Friedman. I’m also a big fan of easy-to-remember phrases that impart great wisdom. It honestly made me wince the first time I said the following:
“Inflation is *not* everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon“.
The reasoning is as plain as day. Consider the quantity equation:
MV=PY
For the uninitiated, M is the money supply, V (velocity) is the average number of times dollars transacts during a period, P is the price level, and finally Y is real output during a period. This equation is often called the “equation of exchange” or “the quantity equation”. Strictly speaking, it is an identity. It is a truism that cannot be violated. All economists agree that the equation is true, though they may disagree on its usefulness.
Inflation is simply the percent change in price. We can rearrange the quantity equation, solving for price, in order to see the relationship between the price level and its determinants.
P= MV/Y
What does this mean? It means that more money results in more inflation, all else held constant. It means that higher velocity results in more inflation, all else held constant. It means that less output results in more inflation, all else held constant.
Why would Milton Friedman say that inflation is always caused by changes in the money supply if it is clear that there are two other causes of the price level? When Milton Friedman said his famous quote, output growth was relatively steady. Velocity growth was relatively steady. For his context, Milton Friedman was right. The majority of price and inflation volatility was found in changes in M. See below.
Strictly speaking however, Milton Friedman knew better and he knew that the statement was not strictly correct. Friedman was a public intellectual and he was a great simplifier. He taught many people many true things. At the time, people were blaming inflation on a great variety of things: taxes, fish catches, and unions, to name a few. Arguably, Friedman got them closer to the truth.
What does this mean? It means that higher NGDP results in more inflation, all else held constant. It means that less output results in more inflation, all else held constant.
But economists dismissing M in lieu of AD are committing the same oversimplification. Y can also change! Maybe economists figure that our recent history is full of relatively stable Y growth and that we ought not pay attention to it. And indeed, unsurprisingly, RGDP growth has been less than NGDP growth.
But what is driving the current bought of inflation?
Pardon the crude image. The pink lines are eye-balled trend lines on natural logged data for AD, Y, and P. Prices are up. Is it because of exceptionally high NGDP? Nope. Total spending is back on pre-2020 trend. Does Y happen to be down? Yep, it sure is.
Right now, assuming the previous trend was anywhere close to potential output, inflation is not being driven by excess aggregate demand. It’s being driven by inadequate real output. The news tells the story. There have been supply-chain bottle-necks, difficulty employing, lockdowns, and fear of covid. Right now we have an output problem and higher prices are a symptom. We do not have an aggregate spending problem.
PS – In fact, it is my belief that the Fed successfully avoided a debt-deflation aggregate demand tumble that would have been catastrophic. Inflation is expected when supplies of goods decline.
Back in March of this year, I wrote blog posts providing data on GDP losses and COVID-19 deaths for 2020, both for selected countries and US states. Since we’ve now had another 6 months of GDP data and the pandemic continues to take lives, I thought it would be useful to update that data.
I will update the data for US states in a future post, but here is the most recent data for about 3 dozen countries (mostly European and North American countries, since they have the most believe COVID data).
*indicates that the GDP data is only through the first quarter of 2021Continue reading →
Have you seen this chart? I certainly have. It floats around on social media a lot. The chart seems to indicate that poor Americans are better off than the average person in most other rich countries. Roughly equal to Canada and France, and better off than Denmark or New Zealand.
When I’ve asked for sources in the past, people usually aren’t sure. They remember downloading it from somewhere, but they can’t recall where.
But I think I found the source: it’s this article from JustFacts. After seeing how they calculated it, I’m skeptical that it provides a good comparison of poor Americans to other countries.
Here’s what the chart does. For most countries, it uses a World Bank measure of consumption per capita. They then convert that to US dollars using PPP adjustments. For the poor in the US, they use a consumption estimate for the bottom 20% of households (Table 6), and then divide by the average number of people per household. For the poor in the US, the average consumption for 2010 was an amazing $57,049, more than double the poverty line! That’s about $21,000 per poor person.
Economist Writing Every Day 