Tag Archives: joseph stiglitz

Industrial Policy And Global Tax Coordination: Some Changes In How The World Is Run

Senate Poised To Pass Huge Industrial Policy Bill To Counter China is the headline of a recent news item from The New York Times.

US politicians have come to realise—especially after the rise of Trump—that free trade and globalisation is a major cause of damage to the US economy. The purpose of industrial policy is to make US producers more competitive. This results in increase of exports and fall in imports, relative to gdp.

Wynne Godley had been warning for quite some time on how the US government should address the trade imbalance instead of leaving it to market forces. In March 2003, in an article The U.S. Economy: A Changing Strategic Predicament he said:

The default conclusion is that the U.S. economy will not recover properly in the medium term, but rather will enter a prolonged period of “growth recession.” The only lasting solution will be to get U.S. exports to rise much faster than imports over a prolonged period.

And also suggested non-selected protectionism for the short term.

Another recent news article from NYT is about a global tax coordination. Globalisation has led to a race to the bottom. To raise price competitiveness, countries have been wrongly incentivised to reduce tax rates on firms and this led to some competition between countries to keep reducing tax rates on corporations. And this has led to lot of economic damage.

The Democratic Party of the US has learned from mistakes in the past and is trying to correct them but the Dems are total corporatists and these measures are just for elite preservation. For example, they were talking of reversing Trump’s tax cuts for corporations but the party is a champion in performative politics: it seems they’re not reversing it now.

As Joseph Stiglitz points out, the problem with this 15% tax rate is that it become the de facto the maximum tax rate.

In his last paper, Wynne Godley said on rebalancing:

It is inconceivable that such a large rebalancing could occur without a drastic change in the institutions responsible for running the world economy—a change that would involve placing far less than total reliance on market forces.

Although the steps taken by the US government looks in the right direction, there’s still a large way to go, especially considering how the Democrats pretend to do all sorts of good things. Still far from a Keynes like plan to fine surplus countries and to remove imbalances in balance of payments and international investment position.

Paul Krugman Is More Orthodox Than Joseph Stiglitz

… There is also the problem of the relative levels of different types of earned income. Here we have the famous marginal productivity theory. In perfect competition an employer is supposed to take on such a number of men that the money value of the marginal product to him, taking account of the price of his output and the cost of his plant, is equal to the money wage he has to pay. Then the real wage of each type of labor is believed to measure its marginal product to society. The salary of a professor of economics measures his contribution to society and the wage of a garbage collector measures his contribution. Of course, this is a very comforting doctrine for professors of economics, but I fear that once more the argument is circular. There is not any measure of marginal products except the wages themselves. In short, we have not got a theory of distribution.

We have nothing to say on the subject which above all others occupies the minds of the people whom economics is supposed to enlighten.

[italics in original]

– Joan Robinson, The Second Crisis Of Economic Theory, 1972. Link

There’s an article at Evonomics by Joseph Stiglitz, which is an excerpt from a chapter from a book. Stiglitz has denounced the marginal productivity theory. He says:

The trickle-down notion— along with its theoretical justification, marginal productivity theory— needs urgent rethinking. That theory attempts both to explain inequality— why it occurs— and to justify it— why it would be beneficial for the economy as a whole. This essay looks critically at both claims. It argues in favour of alternative explanations of inequality, with particular reference to the theory of rent-seeking and to the influence of institutional and political factors, which have shaped labour markets and patterns of remuneration. And it shows that, far from being either necessary or good for economic growth, excessive inequality tends to lead to weaker economic performance. In light of this, it argues for a range of policies that would increase both equity and economic well-being.

… Neoclassical economists developed the marginal productivity theory, which argued that compensation more broadly reflected different individuals’ contributions to society.

It reminds me of the debate between Paul Krugman and Thomas Palley some time ago. Paul Krugman completely denied all this. In his blog post at his blog for The New York Times, Krugman said in April 2014:

But doesn’t that show that conventional economics is indeed capable of accommodating big concerns about inequality? You fairly often find heterodox economists insisting that to accept the idea that capital and labor are paid their marginal products, even as a working hypothesis to be modified when you address things like executive pay, is to accept that high inequality is morally justified. But that’s obviously not the case: there are plenty of economists who are willing to use marginal-product models (as gadgets, not as fundamental truth) who don’t at all accept the sanctity of the market distribution of income.

So you have two mainstream economists: Paul Krugman defending orthodoxy and Joseph Stiglitz denouncing the marginal productivity theory.