The Environment Revisited

I want to revisit some of the key environmental themes of this blog that have had very little airtime lately. In particular I want to revisit, over the next month, the unintended consequences of some of our favourite environmental policies and personal choices.

For those new to the blog, the divergence of post topics from my blog title is explained here:

...understanding property is the key to a reasoned approach to preserving our quality of life by preserving environmental amenity. Maybe I am more of a ‘quality of life’ economist who believes there are many non-market goods, including the quality of, and accessibility of natural environments, that are major contributors to our well-being.

However the increasing fanaticism I have observed in some areas of the climate change movement, the lack of ability for some environmentalists to see the forest for the trees (pun intended), has lead me to distance myself from some of the core environmentalist views.

As a rule of thumb I believe we should first focus our efforts on local, tractable environmental problems with clear externalities, and implementable solutions – protecting diversity and fish stocks in the Great Barrier Reef, tackling air pollution and improving urban amenity, and preserving the quality of waterways and wilderness areas. Climate change, that global intractable problem, has dropped down my list of concerns, even though my previous research focussed on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The development of my ideas on the environment is the reverse of renowned ‘skeptical environmentalist’ Bjorn Lomborg’s u-turn. He once held a strong position that climate change was far down humanities list of concerns, particularly noting the obvious an immediate threats from treatable diseases in the developing world. Now climate change to the top of his list, no doubt to pitch his new book to cashed-up fanatics.

My second rule of thumb is that personal ‘green’ consumption choices make no difference, and small actions do not add up. These behaviours are typically offset by other economic adjustments in upstream production and by choices of others as prices respond. These effects are know an rebound effects.

A recent article in The Economist highlights new research showing these rebound effects in action. The study estimates that new energy efficient lighting technology will increase energy consumption in the long run. My own research showed that conservation behaviour, such as using lights and electrical appliances and driving less, will also result in minimal change as money saved get spent elsewhere in the economy.

I intend to revisit ideas about waste, efficiency, environmental taxes, recycling and solar power over the next month to see how my ideas have developed, and to seek input to develop them further.

Interpreting today's National Accounts

A cautionary tale from RMIT's Dr Steven Kates over at Catallaxy Files:

The National Accounts for June 2010 have come out today and will provide those who look no deeper than the headline figure with the belief that the Australian economy is on a shortcut to prosperity. The numbers tell a different story, and while I have no better idea about the future than anyone else, there is nothing in the recent past that should make anyone think things are heading in the right direction.

Three sets of figures stand out as part of a cautionary tale told by the numbers.

The first is the set of figures on Private Gross Fixed Capital Formation, the data on private sector investment. Across the year the growth rate was a quite sedate 1.3% and for the quarter itself (I always use the trend numbers), the growth rate was actually negative, coming in at -0.1%.

Meanwhile, for Public Gross Fixed Capital Formation the growth rate was 38.5%, a monstrous increase. The quarterly figure was only 4.7% which means the numbers are coming back down to sane proportions but even so.

Then thirdly there is the figure for imports which rose by 15.9% across the year, raising spectres of its own. For the quarter it was 1.9%, and for the first time this financial year was lower than the level of exports.

There is a story of debt printed all over the accounts, both domestic and foreign. We have as a nation splurged to get a result, but the costs are still to be paid.

The notion of a double dip, especially after efforts made to maintain the appearance of growth in an economy heading into recession, is in part due to the need not only to unpick the production errors that led to recession in the first place, but now to undo all of the structural changes introduced as part of the stimulus. People producing and installing pink batts now have to find a real job although the major horrors may take place in the United States. We shall see what happens then.

Competition Series Part IV: The future

While competition can clearly bring significant consumer benefits (think Virgin Blue and the airline shake up, or Aldi and current supermarket competition) the evidence is clear that this is not always the case, and that harnessing the innovation stimulated by competition can come with a large coordination cost.

One major consideration as to whether competition can work effectively – will government still control a production bottleneck?

For example, once airport runways are operating at capacity, the government will have the final say on approving new runways. In the mean time, airport owners can act as a monopoly as there is a huge, in fact insurmountable, barrier to entry.

Friday quick links

On personal freedoms, litigation, and common sense (a good read)

Did he really say that? Chris Joye, optimist, reckons that stability and continuity are valuable things for an economy that is hesitantly emerging from the global financial crisis and about to embark on a period of above-trend growth

Does light rail improve public health? This study has results showing obesity declining in areas serviced by light rail in a before and after comparison.

In the spirit of the competition series running this month I thought it opportune to comment on Sam Wylie’s recent article on reciprocal obligations of banks following government support.  Thinking about the whole story makes the situation seems ridiculous.  The government privatises the banking system, allowing privately owned businesses to determine the money supply, and then bails them out after a crash which resulted from their undue risk taking, then left them to go on their merry way to make abnormally high profits once again.  Clearly, there is no moral hazard here and this wonderful situation is highly beneficial for the people.

Can you draw a conclusion about the impact of population growth on economic welfare from this graph? 

What does it mean for an economy to ‘turn Japanese’ and what determines whether it will?

What few seem to appreciate, either inside or outside of Japan, is just how strong the resulting Japanese recovery from 2002-2008 was. It was the longest unbroken recovery of Japan’s postwar history, and, while not as strong as pre-bubble Japanese performance, was in fact stronger than the growth in comparable economies even when fuelled by their own bubbles.

How on Earth did Japan manage that with their ageing population and zero population growth? Indeed, Japan outperformed Australia in productivity growth since 2000 and very nearly kept pace with real GDP per capita growth.

The RBA’s Ric Battelino seems confused. In a recent speech on the Australian economy he notes that “the slowdown in productivity growth has meant that GDP growth in the latest decade was not as fast as in the previous decade”, while also saying that for the past two decades “part of the growth came, of course, from the fact that the population grew strongly over the period, particularly in recent years.” What? The data he presents shows a negative correlation between economic growth and population growth, yet he continues to promote a positive relationship.

Australia’s average annual real growth in GDP per capita (currently the best measure of economic performance) since 2000 is 1.28%. While I can’t find a direct measure from the Japanese Statistical agency, using the World Bank data collection I can make a comparison of real GDP growth per capita of Australia and Japan using a common methodology. Using these statistics I find that Australia had a mean annual growth in real GDP per person since 2000 of 1.8% while Japan’s was 1.4%.

Living in a bubble

Morgan Stanley’s Gerard Minack aptly uses the phrase ‘living in a bubble’ as the title of his research note about Australia’s housing market. Minack’s conclusion is that Australian housing is overvalued, but he sees prolonged stagnation rather than a dramatic pop of the price bubble - I expect that the real returns on residential investment will be negative over the next decade.

I want to highlight a few key charts from the research note. The first is a comparison of prices to rents, showing a massive increase above the long run average since 2000 (I believe this figure is price divided by annual gross rent divided by 100). One could call on interest rates as an explanation, but mortgage interest rates have actually been increasing over much of that period.

The second chart is a comparison of the value of the housing stock to household income, which further supports this claim that home prices are 30-40% above average levels.

The next chart is one that compares the share of household debt by income level. One of the RBA’s claims has been that Australia’s housing market is stable because most debt is held by high income earners - ...our assessment is that the increase in debt has broadly been concentrated in the hands of those generally more able to service it.  This is identical the the US situation in 2007.

 

Helmet law research hits the headlines

Helmet laws hit the headlines with a new Australian study proclaiming their ineffectiveness at providing safety to cyclists, while in Canada the debate is heading the other way (due to this study - sorry I can't get the full text to review the methods).

The Australian study neatly controls for the number of cyclists and distance cycled by comparing the ratio of head to arm and hand injuries resulting from cycling activities from hospital records. A change in this ratio (lower head injuries per arm and hand injury) would be a clear indicator of the success of helmet wearing in preventing head injury.

The figure above shows the ratio (ICD9) from 1988 to 2000. Helmet laws were introduced in 1991, and self-reported compliance for two age groups (<16years and >16years) are plotted from 1991 to 1995.

The essential argument is that the large decline in the ratio of head to arm injuries occurred before the helmet law, and much before compliance with the law. In the two year period where helmet wearing took off following the legislation (1991 to 1993), the ratio dropped from 0.8 to 0.75 – hardly a success. The drop in the two years preceding the helmet law was from 1.15 to 0.8.

The author suggests that other road safety measures contributed to the decline, while the law itself would have contributed to a decline in the number of cyclists (some evidence for the decline is here) which itself made cycling more dangerous and lead to a flattening of the trend -

The reduction in numbers of people cycling may have actually increased the risk to the remaining cyclists because of Smeed’s Law and the safety in numbers hypothesis.

The Shadow Public Service

Tyler Cowen asks: Why does anyone pay for macro-economic forecasts when they are typically wrong and in the public domain? The answer is simple. Forward planning requires some assumption about the future. One comment notes that you wouldn’t plan a military exercise without checking the weather forecast, no matter how inaccurate.

But more fundamentally, the reason for paying for such advice is due to the need to appear objective. Whether objectivity involves accuracy is a secondary concern.

Governments face this problem regularly. To avoid accusations of political influence they engage an army of external consultants to provide trivial advice that can easily be determined by internal staff. This army is the Shadow Public Service.

Oddly, critics fail to note that external advice that does not support a government position will be filtered anyway. Like a barrister in a criminal trial, they won’t ask questions they don’t already know the answer to.

I regularly deal with private economics consulting firms and can’t help but wonder how big an industry is supported by the farcical drive for an illusion of objectivity by government. I have personally engaged millions of dollars of work from private economics consulting firms for the sole purpose of having a basis for a predetermined decision that appears independent.

The final irony of it all is that the best qualified people tend to leave government departments to take on the same role as a consultant, but at five times the cost. And, of course, governments have a habit of filling vacant positions whether they are required or not.  Either recruit the staff you need to provide proper advice, or get rid of them and draw upon the resources sitting in private firms.  Don't waste money on a shadow public service unless they provide a real contribution beyond the objectivity illusion.

Competition Series Part III: History

Often forgotten in the competition debate are the reasons for a monopoly’s existence in the first place? A few are:

1. Mergers and economies of scale of private enterprise
2. Government development for its own needs (including defence)
3. Government intervention due to natural monopoly features (either too high risk for private enterprise or too much scope for price gouging)
4. Government intervention due to positive externalities (for example, cleanliness and health benefits of sewerage)
5. Government intervention due to fairness and equitable access – once a technology becomes a necessity it is politically expedient to promote fair access (including regional development)

While many may disagree that government involvement in some infrastructure networks was necessary from the start, citing the textbook benefits of the profit maximising natural monopolist, the onus should be on those promoting change to demonstrate that the world has changed sufficiently for competition and/or private firms to now deliver these services.

Historically, with the advent of new technology, government will typically step in if it sees benefits to centralisation - creating an entity tasked with equitable provision of the new service. Prior to centralised water and sewerage in cities, each property owner would have had a rainwater tank, bore or well to supply water, and a thunderbox for waste. Health benefits of newly designed reticulated sewerage systems were overwhelming (although it took some time before waste was treated in any fashion before being dumped into waterways). Private investment in sewerage reticulation could only recover cost from those who accessed the system, yet the social benefits were much broader. A government established (and subsidised) monopoly was the only way to go. A similar story can be told for water reticulation.

Last piece of the population puzzle

I was pleasantly surprised by Dick Smith’s Population Puzzle documentary last night. He covered most of the key economic arguments against growth, including a rebuttal of the skills shortage and age dependency arguments. I was not taken by the food security argument, but was impressed by the way he highlighted the clash over land use on the urban fringes (where some of the most fertile soils are found).
Most importantly Dick raised the issue of vested interests promoting population growth early in his piece. He rightly singled out the property development lobby as a key exponent of higher population growth, and their obvious vested interests which do not align with the interests of most Australians.

Page 58 of today’s Financial Review has run a pro-population growth response to the Dick Smith documentary, advocating population growth on the grounds of economies of scale – an argument that is easily debunked.

A second argument appeals to economies of scale and suggests that with greater domestic consumption industries can expand to a point where they have economies of scale that make them internationally competitive. Why domestic population is currently a barrier to industry development is beyond me. If there are no artificial constraints on trade, shouldn’t the world be the marketplace of any industry even in its infancy? This argument only works if you couple high population with protectionism.

Economies of scale from increasing the size of the market only apply to monopolies in any case, and even then it is hard to know whether futher efficiency gains are possible (and whether they would be passed on to consumers).

But the confusion of the pro-population growth position is revealed later in the article when it states:

Of course it is possible to have economic growth without population growth – by setting up the conditions for higher productivity growth.

But the ‘meeting the challenges of growth’ argument persists in the end. We are apparently better off investing in massive duplication of infrastructure (roads, housing, energy and water) to accommodate higher population growth, which decreases productivity and economic growth, rather than focus on improving the productivity of the existing population - an absurd conclusion.

I have explained in detail in a previous post how housing investment and other infrastructure duplication does not improve productivity – it is a short term cost that simply allows more people to be equally as productive as the current population at some time in the future. Slower population growth is the recipe for improved per capita well being.

The relationship between growth and productivity is interlinked, but not in the way pro-population growth advocates maintain. Higher population growth is strongly negatively correlated with improved productivity. The graph below uses the ABS multifactor productivity measure and percentage change in population growth to demonstrate. Productivity improved most dramatically when population growth was around 1%.

The investment duplication argument is the final piece to the population puzzle.