Macroeconomics – Page 9

Consumer Spending is 60% of the Economy, not 70%

Early Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its third look at economic growth in the first quarter. The results were disappointing: BEA now estimates that Q1 growth was only 2.7%, down from the prior estimate of 3.0%. A key reason: consumer spending was weaker than previously thought.

As I noted in May, the monthly release of GDP data is inevitably followed by commentators claiming that “consumer spending makes up 70% of the U.S. economy” (see, for example, here). Unfortunately, that isn’t right. Consumer spending appears to be about 70% of the economy based on a seemingly obvious calculation (consumer spending divided by GDP), but that ignores the way that macroeconomic accounting handles imports. For reasons detailed in my earlier post, careful analysis suggests that the actual ratio is about 60%.

One reason the 70% error is so common is that doing the correct calculation requires a great deal of work; for example, you need to estimate the fraction of consumer purchases that come from imports. If we want commentators to start using the right figure, we need an easier way to get the idea across using the information reported in the headline GDP release.

Here’s one idea: Compare consumer spending to a measure of overall demand. To do so, we start with the usual macroeconomic identity:

GDP = C + I + G + X – M,

which says that GDP equals Consumer spending, Investment, Government spending, and eXports minus iMports (which are subtracted to avoid double-counting). Looking at this identity, you see that C, I, G, and X can be viewed as measures of demand from consumers, businesses, governments, and overseas markets, while M is a measure of supply from overseas producers.

To get a more reasonable measure of the importance of consumer spending, we can calculate what share of “overall demand” (C + I + G + X) comes from consumers. As shown in the chart, that measure (in red) has been roughly 60% for decades. The usual, misleading measure of consumer spending’s importance (in blue), however, has been up around 70% over the past decade, but used to be lower back when imports were smaller.

The C / (C + I + G + X) measure of consumer spending’s importance is hardly exact. For example, it doesn’t consider how much consumer spending actually comes from imports. However, it’s the simplest measure I could think of that comes close to the right answer. But maybe readers have an even better idea?

P.S. Thanks to Cornelia Strawser for helpful discussion of this measurement challenge.

Expeditionary Economics

The U.S. military is now a major player in economic development. In Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, economic stabilization is a core tenet of its counterinsurgency strategy. Which makes good sense, in theory, but raises a troubling practical question: does the military actually know anything about economic stabilization and development?

In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs (Expeditionary Economics: Spurring Growth after Conflicts and Disasters), Carl Schramm answers in the negative. The U.S. military does not have these skills in anywhere near the measure that it should. He then recommends that:

[P]ostconflict economic reconstruction must become a core competence of the U.S. military. … It is imperative that the U.S. military develop its competence in economics. It must establish a new field of inquiry that treats economic reconstruction as part of any successful three-legged strategy of invasion, stabilization or pacification, and economic reconstruction. Call this “expeditionary economics.”

Schramm goes on to argue that expeditionary economics should emphasize entrepreneurship and “messy” capitalism, not just large-scale infrastructure efforts that often get the most attention. If you are interested in these issues, his essay is definitely worth a read.

For more context and other views, you should also check out the conference that Kauffman held to discuss these issues. You can read highlights from the conference here.

Some excerpts (not attributed to any of the specific participants):

The core idea behind the Marshall Plan was to stimulate the private sector through direct financial support of businesses rather than distribution through local government institutions, and it continues to serve as a potential model for efforts today, especially insofar as it deeply considered the nature of the war and the pre-existing institutional conditions in Europe.

…

Stability and economic development operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have been problematic for quite different reasons. In Iraq, the United States squandered the opportunity to demonstrate a real concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people in the months after the invasion because it failed to adequately plan for stabilization and reconstruction activities after major combat operations—as a result, both the economic and security planning systems failed. Many government agencies were complicit in this failure, including the military. In Afghanistan, the rush to respond and the limits of time constrained stabilization and reconstruction planning along with a desire to maintain a light footprint. Military, political, and development strategy was cobbled together as the conflict progressed. This meant the United States began trying to catch up with ideas, and has been trying to acquire and deploy resources ever since. As part of a “peacebuilding” strategy for the future, the military should address these core challenges to improve its stabilization operations

…

One pre-requisite of a market economy might be the rule of law, although China’s success over the past few decades offers an interesting challenge to that premise.

…

There is debate and uncertainty over what we mean by the phrase, “rule of law,” and whether it simply includes a justice system, courts, and efficient policing or extends beyond that to contracts, finance, commerce, and beyond. The answer is no one knows, and the rules of the game don’t have to be perfect—they just have to be certain and perceived as fair. The two things businesses always look for are stability and certainty.

…

In war, just as there are human casualties, there also are financial casualties, and we need to accept this reality. Some dollars will be misappropriated, and some will go to the enemy, to criminal networks, to ineffective local leaders, and to bad projects. This doesn’t make it okay, but we need a productive dialogue to determine what is a reasonable level of these financial casualties.

…

Some disagree that economics is … a soldier’s job. Yet, economics is required to win, and a soldier’s job is to win. The military has no choice but to use economics as a weapon in stability operations, so let’s be as good as possible at it. What we need to be thinking is, “What are the appropriate economic principles we can teach military leaders so they can use them to accomplish their mission?”

“Legal Tender” by Merle Hazard

A quick history of money–from cigarettes to fiat currency–courtesy of Merle Hazard:

Sung to the tune of “Love Me Tender” which turns out to have been based on the tune of “Aura Lee” from 1861. (There’s a gold joke in there somewhere.)

Underemployment Fell in May

The headline jobs report on Friday was disappointing, as temporary Census workers accounted for almost all of the 431,000 of May’s increase in payroll jobs. As the economics team at PNC put it, the jobs report was “all frosting, no cupcake.”

The household survey provided a little more substance, as the headline unemployment rate fell to 9.7% in May from 9.9%. More encouraging, the U-6 measure of underemployment (which includes not only those who are unemployed but also marginally attached workers and those who are part time for economic reasons) fell sharply. The underemployment rate was 16.6% in May, down from 17.1% a month earlier (and from its peak of 17.4% last October):

As you can see, the headline unemployment rate (U-3) and the underemployment rate (U-6) have been moving sideways or slightly downward over the past eight months. That’s a step in the right direction after the sharp increases in 2008 and 2009. But we have a very long way to go.

How Blurry is the Line between Monetary and Fiscal Policy?

Economists have traditionally drawn a sharp distinction between monetary and fiscal policy. Monetary policy should try to promote growth and limit inflation by setting short-term interest rates, managing the money supply, and providing liquidity during times of financial stress. Fiscal policy should also encourage growth and, more broadly, promote the general welfare through careful choices about spending, taxes, and borrowing. The Federal Reserve has responsibility for monetary policy, while Congress and the President handle fiscal policy.

That clean distinction was one of many casualties of the financial crisis. As credit markets froze, the Fed pursued unconventional policies that blurred the line between fiscal and monetary policy. For example, it purchased more than $1 trillion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, created new lending facilities for commercial paper and asset-backed securities, and provided special support for such key financial institutions as AIG, Bank of America, and Citigroup.

Those actions differed from conventional monetary policy in two ways. First, they exposed the Fed to more financial risk. Short-term Treasury securities, the Fed’s usual fare, carry no credit risk and almost no interest rate risk. In contrast, the Fed’s new portfolio has healthy doses of both. Second, in several cases the Fed offered to purchase financial assets at above-market prices or, equivalently, to make loans at below-market interest rates. In effect, the Fed chose to subsidize some specific financial activities.

Both changes increased the Fed’s fiscal importance.

Most visibly, Fed profits have jumped as its portfolio expanded and it acquired higher-yielding assets. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that Fed profits will hit $77 billion in 2010, up from $32 billion in 2008. That makes them the fourth largest source of federal revenues, after personal income, social insurance, and corporate income taxes, but ahead of estate and excise taxes. Actual returns could be higher or lower, however, depending on how well its investments perform.

Also important, though less visible, are subsidies implicit in some of the Fed’s financing programs. The Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), for example, offered favorable long-term funding to investors who wanted to finance investments in securities backed by auto loans, student loans, and certain other types of debt. Similar programs provided favorable funding to support commercial paper markets and to assist AIG, Bank of America, and Citigroup. CBO recently pegged the initial cost of the resulting subsidies at $21 billion.

Not all programs created subsidies, however. CBO concluded, for example, that the MBS purchase program did not involve subsidies because the Fed made its purchases at market prices.

To be sure, the Fed’s fiscal initiatives were dwarfed by the explicitly fiscal actions taken by Congress and Presidents Bush and Obama. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), for example, was originally estimated to involve subsidies of $189 billion (a figure that has fallen as financial markets have healed), and support to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has added tens of billions more. Still, CBO’s estimates do highlight the Fed’s move into fiscal territory as it battled the financial crisis.

Those steps were appropriate given the severity and suddenness of the crisis, but have fueled concerns about the Fed’s scope of authority. Some members of Congress, for example, have questioned whether the Fed should be able to engage in even moderate amounts of fiscal policy without congressional oversight. Their increased interest in Fed oversight, in turn, has raised concerns about defending the Fed’s traditional independence in making monetary policy.

As Chairman Ben Bernanke argued in a speech last week, maintaining the Fed’s independence in monetary policy would be easier if policymakers would “further clarify the dividing line between monetary and fiscal responsibilities.” Let’s hope such guidance comes along before the next financial crisis strikes.

This post first appeared on TaxVox, the blog of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Consumer Spending is Not 70% of the Economy

Journalists, commentators, and economists often say that consumer spending makes up 70% of the U.S. economy. Indeed, it’s easy to find several examples of that claim in today’s coverage of the latest GDP data (e.g., here). And, full confession, I’ve used that phrase a few times myself.

There’s just one problem with the 70% claim: it’s wrong. Consumer spending actually makes up only 60% of the economy.

This discrepancy exists because national income accounting doesn’t always mix well with simple arithmetic. If you look at data for 2009, you will find that consumer spending totaled $10.1 trillion, while GDP was $14.3 trillion, both measured in current dollars. Put those together, and it appears that consumer spending is about 71% of the economy (= 10.1 / 14.3). (You get almost the exact same percentage if you do the calculation with real values, but that introduces other complexities.)

That calculation is so simple, it’s easy to understand why it has a fan club. But there’s a hidden problem. To see it, it helps to do the same calculation for other parts of the economy. Again using current dollar figures for 2009, you will find the following:

     Consumer Spending            71%
     Investment                            12%
     Government                          21%
     Exports                                    11%

Notice anything strange? If you add these four sectors of the economy together, you discover that they account for 114% of GDP. In other words, consumer spending, investment, government spending, and exports, when combined, are one-seventh larger than the total economy.

This apparent paradox—the components of the economy are bigger than the economy itself—is resolved when you consider how the economic data handle imports. In order to determine gross domestic production, the statisticians add up domestic purchases and then subtract imports. So the full national income accounts for 2009 show the following shares of the economy:

     Consumer Spending           71%
     Investment                            12%
     Government                          21%
     Exports                                    11%
     Imports                                 -14%

These figures add to 100%, as they should. They also demonstrate why consumer spending was not really 71% of the U.S. economy in 2009. Total consumer spending was indeed 71% of the size of the economy, but part of that spending went to imported goods (clothes, coffee, cars, etc.). If you want to know how much consumers contributed to U.S. GDP, you need to take the 71% figure and then deduct the portion that was spent on imports.

I am not aware of a simple way to do this calculation using the data in the regular GDP reports. Over at Mandel on Innovation and Growth, however, Michael Mandel provides a useful discussion of a paper that does this calculation for several recent years, including 2008. (Michael deserves credit for taking a leading role in fighting back against the claim that consumers are 70% of the economy.)

The paper, “Induced Consumption: Its Impact on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Employment” by Carl Chentrens and Art Andreassen (you can find it in this conference proceeding) makes exactly the import adjustment I described above. For 2008, it concludes that the relative shares are as follows

Unadjusted Adjusted

Consumer Spending           71%                           61%
Investment                          14%                           11%
Government                         20%                           17%
Exports                                   12%                            11%
Imports                                 -17%

The authors find similar results in previous years, including 1999, 2002, and 2006.

Bottom line: Consumer spending really makes up about 60% of the U.S. economy. But you’d be hard-pressed to know that from the usual GDP data.

Note: The authors make a second adjustment for “induced activity”, that Michael Mandel also picks up on. That makes the consumer share seem even smaller. I have serious reservations about that adjustment, however, particularly when trying to answer questions about (a) the overall size and composition of the economy and (b) its long-term growth. Thus, I favor the 60% figure.

Jobs Rebounding Faster at Large Employers

In testimony before Congress’s Joint Economic Committee today, Treasury Assistant Secretary Alan Krueger provides further evidence that small employers have been particularly hard hit by the financial crisis and economic downturn.

Using research data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey data (known as the JOLTS data), Alan found that the pace of job openings has been rebounding at large employers (in green), but remains low at smaller employers (red and blue):

He also found important differences in the way that large and small employers reacted to the worsening of the financial crisis in September 2008:

[S]mall establishments responded by quickly laying off a large number of workers. Mid-size establishments … and large establishments … responded by sharply cutting back on hiring in the months immediately after the crisis, and while they also increased layoffs, the increase was not as large as that seen by the small establishments. [See his testimony for the corresponding charts.]

His bottom line:

[T]he improvement in the labor market seen to date has been unevenly distributed across establishments of different sizes. On the positive side, labor demand has generally trended up at large private sector establishments since reaching a trough in February 2008. Moreover, large establishments have apparently increased employment in five of the six months since September 2009–a possible early sign of durable job growth. At the lower end of the size distribution, however, labor demand by small establishments has continued to be weak, with notably low rates of new hires.

P.S. For an earlier discussion of the JOLTS data, see this post.

Consumers Boosted GDP in Q1

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its first look at Q1 GDP growth this morning. BEA estimates that GDP grew at a solid 3.2% annual pace in the first quarter. That’s slower than the 5.6% pace of the previous quarter, but is otherwise the strongest showing since the third quarter of 2007.

The following chart illustrates how much various types of economic activity added to (or subtracted from) first quarter growth:

The big story is the return of the American consumer. Their spending increased at a 3.6% pace during the first quarter, the fastest pace in three years. (Consumer spending added 2.6 percentage points to overall growth because it makes up about 70% of the economy).

Business investment in equipment and software (E&S) showed continued strength, rising at a 13.4% pace (and adding 0.8 percentage points to overall growth). That’s down from the blistering 19% recorded in the fourth quarter, but is still remarkably strong.

Inventories–the big story in Q4–continued to boost growth as well. Inventories actually increased in the first quarter, after seven quarters of declines.

On the downside, construction continued to suffer, with both housing and non-residential structures declining. Government spending fell as well, as reduced spending by state and local governments more than offset a moderate increase in purchases by the federal government.

Talking about the Economy at Milken

This morning I participated in a panel discussion at the Milken Global Conference about the state of the economy. Here’s the video.

Fellow panelists were:

Ron Bloom, Senior Advisor, U.S. Treasury Department; White House Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy

John Engler, President and CEO, National Association of Manufacturers

Michael McCallister, President and CEO, Humana Inc.

David Simon, Chairman and CEO, Simon Property Group Inc.

Moderator: Ross DeVol, Executive Director, Economic Research, Milken Institute

We covered lots of material during the panel – policy responses to the financial crisis, stimulus, boosting exports, the fiscal outlook, etc. If you want to hear my budget stump speech, that begins at about 57:30 in the video.

At the end of the panel, Ross DeVol polled the audience about the strength of the economy. A whopping 52% said they thought the economy would be weaker in the next few years than is predicted by the consensus of economic forecasters. Several of the panelists agreed (including me with the caveat that this year may surprise on the upside). But the contrarian in me is wondering whether this agreement might itself be a sign that the economy will be stronger than anticipated.

Single Family Construction Still Flat

Today’s housing data are driving some optimistic headlines about the 1.6% increase in housing starts in March and the upward revisions to February data. Looking a bit deeper, however, one finds that single-family starts actually fell in March; all of the gain came in multi-family units.

As I’ve noted in previous posts (here, for example), I think it’s useful to look not only at the number of housing starts, but also at the number of houses under construction (which reflects the pace of both starts and completions). Why? Because that gives us a sense of how much construction activity is actually taking place:

As you would expect, the chart shows that the number of single-family homes under construction fell off a cliff in early 2006. Almost 1 million new single family homes were under construction in February 2006. Today there are just 305,000.

The precipitous decline ended last summer, and housing construction has now been flat for several months.