Monday, November 16, 2009
The Myths of Financial Deregulation
An exhaustive compendium by Critical Review author Peter Wallison.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Regulation, Not Markets, Let Us Down
by Viral V. Acharya
In the aftermath of the crisis, it is customary to fault the markets: Markets missed the crisis; markets are euphoric in good times; markets suffer from mob mania; markets reflect animal spirits, and so on. It is tempting to ring the death knell of “efficient markets”: How could creditors get it so wrong? Why did bank shareholders not react sooner? Can we rely on markets any longer?
I contend that markets have been reasonably efficient, but only within poor regulatory constraints. Markets slept in the buildup to this crisis when regulation was supposed to be on the watch. It was lax regulation – not markets – that let us down. And until we improve the regulatory perimeter within which markets operate, we will not be able to generate stable economic growth.
Let me elaborate.
Most of the leverage built by financial firms between 2004 and 2007 was either done through regulatory arbitrage or was the result of lax regulation. Commercial banks added over $700bln to their off-balance sheet leverage by providing under-capitalized guarantees to structured purpose vehicles (“conduits”) that themselves had hardly any capital. Regulators allowed this, even though a similar leverage game brought down Enron. Once the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) lifted their “net capitalization rule” in 2004, investment banks ramped up their exposure to sub-prime mortgages. In no time, these banks drove up their debt-to-equity ratios from 22:1 to 33:1. A.I.G. was the mother of all jurisdictional arbitrages. It bought a small thrift in order to get its several hundred billion dollars of credit default swaps weakly capitalized, avoiding the New York State Insurance Department, its natural but tougher regulator. Banks buying protection from A.I.G. could not care less as they too got a regulatory capital relief in the process. And regulators allowed Fannie and Freddie – set up by the government to securitize prime mortgages – to bet in sub-prime assets that eventually ruined them.
Markets could be deemed inefficient in all this if they had the relevant information, but made a mistake in not using it. But many activities through which the financial sector built up leverage, such as conduits and over-the-counter exposures, were not visible to investors. In contrast, these activities were – or should have been – visible to regulators. Elsewhere, it was simply not in the interest of investors to be bothered. For instance, Fannie and Freddie’s debt was understood by all to be government-backed, so their sub-prime bets were a pure gambling option for the shareholders. And except for a few cases, even uninsured creditors and counterparties of failed financial institutions have walked away without taking substantial haircuts.
The low price of credit risk of financials until 2007, coinciding with a rising path of their leverage, implied that the hidden trajectory of expected taxpayer losses was exploding. Put simply, profits were being privatized and risks socialized. It was regulation, not markets, that allowed this to happen.
Regulation is supposed to fix market failures. But regulation also reduces market discipline. For instance, insured depositors are unlikely to “run” but they also freely deposit at the highest-yielding bank, not worrying about its credit risk. Thus, when regulators deem a bank as well-capitalized, the onus is on regulators that this be right. Markets may not have the incentive to gather this information nor possess the details of regulatory supervision that led to such an assessment. Conversely, when regulation allows itself to be arbitraged, the financial sector becomes more opaque exposing markets to unexpected outcomes.
When such adverse outcomes materialized in the first eight months of 2007, market learned fairly quickly. By then, Countrywide had fallen, Bear Stearns had to bail out hedge funds invested in the US subprime assets, and indices tracking such assets were declining day by day. When BNP Paribas declared on August 8th that there was no market for subprime assets in its hedge funds, it became clear to investors that the entire financial sector had made a one-way bet on the economy. Investors realized that the seemingly well-capitalized financial institutions were in fact significantly more levered, no matter what their regulatory capitals looked like.
Since that day of rude awakening, markets have given hell to the weak players and rewarded the strong ones. Financials with the worst balance sheets have fallen, and the next in line have been punished severely. Bear Stearns failed in March 2008 even as its regulatory capital level exceeded 10%, well above the required minimum. It was clear to markets that Bear’s regulatory capitalization had little information content about its solvency. In fact, only the relatively stringent “stress tests” conducted earlier this year have restored markets’ confidence in regulatory endorsements of financial stability.
Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman, acknowledged that he “made a mistake” in trusting that free markets could regulate themselves. The underlying assumption is itself questionable. The financial sector – so heavily regulated and partly guaranteed since 1930’s – is not exactly a free market, is it?
Recently, the G20 also accused the “reckless excesses” of the banking sector for the mess we are in. While there might be a grain of truth to this, there is also a sense in which these excesses are consistent with the efficiency of markets. If government guarantees are offered gratis to the private sector, competition leads to their fullest exploitation. If regulators legitimize the shadow banking world, then profit-maximizing bankers avoid capital requirements through off-balance sheet transactions. If money is being thrown at insolvent firms without any strings attached, these firms procrastinate on capital issuances and continue paying bonuses and dividends.
Hence, compared to 1930’s, the current job of rewriting regulation is tougher. We need to address regulatory failures in addition to market failures. Will we restrict the scope of government sponsored enterprises? Will we stop rebating deposit insurance premiums to banks in good times? Will we bring capital requirements of off-balance sheet activities in line with on-balance sheet ones? Will central bank lines of credit be made contingent on solvency criteria, like the private lines of credit? And will regulatory supervision be held accountable by requiring that they produce public reports on strengths and weaknesses of banks they invigilate?
To attribute this crisis to a failure of efficient markets is to miss its most important lesson: That poor regulation, with its incentive and information distortions, can also destabilize markets.
The author is a professor of finance at New York University Stern School of Business and co-editor of the book “Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System.” With Matthew Richardson, he coauthored "Causes of the Financial Crisis" in the special issue of Critical Review devoted to that topic.
In the aftermath of the crisis, it is customary to fault the markets: Markets missed the crisis; markets are euphoric in good times; markets suffer from mob mania; markets reflect animal spirits, and so on. It is tempting to ring the death knell of “efficient markets”: How could creditors get it so wrong? Why did bank shareholders not react sooner? Can we rely on markets any longer?
I contend that markets have been reasonably efficient, but only within poor regulatory constraints. Markets slept in the buildup to this crisis when regulation was supposed to be on the watch. It was lax regulation – not markets – that let us down. And until we improve the regulatory perimeter within which markets operate, we will not be able to generate stable economic growth.
Let me elaborate.
Most of the leverage built by financial firms between 2004 and 2007 was either done through regulatory arbitrage or was the result of lax regulation. Commercial banks added over $700bln to their off-balance sheet leverage by providing under-capitalized guarantees to structured purpose vehicles (“conduits”) that themselves had hardly any capital. Regulators allowed this, even though a similar leverage game brought down Enron. Once the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) lifted their “net capitalization rule” in 2004, investment banks ramped up their exposure to sub-prime mortgages. In no time, these banks drove up their debt-to-equity ratios from 22:1 to 33:1. A.I.G. was the mother of all jurisdictional arbitrages. It bought a small thrift in order to get its several hundred billion dollars of credit default swaps weakly capitalized, avoiding the New York State Insurance Department, its natural but tougher regulator. Banks buying protection from A.I.G. could not care less as they too got a regulatory capital relief in the process. And regulators allowed Fannie and Freddie – set up by the government to securitize prime mortgages – to bet in sub-prime assets that eventually ruined them.
Markets could be deemed inefficient in all this if they had the relevant information, but made a mistake in not using it. But many activities through which the financial sector built up leverage, such as conduits and over-the-counter exposures, were not visible to investors. In contrast, these activities were – or should have been – visible to regulators. Elsewhere, it was simply not in the interest of investors to be bothered. For instance, Fannie and Freddie’s debt was understood by all to be government-backed, so their sub-prime bets were a pure gambling option for the shareholders. And except for a few cases, even uninsured creditors and counterparties of failed financial institutions have walked away without taking substantial haircuts.
The low price of credit risk of financials until 2007, coinciding with a rising path of their leverage, implied that the hidden trajectory of expected taxpayer losses was exploding. Put simply, profits were being privatized and risks socialized. It was regulation, not markets, that allowed this to happen.
Regulation is supposed to fix market failures. But regulation also reduces market discipline. For instance, insured depositors are unlikely to “run” but they also freely deposit at the highest-yielding bank, not worrying about its credit risk. Thus, when regulators deem a bank as well-capitalized, the onus is on regulators that this be right. Markets may not have the incentive to gather this information nor possess the details of regulatory supervision that led to such an assessment. Conversely, when regulation allows itself to be arbitraged, the financial sector becomes more opaque exposing markets to unexpected outcomes.
When such adverse outcomes materialized in the first eight months of 2007, market learned fairly quickly. By then, Countrywide had fallen, Bear Stearns had to bail out hedge funds invested in the US subprime assets, and indices tracking such assets were declining day by day. When BNP Paribas declared on August 8th that there was no market for subprime assets in its hedge funds, it became clear to investors that the entire financial sector had made a one-way bet on the economy. Investors realized that the seemingly well-capitalized financial institutions were in fact significantly more levered, no matter what their regulatory capitals looked like.
Since that day of rude awakening, markets have given hell to the weak players and rewarded the strong ones. Financials with the worst balance sheets have fallen, and the next in line have been punished severely. Bear Stearns failed in March 2008 even as its regulatory capital level exceeded 10%, well above the required minimum. It was clear to markets that Bear’s regulatory capitalization had little information content about its solvency. In fact, only the relatively stringent “stress tests” conducted earlier this year have restored markets’ confidence in regulatory endorsements of financial stability.
Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman, acknowledged that he “made a mistake” in trusting that free markets could regulate themselves. The underlying assumption is itself questionable. The financial sector – so heavily regulated and partly guaranteed since 1930’s – is not exactly a free market, is it?
Recently, the G20 also accused the “reckless excesses” of the banking sector for the mess we are in. While there might be a grain of truth to this, there is also a sense in which these excesses are consistent with the efficiency of markets. If government guarantees are offered gratis to the private sector, competition leads to their fullest exploitation. If regulators legitimize the shadow banking world, then profit-maximizing bankers avoid capital requirements through off-balance sheet transactions. If money is being thrown at insolvent firms without any strings attached, these firms procrastinate on capital issuances and continue paying bonuses and dividends.
Hence, compared to 1930’s, the current job of rewriting regulation is tougher. We need to address regulatory failures in addition to market failures. Will we restrict the scope of government sponsored enterprises? Will we stop rebating deposit insurance premiums to banks in good times? Will we bring capital requirements of off-balance sheet activities in line with on-balance sheet ones? Will central bank lines of credit be made contingent on solvency criteria, like the private lines of credit? And will regulatory supervision be held accountable by requiring that they produce public reports on strengths and weaknesses of banks they invigilate?
To attribute this crisis to a failure of efficient markets is to miss its most important lesson: That poor regulation, with its incentive and information distortions, can also destabilize markets.
The author is a professor of finance at New York University Stern School of Business and co-editor of the book “Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System.” With Matthew Richardson, he coauthored "Causes of the Financial Crisis" in the special issue of Critical Review devoted to that topic.
Terrific Article by Edmund Phelps
Nobel laureate Ned Phelps writes : "The lesson the crisis teaches, though it is not yet grasped, is that there is no magic in the market: the expectations underlying asset prices cannot be 'rational' relative to some known and agreed model since there is no such model."
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The Real Bank Pay Scandal
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announced last week that all federally regulated banks will be subject to regulatory scrutiny of compensation practices “to ensure that they do not encourage excessive risk-taking.” Bernanke justified this plan by asserting that “flawed compensation practices at financial institutions” helped cause the financial crisis.
It would be an understatement to say that this assertion has not been proven. Bernanke’s heavily footnoted speech provides dozens of statements from various regulatory bodies that simply assert the Bernanke thesis as if it were self-evidently true. The real scandal of bankers’ pay contributing to the financial crisis is that nobody, literally nobody, has offered a shred of evidence that it did contribute to the crisis. Yet public opinion, the financial press, and the regulators have decided that it did, and drastic new regulatory policies are being constructed on that basis.
Moreover, when we consult what evidence is known, it seems that bankers, far from deliberately courting disaster so as to boost their pay, unintentionally took risks that jeopardized their own wealth.
We can see some of the results in the huge hits taken by key bank executives, such as Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, who lost $1 billion by retaining his Lehman holdings until the bitter end. Sanford Weill of Citigroup lost half that amount. Ohio State economists Rüdiger Fahlenbrach and René Stulz have shown that banks whose CEOs held a lot of their banks’ stock fared worse in the crisis than banks with CEOs who held less stock. The CEOs who held stock in the riskier banks must have been ignorant of the risk, or they would have sold their shares.
Ignorance, not a perverse pay structure, also seems to have been at work at Bear Stearns. William D. Cohan’s "House of Cards" suggests that before losing about $900 million in stock when the bank imploded, Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne had no idea that anything was amiss. In fact, he was obsessed with the construction of a huge new headquarters building that would testify to the permanence of Bear Stearns, formerly the upstart of investment banks. It isn’t plausible that he would have let anything jeopardize this legacy—if he knew about the risk. All the while, two Bear Stearns hedge funds were buying billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities that ended up sinking the parent bank. Did the employees who ran these funds, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, understand the risks they were taking? That is part of what’s at issue in their trial for securities fraud. But we already know that they had millions of dollars of their own invested in their hedge funds, and emails between them suggest that until nearly the end, they felt secure in the knowledge that the funds’ holdings were rated AAA.
Indeed, 93 percent of the mortgage-backed securities purchased by banks either were rated AAA or—better yet—were insured by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, with implicit federal guarantees. It turned out to be a mistake to trust the AAA ratings, but in making this mistake, bankers again demonstrated that they were not seeking short-term profits to boost their annual bonuses. Had that been the bankers’ aim, they would not have bought AAA-rated mortgage-backed bonds, which, being “safe,” paid a lower interest rate than AA- and lower-rated bonds. Bankers who were indifferent to risk because they were seeking higher return should have bought the more-lucrative, riskier bonds, but they did so only 7 percent of the time.
The theory that the financial crisis was caused by pay incentives that encouraged risk-taking simply does not fit the facts. Moreover, if we ask why bankers invested so heavily in mortgage-backed bonds instead of other securities, the answer seems to be a previous regulatory attempt to steer banks away from risk. In 2001, the Fed, the FDIC, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Office of Thrift Supervision promulgated the Recourse Rule, which encouraged commercial banks to trade individual mortgages, which the regulators deemed risky, for mortgage-backed securities, which the regulators deemed safe—as long as they were guaranteed by Fannie or Freddie, or were rated AA or AAA. The bankers’ repudiation of the higher-yielding AA bonds shows that they were not deliberately courting risk. But the regulators’ judgment about the risklessness of AAA mortgage-backed bonds proved to be disastrously wrong—and this judgment, in the form of the Recourse Rule, made those bonds much more profitable for banks than they otherwise would have been. As a result, banks ended up buying about half of the world’s entire supply of mortgage-backed securities, and when housing prices began to drop, the uncertain value of these securities caused the financial panic of September 2008.
One lesson of the financial crisis, then, is that regulators, like bankers, are human. Nobody can flawlessly predict the future, but regulators—like bankers and other businesspeople—have no choice but to try.
There is a difference, however. Competing businesses may pursue a variety of strategies based on divergent risk/reward assessments. Citigroup jumped into mortgage-backed bonds with both feet, even opening its own securitizing unit to transform mortgages into mortgage-backed securities. J. P. Morgan thought the risk was too great and went in the opposite direction, even though that meant passing up the extra rewards offered by the Recourse Rule. Such heterogeneous behavior is perhaps the one saving grace of capitalism. By behaving heterogeneously in order to compete with each other, capitalists spread society’s bets among a variety of ideas about the location of risk and reward.
Capitalists as a group aren’t smarter or better at predicting the future than regulators are, and when capitalists fall victim to the herd mentality, they may homogeneously converge on a mistaken prediction. This is a danger, but regulations aggravate it. Of necessity, a regulation homogenizes capitalists’ behavior. Prudential bank regulation, for instance, imposes one idea about risk on the whole banking system, skewing the various risk/reward calculations of all bankers in a direction the regulators deem safe. If the regulators turn out to be mistaken, as they were in 2001, they put the whole system at risk.
The Bernanke plan is intended to reduce the risk taken by banks, but by homogenizing all banks’ compensation practices, it may actually aggravate systemic risk. To take such an action with no evidentiary basis flies in the face of reason.
--Jeffrey Friedman and Wladimir Kraus
It would be an understatement to say that this assertion has not been proven. Bernanke’s heavily footnoted speech provides dozens of statements from various regulatory bodies that simply assert the Bernanke thesis as if it were self-evidently true. The real scandal of bankers’ pay contributing to the financial crisis is that nobody, literally nobody, has offered a shred of evidence that it did contribute to the crisis. Yet public opinion, the financial press, and the regulators have decided that it did, and drastic new regulatory policies are being constructed on that basis.
Moreover, when we consult what evidence is known, it seems that bankers, far from deliberately courting disaster so as to boost their pay, unintentionally took risks that jeopardized their own wealth.
We can see some of the results in the huge hits taken by key bank executives, such as Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, who lost $1 billion by retaining his Lehman holdings until the bitter end. Sanford Weill of Citigroup lost half that amount. Ohio State economists Rüdiger Fahlenbrach and René Stulz have shown that banks whose CEOs held a lot of their banks’ stock fared worse in the crisis than banks with CEOs who held less stock. The CEOs who held stock in the riskier banks must have been ignorant of the risk, or they would have sold their shares.
Ignorance, not a perverse pay structure, also seems to have been at work at Bear Stearns. William D. Cohan’s "House of Cards" suggests that before losing about $900 million in stock when the bank imploded, Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne had no idea that anything was amiss. In fact, he was obsessed with the construction of a huge new headquarters building that would testify to the permanence of Bear Stearns, formerly the upstart of investment banks. It isn’t plausible that he would have let anything jeopardize this legacy—if he knew about the risk. All the while, two Bear Stearns hedge funds were buying billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities that ended up sinking the parent bank. Did the employees who ran these funds, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, understand the risks they were taking? That is part of what’s at issue in their trial for securities fraud. But we already know that they had millions of dollars of their own invested in their hedge funds, and emails between them suggest that until nearly the end, they felt secure in the knowledge that the funds’ holdings were rated AAA.
Indeed, 93 percent of the mortgage-backed securities purchased by banks either were rated AAA or—better yet—were insured by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, with implicit federal guarantees. It turned out to be a mistake to trust the AAA ratings, but in making this mistake, bankers again demonstrated that they were not seeking short-term profits to boost their annual bonuses. Had that been the bankers’ aim, they would not have bought AAA-rated mortgage-backed bonds, which, being “safe,” paid a lower interest rate than AA- and lower-rated bonds. Bankers who were indifferent to risk because they were seeking higher return should have bought the more-lucrative, riskier bonds, but they did so only 7 percent of the time.
The theory that the financial crisis was caused by pay incentives that encouraged risk-taking simply does not fit the facts. Moreover, if we ask why bankers invested so heavily in mortgage-backed bonds instead of other securities, the answer seems to be a previous regulatory attempt to steer banks away from risk. In 2001, the Fed, the FDIC, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Office of Thrift Supervision promulgated the Recourse Rule, which encouraged commercial banks to trade individual mortgages, which the regulators deemed risky, for mortgage-backed securities, which the regulators deemed safe—as long as they were guaranteed by Fannie or Freddie, or were rated AA or AAA. The bankers’ repudiation of the higher-yielding AA bonds shows that they were not deliberately courting risk. But the regulators’ judgment about the risklessness of AAA mortgage-backed bonds proved to be disastrously wrong—and this judgment, in the form of the Recourse Rule, made those bonds much more profitable for banks than they otherwise would have been. As a result, banks ended up buying about half of the world’s entire supply of mortgage-backed securities, and when housing prices began to drop, the uncertain value of these securities caused the financial panic of September 2008.
One lesson of the financial crisis, then, is that regulators, like bankers, are human. Nobody can flawlessly predict the future, but regulators—like bankers and other businesspeople—have no choice but to try.
There is a difference, however. Competing businesses may pursue a variety of strategies based on divergent risk/reward assessments. Citigroup jumped into mortgage-backed bonds with both feet, even opening its own securitizing unit to transform mortgages into mortgage-backed securities. J. P. Morgan thought the risk was too great and went in the opposite direction, even though that meant passing up the extra rewards offered by the Recourse Rule. Such heterogeneous behavior is perhaps the one saving grace of capitalism. By behaving heterogeneously in order to compete with each other, capitalists spread society’s bets among a variety of ideas about the location of risk and reward.
Capitalists as a group aren’t smarter or better at predicting the future than regulators are, and when capitalists fall victim to the herd mentality, they may homogeneously converge on a mistaken prediction. This is a danger, but regulations aggravate it. Of necessity, a regulation homogenizes capitalists’ behavior. Prudential bank regulation, for instance, imposes one idea about risk on the whole banking system, skewing the various risk/reward calculations of all bankers in a direction the regulators deem safe. If the regulators turn out to be mistaken, as they were in 2001, they put the whole system at risk.
The Bernanke plan is intended to reduce the risk taken by banks, but by homogenizing all banks’ compensation practices, it may actually aggravate systemic risk. To take such an action with no evidentiary basis flies in the face of reason.
--Jeffrey Friedman and Wladimir Kraus
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Katarina Juselius on Is Beauty Mistaken For Truth? A Marchallian Versus a Walrasian Approach to Economics
In his New York Sunday column Paul Krugman launches a blistering attack on mainframe macro (mostly based on representative agents with rational expectations who maximize over an infinite future). John Cochrane launches an equally blistering response rhetorically beginning with:
“Krugman, says, most basically, that everything everyone has done in his field since the mid 1960s is a complete waste of time. Everything that fills its academic journals, is taught in its PhD programs, presented at its conferences, summarized in its graduate textbooks, and rewarded with the accolades a profession can bestow, including multiple Nobel prizes, is totally wrong.”
No doubt, there are quite a number of economists, not to mention non-economists, that would nod at least in partial agreement with the above. As a result of the crisis, such views have manifested themselves in numerous critical articles in the press and in a chorus of critical voices (including the English queen!) demanding that standard textbooks in economics should be re-written. Also, a number of economists have triumphantly declared ‘I told you so, Keynes is right after all!’ But isn’t the latter just a foreseeable reaction by those whose papers were previously rejected by editors of top economic journals and whose proposals were largely ignored by policy makers? Loosely interpreted this seems more or less what Cochrane says in his response to Krugman’s critique. So, has Cochrane a valid point in saying that Krugman has misled New York Times readers with his outdated Keynesian insights?
I believe this is a question of considerable interest both among economists and the general public and have tried to address it based on my experience as an empirical econometrician over a period over roughly 25 years. Let me say it right from the beginning: when we let the data speak freely (in the sense of not constraining the data according to one’s economic prior without first testing such restrictions) they mostly tell a very different story than the one found in standard textbooks. No doubt, our fast changing reality is infinitely more rich and complicated than the models which are discussed there. This does not necessarily mean that these models are irrelevant; it only means that abstract theory models and the empirical reality are two very different entities. Therefore, it did not come as a big surprise that very few observers came close to predicting the scale of the global financial and economics crisis that erupted in August 2007, and that those who did predict a massive correction in financial markets, with the associated impact on the real economy, typically relied on anecdotal evidence and rule-of-thumb indicators that are far less sophisticated than the models employed by central banks and leading academics (Colander et al. 2009).
What lessons can we draw from the widespread failure of central bank modelling and forecasting prior to the crisis? Which considerations need to be built into future models to improve their predictive power? Cochrane essentially argues that the efficient market hypothesis tells us that there is no need to do anything. This is just what one should expect to happen in a market economy every now and then: “it is fun to say we didn’t see the crisis coming, but the central empirical prediction of the efficient markets hypothesis is precisely that nobody can tell where markets are going – neither benevolent government bureaucrats, nor crafty hedge-fund managers, nor ivory-tower academics. This is probably the best-tested proposition in all the social sciences.”
But is this really so? The efficient market hypothesis says that nobody should be able to systematically make money by predicting future outcomes. This has generally been interpreted to mean that financial prices should behave like a random walk and this hypothesis has certainly been tested many times. The problem is that the univariate random walk hypothesis is all too simple as a test of the EMH. For example, if we assume for a moment that stock prices in general should be affected by the level of savings and investments in the economy, it would be reasonable to assume that stock prices would have a common component. In that case some linear combination would very likely be cointegrated and, hence, testing the random walk hypotheses in a multivariate setting would reject the hypothesis (which is what we find). This, however, does not as such imply a rejection of the EMH. If everybody reacts on the common information (though not according to the Rational Expectations Hypothesis) the market may not be able to systematically make money. Over the long run prices would converge to a level that could, for example, be consistent with a Tobin’s q level or a constant price/earnings ratio, and would therefore in a broad sense be predictable. But, even though the EMH might be right over the very long run, over the medium run of say 5-10 years, unregulated financial markets are likely to produce persistent swings in asset prices (Frydman and Goldberg, 2009) which are basically inconsistent with the following two interrelated assumptions:
1. Financial markets tend to drive prices towards their fundamental equilibrium values
2. Financial markets pricing behaviour is influenced by fundamentals in the real economy, but it does not change the fundamentals.
While most rational expectations models are implicitly or explicitly based on the above assumptions, empirical evidence (when letting data speak freely) suggest that financial markets drive prices away from fundamentals for extended periods of time with strong effect on the real economy. This is what George Soros has named reflexivity between the financial and real sector of the economy. Since it undermines the idea of unregulated financial markets as a guarantee for efficient capital allocation, reflexivity is an important feature of free financial markets that need to be included in our economic models.
Could empirical analysis have signalled the looming crisis? Already many years before the bubble burst, the relative house-consumption price index exhibited very pronounced nonstationary behaviour. Such movements of house prices away from ordinary consumer prices was (primarily) facilitated by low price inflation and interest rates. Prior to the bursting of the bubble, the house – consumption price ratio increased almost exponentially signalling that house prices were moving far away from their sustainable level, given by the level of inflation and interest rates. This, in my view, would have been the absolutely last moment for the authorities to react to prevent the subsequent disaster. But, the empirical result that the extraordinary high level of house prices were sustainable only by the extraordinary low levels of nominal interest rates and inflation rates should have been a reason for concern much earlier.
Has beauty been mistaken for truth? Assume for a moment that economists would agree that a minimum requirement for a theory model to be called empirically relevant is that it would be able to explain basic empirical facts as formulated in terms of the pulling and pushing forces estimated from a correctly specified and adequately structured VAR model. In such a case I would not hesitate to answer the above question in the affirmative. Economic data, when allowed to speak freely, often tell a very different story than being told by most Walrasian type of models. If anything, the stories data tell have much more a flavour of Keynesianism (though not New Keynesianism!) than Neoclassicism (or other recent isms). But when this is said, I doubt whether it is a good idea to ask which school is right and which is wrong. In some periods, one school seems more relevant, in other periods, it is another one. Quite often data suggest mechanisms which do not fit into any school. But, I am convinced that relying on beautiful but grossly oversimplified models as a description of our economic reality may easily prevent us from seeing what we really need to see. For example, I believe information about looming crisis was there in sufficiently good time to have helped us see the coming disaster, had we chosen to look carefully.
To conclude: I believe many economists were indeed blinded by the beauty of their theory models and in my view Krugman was right to point this out to the readers of NY Times.
Katarina Juselius
The full article can be downloaded here.
“Krugman, says, most basically, that everything everyone has done in his field since the mid 1960s is a complete waste of time. Everything that fills its academic journals, is taught in its PhD programs, presented at its conferences, summarized in its graduate textbooks, and rewarded with the accolades a profession can bestow, including multiple Nobel prizes, is totally wrong.”
No doubt, there are quite a number of economists, not to mention non-economists, that would nod at least in partial agreement with the above. As a result of the crisis, such views have manifested themselves in numerous critical articles in the press and in a chorus of critical voices (including the English queen!) demanding that standard textbooks in economics should be re-written. Also, a number of economists have triumphantly declared ‘I told you so, Keynes is right after all!’ But isn’t the latter just a foreseeable reaction by those whose papers were previously rejected by editors of top economic journals and whose proposals were largely ignored by policy makers? Loosely interpreted this seems more or less what Cochrane says in his response to Krugman’s critique. So, has Cochrane a valid point in saying that Krugman has misled New York Times readers with his outdated Keynesian insights?
I believe this is a question of considerable interest both among economists and the general public and have tried to address it based on my experience as an empirical econometrician over a period over roughly 25 years. Let me say it right from the beginning: when we let the data speak freely (in the sense of not constraining the data according to one’s economic prior without first testing such restrictions) they mostly tell a very different story than the one found in standard textbooks. No doubt, our fast changing reality is infinitely more rich and complicated than the models which are discussed there. This does not necessarily mean that these models are irrelevant; it only means that abstract theory models and the empirical reality are two very different entities. Therefore, it did not come as a big surprise that very few observers came close to predicting the scale of the global financial and economics crisis that erupted in August 2007, and that those who did predict a massive correction in financial markets, with the associated impact on the real economy, typically relied on anecdotal evidence and rule-of-thumb indicators that are far less sophisticated than the models employed by central banks and leading academics (Colander et al. 2009).
What lessons can we draw from the widespread failure of central bank modelling and forecasting prior to the crisis? Which considerations need to be built into future models to improve their predictive power? Cochrane essentially argues that the efficient market hypothesis tells us that there is no need to do anything. This is just what one should expect to happen in a market economy every now and then: “it is fun to say we didn’t see the crisis coming, but the central empirical prediction of the efficient markets hypothesis is precisely that nobody can tell where markets are going – neither benevolent government bureaucrats, nor crafty hedge-fund managers, nor ivory-tower academics. This is probably the best-tested proposition in all the social sciences.”
But is this really so? The efficient market hypothesis says that nobody should be able to systematically make money by predicting future outcomes. This has generally been interpreted to mean that financial prices should behave like a random walk and this hypothesis has certainly been tested many times. The problem is that the univariate random walk hypothesis is all too simple as a test of the EMH. For example, if we assume for a moment that stock prices in general should be affected by the level of savings and investments in the economy, it would be reasonable to assume that stock prices would have a common component. In that case some linear combination would very likely be cointegrated and, hence, testing the random walk hypotheses in a multivariate setting would reject the hypothesis (which is what we find). This, however, does not as such imply a rejection of the EMH. If everybody reacts on the common information (though not according to the Rational Expectations Hypothesis) the market may not be able to systematically make money. Over the long run prices would converge to a level that could, for example, be consistent with a Tobin’s q level or a constant price/earnings ratio, and would therefore in a broad sense be predictable. But, even though the EMH might be right over the very long run, over the medium run of say 5-10 years, unregulated financial markets are likely to produce persistent swings in asset prices (Frydman and Goldberg, 2009) which are basically inconsistent with the following two interrelated assumptions:
1. Financial markets tend to drive prices towards their fundamental equilibrium values
2. Financial markets pricing behaviour is influenced by fundamentals in the real economy, but it does not change the fundamentals.
While most rational expectations models are implicitly or explicitly based on the above assumptions, empirical evidence (when letting data speak freely) suggest that financial markets drive prices away from fundamentals for extended periods of time with strong effect on the real economy. This is what George Soros has named reflexivity between the financial and real sector of the economy. Since it undermines the idea of unregulated financial markets as a guarantee for efficient capital allocation, reflexivity is an important feature of free financial markets that need to be included in our economic models.
Could empirical analysis have signalled the looming crisis? Already many years before the bubble burst, the relative house-consumption price index exhibited very pronounced nonstationary behaviour. Such movements of house prices away from ordinary consumer prices was (primarily) facilitated by low price inflation and interest rates. Prior to the bursting of the bubble, the house – consumption price ratio increased almost exponentially signalling that house prices were moving far away from their sustainable level, given by the level of inflation and interest rates. This, in my view, would have been the absolutely last moment for the authorities to react to prevent the subsequent disaster. But, the empirical result that the extraordinary high level of house prices were sustainable only by the extraordinary low levels of nominal interest rates and inflation rates should have been a reason for concern much earlier.
Has beauty been mistaken for truth? Assume for a moment that economists would agree that a minimum requirement for a theory model to be called empirically relevant is that it would be able to explain basic empirical facts as formulated in terms of the pulling and pushing forces estimated from a correctly specified and adequately structured VAR model. In such a case I would not hesitate to answer the above question in the affirmative. Economic data, when allowed to speak freely, often tell a very different story than being told by most Walrasian type of models. If anything, the stories data tell have much more a flavour of Keynesianism (though not New Keynesianism!) than Neoclassicism (or other recent isms). But when this is said, I doubt whether it is a good idea to ask which school is right and which is wrong. In some periods, one school seems more relevant, in other periods, it is another one. Quite often data suggest mechanisms which do not fit into any school. But, I am convinced that relying on beautiful but grossly oversimplified models as a description of our economic reality may easily prevent us from seeing what we really need to see. For example, I believe information about looming crisis was there in sufficiently good time to have helped us see the coming disaster, had we chosen to look carefully.
To conclude: I believe many economists were indeed blinded by the beauty of their theory models and in my view Krugman was right to point this out to the readers of NY Times.
Katarina Juselius
The full article can be downloaded here.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Alan Kirman on What's Wrong with Economics
Alan Kirman, one of our contributors, was unable to post this himself for technical reasons:
The first thing that comes to mind, as one reads through the various postings about the crisis, is that economic theory was locked into a bubble which has now burst--and that the reactions have either to ignore this (John Cochrane) or to herald the return of one of our old heroes, Keynes (Paul Krugman). Economists seem to have been victims of extremely short memories and an incapacity to anticipate what the next theoretical developments will be. We periodically come to believe that we have hit upon the "right model" and that all previous efforts can be consigned to the waste basket of history. When the current model turns out to be completely at odds with reality, the reflex reaction seems to go back to the previous model and to chide the modernists for having lost sight of it. Dave Colander has tried to add a little historical perspective, but the debate remains very short sighted and ideologically motivated.
All of this seems to be misplaced. Supposing that we accept that economic theory, like the economy, is a complex adaptive system. Then we should expect to see it continually evolving and being modified to take into account both new theoretical insights and the evolution of the economy itself. We will not see theory evolving toward a given model which more closely represents the economy, since the economy itself is changing.
However, we might expect theory to evolve to at least be able to envisage the occurrence of the major crises that periodically shake the economy. We might then avoid the usual habit of falling back on the standard equilibrium notions and claiming that some major exogenous shock has hit the system. The latter sort of claim rarely identifies the shoc,k and as Bouchaud has shown, almost every significant turning point in all of the major stock price indices was accompanied by no notable news, and hence shock, at all.
Thus these large and abrupt movements must be due to the endogenous dynamics of the system. What has become the standard macroeconomic model--Dynamic General Stochastic Equilibrium (DGSE), for insiders--is justified by its proponents on the grounds that it has more "scientific" foundations than its predeceesors. By this is meant that it is based on rational maximising individuals. But there are two problems with this. First, we have known since the mid-70s that aggregating the behaviour of lots of rational individuals will not necessarily lead to behaviour consistent with that of some "representative agent." Second, the axioms that are used to define "rationality" are based on the introspection of economists and not on the observed behaviour of individuals. Thus, we have wound up in the weird position of developing models which unjustifiably claim to be scientific because they are based on the idea that the economy behaves like a rational individual, when there is a wealth of evidence to show that the rationality in question has little or nothing to do with how people behave.
Why do I say we do not look back far enough? Consider the Efficient Markets Hypothesis which has ruled the roost for some years in finance. Its originator was, by common accord, Bachelier, who developed the notion of Brownian motion at the turn of the twentieth century. His argument that stock prices should follow this sort of stochastic process, after years of being ignored, was acclaimed by economists both for analytic and ideological reasons. Yet, shortly after having written his report on Bachelier’s thesis, the great French mathematician Henri Poincaré observed that it would not be sensible to take this model as a basis for analysing what happens on financial markets. As he said, individuals who are close to each other, as they are in a market, do not take independent decisions, they watch each other and it is always herd behaviour that persists. Thus Poincaré clearly envisaged one of the most prevalent features of financial markets long before modern economists took this theme up to explain "excess volatility."
With regard to modern macro models, the same Poincaré wrote to Walras and chided him for his assumptions of infinite farsightedness and infinite selfishness. The latter he could believe at a pinch, but the former he found dubious, to say the least. Yet, while in other areas of economics we have moved on from these assumtptions,we are still faced today with macro models in which these two assumptions are central.
This brings me to my second point. Why are we so reluctant to envisage different models and different tools? As somebody said, we went through the twentieth century developing and perfecting a model based on nineteenth century physics; perhaps in the twenty first century we could move on to a model based on twentieth century physics. But as Paul Krugman has pointed out, the vested interests are strong and to ask economists to take up a new set of tools is probably asking too much. To discard equilibrium in the standard sense and to move on to study out of equilibrium dynamics is perhaps too big a step. To place externalities, the influence of one person’s actions on another, at the centre of the action rather than to regard them as "imperfections" in our equilibrium model is a necessary step. But if we argue that the interaction between individuals is important, then we have to specify the structure of that interaction. This means that we have to study the structure and fragility of the networks which govern the interaction between individuals and again to make this central in our analysis and not just a peripheral, albeit fascinating, topic.
Such changes are essential if we are to progress, but the inertia in the economics profession is strong and whilst the economy has shown that it is capable of sliding rapidly into a new phase, economists may well self organise to prevent this from happening to them in the immediate future. But in the end we will move on, for as Max Planck said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
--Alan Kirman
The first thing that comes to mind, as one reads through the various postings about the crisis, is that economic theory was locked into a bubble which has now burst--and that the reactions have either to ignore this (John Cochrane) or to herald the return of one of our old heroes, Keynes (Paul Krugman). Economists seem to have been victims of extremely short memories and an incapacity to anticipate what the next theoretical developments will be. We periodically come to believe that we have hit upon the "right model" and that all previous efforts can be consigned to the waste basket of history. When the current model turns out to be completely at odds with reality, the reflex reaction seems to go back to the previous model and to chide the modernists for having lost sight of it. Dave Colander has tried to add a little historical perspective, but the debate remains very short sighted and ideologically motivated.
All of this seems to be misplaced. Supposing that we accept that economic theory, like the economy, is a complex adaptive system. Then we should expect to see it continually evolving and being modified to take into account both new theoretical insights and the evolution of the economy itself. We will not see theory evolving toward a given model which more closely represents the economy, since the economy itself is changing.
However, we might expect theory to evolve to at least be able to envisage the occurrence of the major crises that periodically shake the economy. We might then avoid the usual habit of falling back on the standard equilibrium notions and claiming that some major exogenous shock has hit the system. The latter sort of claim rarely identifies the shoc,k and as Bouchaud has shown, almost every significant turning point in all of the major stock price indices was accompanied by no notable news, and hence shock, at all.
Thus these large and abrupt movements must be due to the endogenous dynamics of the system. What has become the standard macroeconomic model--Dynamic General Stochastic Equilibrium (DGSE), for insiders--is justified by its proponents on the grounds that it has more "scientific" foundations than its predeceesors. By this is meant that it is based on rational maximising individuals. But there are two problems with this. First, we have known since the mid-70s that aggregating the behaviour of lots of rational individuals will not necessarily lead to behaviour consistent with that of some "representative agent." Second, the axioms that are used to define "rationality" are based on the introspection of economists and not on the observed behaviour of individuals. Thus, we have wound up in the weird position of developing models which unjustifiably claim to be scientific because they are based on the idea that the economy behaves like a rational individual, when there is a wealth of evidence to show that the rationality in question has little or nothing to do with how people behave.
Why do I say we do not look back far enough? Consider the Efficient Markets Hypothesis which has ruled the roost for some years in finance. Its originator was, by common accord, Bachelier, who developed the notion of Brownian motion at the turn of the twentieth century. His argument that stock prices should follow this sort of stochastic process, after years of being ignored, was acclaimed by economists both for analytic and ideological reasons. Yet, shortly after having written his report on Bachelier’s thesis, the great French mathematician Henri Poincaré observed that it would not be sensible to take this model as a basis for analysing what happens on financial markets. As he said, individuals who are close to each other, as they are in a market, do not take independent decisions, they watch each other and it is always herd behaviour that persists. Thus Poincaré clearly envisaged one of the most prevalent features of financial markets long before modern economists took this theme up to explain "excess volatility."
With regard to modern macro models, the same Poincaré wrote to Walras and chided him for his assumptions of infinite farsightedness and infinite selfishness. The latter he could believe at a pinch, but the former he found dubious, to say the least. Yet, while in other areas of economics we have moved on from these assumtptions,we are still faced today with macro models in which these two assumptions are central.
This brings me to my second point. Why are we so reluctant to envisage different models and different tools? As somebody said, we went through the twentieth century developing and perfecting a model based on nineteenth century physics; perhaps in the twenty first century we could move on to a model based on twentieth century physics. But as Paul Krugman has pointed out, the vested interests are strong and to ask economists to take up a new set of tools is probably asking too much. To discard equilibrium in the standard sense and to move on to study out of equilibrium dynamics is perhaps too big a step. To place externalities, the influence of one person’s actions on another, at the centre of the action rather than to regard them as "imperfections" in our equilibrium model is a necessary step. But if we argue that the interaction between individuals is important, then we have to specify the structure of that interaction. This means that we have to study the structure and fragility of the networks which govern the interaction between individuals and again to make this central in our analysis and not just a peripheral, albeit fascinating, topic.
Such changes are essential if we are to progress, but the inertia in the economics profession is strong and whilst the economy has shown that it is capable of sliding rapidly into a new phase, economists may well self organise to prevent this from happening to them in the immediate future. But in the end we will move on, for as Max Planck said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
--Alan Kirman
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Basel Rules & the Crisis
Here is (believe it or not!) a very illuminating blog discussion (illuminating blog discussions are a bit like black swans) regarding whether bank-capital regulations, even if they did help cause the crisis, can justly be blamed on the regulations themselves or on the bankers who took advantage of them to "leverage up." The discussion was prompted by my post here last week and was begun by Mike Konczal of the Atlantic business blog. All credit to him for pushing me on whether a regulatory inducement (as opposed to a command) constitutes a form of deregulation, not regulation.
Also relevant: an article on bank capital from today's Financial Times.
Also relevant: an article on bank capital from today's Financial Times.
Frydman and Goldberg on "Rationality"
A very important piece on the impossible standards of economic rationality that lead, in reaction, to claims of "irrationality"; coauthored by Roman Frydman of NYU and Critical Review contributor Michael Goldberg of the U. of New Hampshire.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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