Would a 'Modest Member' please take an interest in anti-dumping regulation?

It was good to see the return of ‘The Modest Member’ column in the Australian Financial Review a couple of weeks ago. The original column was written by Bert Kelly, who used his wit and wisdom to good effect in promoting free trade, much to the discomfort of many people on both sides of politics. The latter-day modest members will make a worthwhile contribution if they display half the wit, wisdom and courage of Bert Kelly.

It is not yet clear whether the latter-day modest members will have the courage to emulate Bert Kelly. The series started with a column by Jamie Briggs on 7 February about lifting the dead hand of government i.e. reducing government spending. Today’s column by Kelly O’Dwyer is about the high cost of regulation. This is not a bad start, but it is hardly a test of moral character. So far Briggs and O’Dwyer have written the sort of stuff conservative politicians usually write when they are not in government.

A useful test of character for the modest members would be to attempt to emulate Bert Kelly by writing something sensible about Australia’s anti-dumping system. The modest members could usefully begin their consideration with an article by Bert, published in March 1972 and reprinted in ‘Economics Made Easy’, in which he explained that export prices that are lower than domestic prices are quite common in Australia and elsewhere. He noted that when we do it the practice is known as ‘marginal pricing’ rather than dumping. If the modest members take up this issue they might note that Austrade actually encourages prospective Australian exporters to use this practice.

If the modest members look carefully at the Productivity Commission’s recent report on anti-dumping duties they will see that the Commission found that none of the economic arguments that had been advanced in support of the anti-dumping system ‘provide any justification for Australia to retain an anti-dumping system’. In looking at this report and subsequent responses by the government and opposition, they might ponder whether or not the Commission will turn out to have been correct in its judgement that the anti-dumping system should be retained - on the grounds that it is unlikely to do much harm and may continue to be helpful in dealing with aspects of protectionist sentiment within industry and the community.

The modest members should ask themselves what Bert Kelly would have thought of proposals by their political colleagues to require foreign producers to prove their conduct hasn’t hurt Australian industry. They should also ask themselves what consequences are likely to follow from the government’s plans to ‘streamline’ the anti-dumping system. In particular, they should ponder the appropriateness of proposals of the International Trade Remedies Forum – the high sounding title the government has given to an unholy alliance of industry, unions and bureaucrats who benefit from the anti-dumping system – to enlist the Australian Bureau of Statistics to help complainants make a case for anti-dumping assistance.

One of the great strengths of Bert Kelly’s writing was his use of particular examples to illustrate the points he was making. In that regard, the modest members might find plenty to interest them in the current anti-dumping inquiry relating to aluminium wheels from China. In the light of recent discussions concerning further budgetary assistance to the car industry, they might ask themselves whether there is not some irony in a situation where Australian taxpayers could end up having to pay for the additional cost of imported inputs if this anti-dumping case is successful.  If they read the submission by Ford Australia they might wonder about the potential for a firm that is involved in protracted and acrimonious legal proceedings against another firm to initiate anti-dumping action as a tactic in a legal battle. If they read the submission by GM Holden, which argues against anti-dumping action because of its adverse effects on down-stream users, they might wonder whether the government was wise to reject the Productivity Commission’s recommendation that a public interest test should be included in the anti-dumping system. They might wonder why GM and its advisors think that line of argument might be influential.

It would not surprise me, however, if the latter-day modest members decide not to accept the challenge of writing about anti-dumping. Their political careers might be at risk if they start questioning the views of SophieMirabella the shadow minister for industry protection. As they tell themselves that discretion is the better part of valour they may take comfort from the fact that Bert Kelly pretended not to be without fear. Bert ended his anti-dumping article by telling readers that he didn’t ‘feel like chasing after the anti-dumping hare’ because ‘Mavis says I am in enough trouble already without getting mixed up with this kind of nonsense’.

Will Australia remain a sweet spot?

‘Australia in 2010-11 offered the best conditions for human existence on planet earth, a sweet spot indeed.’

The quote is from Peter Hartcher’s book, ‘The Sweet Spot’, published in November last year. Hartcher bases his view that Australia is the sweet spot on well-being indexes such as the UN’s Human Development index and the OECD’s Better Life Index. That view seems to me to be soundly based. As I noted on this blog last year, Australia is ranked highly even when the weighting given to the criteria incorporated in the OECD index is changed to reflect differing priorities with respect to income, social and environmental objectives.

The great strength of ‘The Sweet Spot’, in my view, is that it provides historical perspective on how Australia came to be where it is now. This helps the author to get across the message of the sub-title: ‘Australia made its own luck and could now throw it away’.

Hartcher argues that Australia has become the sweet spot because it eventually found a good balance between opportunity and security, or between free markets and collectivism. A central focus of the book is the evolution and later dismantling of what Paul Kelly referred to as ‘the Australian settlement’, which led to what Donald Horne referred to as ‘the racket’. The Australian settlement, which was largely established around the time of federation, involved a consensus in favour of racially-based restrictions on immigration (the white Australia policy), trade protectionism, national wage regulation (the arbitration system) and government paternalism, underpinned by a belief that Australian prosperity was underwritten by the British Empire.

Donald Horne argued in his book, ‘The Lucky Country’, published in 1964, that Australia’s good fortune in terms of natural resources had become an excuse and perhaps even a licence for complacency. Hartcher reminds readers:

‘Horne had detected and foreshadowed Australia’s slide from the top ranks of the world’s richest countries, arguing that luck and complacency were poor substitutes for originality and investment. “Can the racket last?” he asked, immediately responding with a resounding “NO”. He was, of course, correct, and it was a slippage that gathered pace in the ‘70s and 80’s.’

The subsequent chapters tell the story of how Australia opened up to the rest of the world, moved away from a rent-seeking culture and reformed its economy. In my view the story has been told fairly, with appropriate acknowledgement of the immigration reforms introduced by Whitlam, the influx of refugees from Vietnam during the time of the Fraser government, the floating of the Australian dollar, industry assistance reforms and the beginning of wider ranging economic reforms during the Hawke-Keating years and the privatisations, tax reforms and labour market reforms (subsequently aborted) of the Howard-Costello period of government. Hartcher makes the point that while the general thrust of these reforms was to give markets a greater role in the Australian economy, they were achieved, for the most part, without the rancour that accompanied the reforms of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States. He attributes this to greater reliance on consultation and consensus-building in Australia, in contrast to more overtly ideological approaches adopted by the UK and US governments. I would have like to have seen more attention given to the role of the policy advice processes adopted in Australia (but my view about the importance of the role played by the IAC and Productivity Commission might not be objective).

Let us now jump to 2007, by which time the economic strength which is reflected in Australia’s current ranking in quality of life indexes would have been established. I don’t think Peter Hartcher actually mentions it, but in October 2007 Paul Kelly announced the arrival of a “new Australian settlement engineered by political leaders during the past generation and a half”. He noted that the policies of the major parties had converged. For example, economic policy had become more pro-market, foreign policy had converged on a strategic outlook of simultaneously deepening ties with East Asia and the US, and immigration policies had converged on acceptance of increased immigration accompanied by a deeper commitment to Australian citizenship. A few weeks later, former Labor leader Mark Latham observed that the policies that the major parties had put forward in the election campaign then being conducted were virtually indistinguishable. He suggested that the policies of the major parties had converged to address the concerns of the middle classes. I can remember this because in April 2008 I posted an article on this blog entitled: Do we now have a new Australiansettlement? I agreed with Kelly and Latham, but subsequent events suggest that we were all wrong. Rather than a sensible convergence on policies that build on the strong legacy left by Hawke, Keating, Howard and Costello we now seem to be drifting in the opposite direction.

I don’t agree entirely with Peter Hartcher’s assessment of the political sins of the main political players over the last few years. I think he is far too kind to Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan. Nevertheless, that doesn’t prevent me from agreeing with him that neither Gillard nor Abbott ‘seems to be the leader to take Australia into its next golden era of national improvement’.  I also agree with Hartcher’s qualification to that judgement: ‘Leaders change, and perhaps one, or both, can develop the agenda and skills to lead the country in the national interest’.

In my view ‘The Sweet Spot’ is a fine example of big picture journalism. It deserves to be as widely read and influential as ‘The Lucky Country’. With a bit of luck this book might help prevent a return of the rent-seeking culture that saw Australia’s relative living standards slip so dramatically during the 1970s and 80s.

How does income inequality affect happiness?

Early yesterday the thought occurred to me that it might be a good idea to write something about the effects of inequality on happiness levels. I have been thinking that the judgements people make about inequality are more like judgements about the characteristics of a good society than judgements about the effects of inequality on aggregate happiness (whatever that means). I thought I would spend an hour or so bringing myself up to date with the literature and then another hour or so writing something - and the rest of the day in the garden. However, the process has taken longer than I thought it would (and this post might also take longer to read than some people might think appropriate).

The issues involved are fairly complex. There are at least three different aspects of the relationship between income inequality and happiness that might be relevant – the effects of relative income levels on happiness, the more general effects of income inequality on happiness and the effects of income inequality on happiness inequality.

How do relative income levels affect life satisfaction? As discussed here some time ago, this is not always about envy and status-seeking. The findings of a study by Guy Mayraz et al, based on German panel data, are consistent with the more conventional view that income comparisons tend to have negative effects on life satisfaction of people with relatively low incomes. However, some of the authors’ findings shed further light on the issues:

• ·         Life satisfaction of men is more affected by relative income than that of women.
• ·          Comparisons with friends and neighbours are less important than broader comparisons with the whole population.
• ·          Those who perceive income comparisons to be important tend to have lower life satisfaction.
• ·         The negative effect of relative income comparisons for those with below average incomes is balanced (from a Benthamite perspective) by the positive effect for those with above average income.

Does inequality have an effect on life satisfaction over and above the relative income effect? Studies which have attempted to answer this question have often reached different conclusions. A recent study by Paolo Verme, which seems to be technically superior to previous studies, has found that income inequality tends to have a significantly negative effect on life satisfaction, after controlling for relative income effects etc. The results seem to apply in western countries as well as non-western countries and to rich people as well as to poor people.

This raises the question of why income inequality might have these effects. One possibility is that people feel more comfortable in societies where opportunities are relatively equal. Another possibility is that they are more concerned about equality of outcomes. If so, it seems reasonable to suppose that they are concerned about income inequality because they think it results in happiness inequality.

Is there strong correlation between income inequality and happiness inequality? In a post a couple of years ago I suggested that there was not much evidence of correlation between income inequality and happiness inequality - on the basis of a paper by Jan Ott and some research of my own. Since there were not many countries included in these studies, it seemed like a good idea to produce the scatter diagram below showing measures of income and happiness dispersion for a larger number of countries. (I used World Bank and CIA data on the income/consumption gini and data on standard deviation of life satisfaction from Veenhoven’s latest IAH paper. Both series are based on information for various years during the last decade.)

I can’t see any relationship between the variables in the chart, but statistical analysis suggests that a weak positive relationship might exist.  (The correlation between the variables is 0.13. The estimated coefficient relating inequality of happiness to inequality of income in a linear regression is positive, but the standard error is not much smaller than the estimate. The ‘t’ statistic is 1.38.)

The absence of a strong relationship between inequality of income and happiness at an international level is consistent with the observation of Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers that there has not been a close link between trends in happiness inequality and income inequality in the United States. It is also consistent with the findings of a paper by Leonardo Becchetti et al, based on panel data, that the increase in income inequality has not been one of the drivers of the increase in happiness inequality in Germany.

So, how did this information enlighten me on the question of whether the judgements people make about inequality are more like judgements about the characteristics of a good society than judgements about the effects of inequality on aggregate happiness? The effects of relative income on life satisfaction do not seem relevant to this question. The relationship between income inequality and individual happiness does seem relevant, but I suspect it has more to do with empathy with compatriots and a desire to alleviate suffering of people near the bottom of the income scale rather than a more general concern about distributional equity.

Happiness inequality also seems relevant. When Ruut Veenhoven argues that the quality of a society should be judged by the disparity of happiness among its citizens as well by average happiness levels, he is clearly making a judgement about the characteristics of a good society. The weakness of the relationship between income inequality and happiness inequality certainly suggests that caution is required in basing judgements about the relative quality of different societies on income distribution data. The question I am left with, however, is to what extent disparities of happiness can be attributed to government policies and societal institutions (the rules of the game) rather than individual and group behaviour. It seems to me that to the extent that we introduce distributional considerations into our consideration of the quality of different societies, we are on safer ground in basing our judgements on the distribution of opportunities that are offered, rather than on the distribution of happiness outcomes.

Where is Ross Gittins coming from?

A few days ago, Evan, a person who comments on Jim Belshaw’s blog, wrote: ‘I think Ross Gittins is a good model for how to write on economics’. That was in response to a discussion Jim and I were having about Robert Frank’s ‘The Darwin Economy’ and the difficulty that we were experiencing in communicating on the issue of whether the ideology of the market is having too much influence in modern society. At least, that is my take on what the discussion was about. Jim and I agreed with Evan that Ross does write well.

It occurred to me soon afterwards that I have been ignoring Ross Gittins’ views on happiness for too long. Ross is the economics editor of the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and the leading economic journalist in Australia writing about happiness. When people have asked me what I think of Ross’s views on happiness I have refrained from saying much on the grounds that I rarely buy the SMH and haven’t read many of Ross’s columns in recent years.  I can’t use the excuse any longer, however, because I have discovered that Ross has a web site on which he posts his columns. (I have recenly included a link to the site on this blog to encourage myself to read his columns more regularly.)

When I looked at Ross’s site it was clear that, as well as the happiness theme, he is sometimes still playing an old tune that I like about the benefits of free trade. For example, one of the articles I read warns of the dangers to the rest of the economy from attempts to shield manufacturing industries from the consequences of the boom in the resources sector. This is consistent with the contribution Ross has made throughout his journalistic career in bringing good sense to public discussion of many economic issues.  I have a particularly high regard for the contribution that Ross made in earlier years in helping to improve public understanding of the costs of high trade barriers that were supporting inefficient resources use and unproductive work practices in this country. He deserves a medal!

But, what about Ross’s views on happiness? It wasn’t hard to find his review of ‘The Darwin Economy’. While well written and informative, the review is totally uncritical. In concluding his review, Ross gives the author, Robert Frank, the last word: ‘Frank concludes that the real reason we regulate markets is to protect ourselves from the consequences of excessive competition’. I was left with the impression that Ross concurs with that view.

How does Ross reconcile the view that regulation is desirable to protect against competition with his knowledge of how regulation has worked in the past in Australia to protect privileged interests at the expense of the rest of the community? How does Ross reconcile his opposition to economic growth, with his apparent ongoing support for productivity growth? I decided to buy Ross’s book, ‘The Happy Economist’ to see whether I could understand where he is coming from. (Since Ross is a strong supporter of international competition I’m sure he will not mind if I let readers of this blog know that I purchased the Kindle edition from Amazon for $9.99, rather than paying Allen and Unwin $26.99.)

I enjoyed reading Part I of the book, which is a discussion about such things as the nature of happiness, the evolutionary purpose of happiness, who is happy, whether wealth makes people happy, whether work makes them happy. This part of the book ends with a discussion of 10 hints about how to be happy. Perhaps it is strange for an economic journalist to be offering such advice, but from my (fairly extensive) reading in this field I get the impression that the advice Ross offers is based on the best research available.

Part II is comprised largely of an attack on mainstream economics and a sermon on ecological economics, mixed up with a strong dose of paternalism and proposals for increased government regulation. Despite all that, Ross manages somehow to convey the impression that he is more concerned about adulation of ‘the market’ than the actual existence of markets and competition.

Ross seems to be particularly concerned about the tendency of humans to over-indulge. He notes that many of us are tempted ‘to eat too much, get too little exercise, smoke, drink too much, shop too much, save too little, put too much on our credit cards, and work too much at the expense of our family and other relationships’.  He suggests that ‘individuals know they have trouble controlling themselves and would appreciate government taking temptation out of their way’.

This reminds me of a comment by the late Roger Kerr, executive director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, in a speech aboutthe concept of progress that he made in 2009. Roger suggested that one consequence of the ‘fashionable academic preoccupation with happiness’ might be for more people to adopt the view: “I’m bald, fat and grumpy. What’s the government going to do about it?” I don’t think that is a necessary consequence of happiness research, but it seems to me that Ross is encouraging that kind of attitude in his paternalistic proposals. Among other things, Ross apparently wants governments to re-regulate shopping hours, limit advertising and take action to discourage spending on positional goods.

Ross’s presentation of his views on productivity, economic efficiency, market preferences and regulation involve as many twists and turns as the road from Thimphu to Punakha. At the risk of making this post excessively long, an appropriate place to begin might be with Ross’s claim that the regard mainstream economists have for ‘revealed preference’ – the idea that the choices people make reveals their preferences - has somehow led them to become ‘the great facilitators and advocators of economic growth – the high priests in the temple of Mammon’ (p 164). Economists who respect revealed preference actually have a long tradition of opposition to proposals by economic planners to lift savings and investment rates or give people incentives to work longer and harder in order to raise economic growth rates. My attitude has always been that if individuals prefer to spend rather than save or to enjoy leisure rather that to work long hours, their choices should be respected. A substantial component of my work involved providing advice about how governments could facilitate economic growth, but facilitating is about removing obstacles rather than pushing people around.

Ross makes it clear that he doesn’t see economic growth as being able to continue indefinitely – and in this regard he sees himself as one of history’s hastening agents (if I may borrow a phrase much used by a former work colleague). His discussion about ecological limits to growth and the desirability of the stationary state had me wondering how he was proposing to stop technological progress – a major source of economic growth. Ross eventually acknowledges that improvements in the efficiency with which resources are used are desirable. He suggests: ‘its growth in the throughput of natural resources we should forswear, not the rise in gross domestic product that comes from the continued pursuit of productivity improvement’ (p 221).

However, a few pages on Ross tried to convince me that I shouldn’t fear the end of economic growth. He states:

‘Many of the things that reduce our happiness stem from the search for greater efficiency so as to contribute to economic growth. Easing the efficiency imperative would be hugely liberating’ (p 229).

So, we will have productivity growth without the ‘efficiency imperative’ of market disciplines?

Ross agonizes further about efficiency a few pages later:

‘My fear is that, were the goal of increased efficiency to be abandoned, the motive of rolling back areas of privilege would be lost. It would then be a matter of first in, best dressed. Workers in unprotected industries would be obliged to continue propping up protected industries in perpetuity, with a great likelihood that, should further difficult times emerge, the privileged industries would be first in line for additional assistance in the name of preserving the status quo’ (p 233).

Well put! I am glad that Ross is troubled by that thought.

The closing sentence of Ross’s book reads: ‘In the end we are what we feel’. I think that might contain the key to the problem Ross has in reconciling his belief that because individual humans are inherently fallible they can’t be trusted to pursue happiness as they wish, with his admiration for the efficiency of markets and his understanding that governments are neither angelic nor infallible .

Our feelings are important. We obviously make ourselves unhappy when we make bad choices. But they are our choices. The nature of humans is such that we cannot flourish unless we have responsibility for our own lives.