Thinking Fast and Slow About Consumer Perceptions of Technology and Sustainability in Agriculture

Farming is the world’s most important career — that’s why it needs a new image

From AgFunder News: https://agfundernews.com/farming-is-the-worlds-most-important-career-thats-why-it-needs-an-image-makeover.html

"Right now the field is in the midst of profound change as advanced technologies including green chemistries, robotics, artificial intelligence, IoT, autonomous vehicles, machine learning, regenerative agriculture and biomimetics transform how farms look and function. It might seem like the stuff of science fiction, but autonomous vehicles, indoor farming and drone pollination are becoming more common throughout the sector.Looking at, and more importantly, talking about farming as a part of the tech revolution has the potential to ignite the curiosity and imagination of the next generation.millennials want meaningful careers that help make the world a better place. Often that interest is funnelled towards jobs in CleanTech, non-profits, the environment or the arts. But farming is an overlooked industry with incredible potential to help improve the world."

I tend to agree.

From Drovers: https://www.drovers.com/article/consumers-speak-sustainable-farmers-wanted

"Consumers used to want farmers to be local, healthy or safe, but a new word is topping the chart this year, according to a new global study by Cargill. In a word, consumers want farmers to be sustainable."

However the theme above related to the need to promote the technological savy of farmers was echoed in this survey:

"Although 75% of the respondents thought technologically advanced farming was a good thing, very few respondents see farmers that way today. “Technologically savvy” was one of the terms least associated with farmers."

This explains why technological advancements in agriculture that actually improve sustainability (Bt, Glyphosate resistance, finely textured beef, etc.) are often rejected when in fact it delivers much of what they are asking for.

I've written before about some of the challenges related to consumer attitudes and perceptions about agriculture.  See the links below. But along the lines of all of these themes I find a common thread in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow:

"emotional attitude drives beliefs about benefits and risks and dominates conclusions over arguments."

Bad arguments and misleading intuition are driven by a number of biases mentioned in the book.

One of these biases is the 'affect heuristic' which "simplifies our lives by creating a world that is much tidier than reality. Good technologies have few costs in our imaginary world we inhabit, bad technologies have no benefits, and all decisions are easy. In the real world, of course we often face painful tradeoffs between costs and benefits."

I think this applies very well to food and agricultural technologies vs other kinds of technology.

Good Technology: Impossible Burger/Tesla
Bad Technology: Biotechnology
Easy Decisions: Meatless Monday/Ban Glyphosate

Real World Tradeoffs: U.S. beef contributes less than .5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so going meatless on Mondays (or campaigning to replace beef with alternatives) likely won't have the impact many consumers believe. We also know that glyphosate is a low toxic herbicide that in combination with biotech traits has helped enable environmentally important farming practices including reduced tillage, reduced energy use, and has helped substitute away from more toxic chemistries(link see also Hybrid Corn vs. Hybrid Cars). Banning glyphosate (or creating a risk and litigation environment effectively banning its continued use) might seem like an easy 'costless' solution but there are definitely tradeoffs.

Additionally:

"System 1 is able produce quick answers to difficult questions by substitution, creating coherence where there is none....The question that is answered is not the one that was intended, but the answer is produced quickly and may be sufficiently plausible to pass the lax and lenient review of system 2"

There definitely seems to be a coherent story among consumers (and voters/politicians) about how good technologies and farming practices (local, natural, organic, non-GMO, vegan etc.) must be sustainable and virtuous while modern (high tech) 'industrialized' technologies and practices must be destructive, risky and harmful. Further, coherence and tidyness implies those advocating a different story with any strong or weak connection to companies producing and marketing these technologies must be biased and non-credible sources regardless of their expertise or what is found in the scientific literature.

It is very difficult to battle the 'coherence' and 'tidyness' of the stories and perceptions that is formed in the minds of consumers and critics of agriculture. This is definitely an area where some food marketers and the 'free from' approach to labeling seems to be most damaging (and profitable?). To say the least, after spending more than a decade studying consumer and voter preferences in relation to food and technology in the agriculture space, I think we are only beginning to scratch the surface. Maybe we have reached a critical mass or turning point in consumer interest in these topics, but can science communication and advocacy turn the tide?

Rational Irrationality and Satter's Hierarchy of Food Needs 
The 'free from' Nash Equilibrium Food Labeling Strategy
Polarized Beliefs on Controversial Science Topics
An Economic Analysis of Preferences for Genetically Engineered Foods
Voter Preferences, The Median Voter Theorem, and Systematic Policy Bias

Applied Microeconomics: The Normative Representative Consumer and Welfare Analysis

In a previous post, I pondered some questions related to using market demand functions to make welfare statements, following broadly Microeconomic Theory by Andreu Mas-Colell, Michael D. Whinston, and Jerry R. Green (MWG).

Making welfare statements about aggregate demand revolves around a few key concepts including a positive representative consumer, a wealth distribution rule, and a social welfare function. At a high level, these concepts seem to represent the technical assumptions and characteristics that need to hold in order to make most of the basic analysis of an intermediate microeconomics course mathematically sound or tractable for applied work. Here is a shot at some high level explanations:

positive representative consumer- at a high level, a hypothetical consumer who's UMP facing society's budget constraint generates a market or economy's aggregate demand function

wealth distribution rule - for every level of aggregate wealth, assigns individual wealth.

This rule or function is what allows us to write aggregate demand as a function of prices and wealth in order to move forward with the rest of our discussion about welfare analysis.

Examples given in MWG include wealth distribution rules that are a function of shareholdings of stocks and commodities which make wealth a function of the market's price vector

social welfare function (SWF) - this assigns utility to the vector of utilities for all 'I' consumers in an economy or market. W(u1,.....,uI) or can be written in terms of indirect utilities W(v1,....vI). 

Maximizing Social Welfare and Defining the Normative Representative Consumer

The wealth distribution rule is assumed to maximize society's social welfare function subject to a given level of aggregate wealth. The optimal solution indicates a particular indirect utility function v(p,w)

Normative Representative Consumer- a positive representative consumer is a normative representative consumer relative to social welfare function W(.) if for every (p,w) the distribution of wealth maximizes W(.). v(p,w) in the optimum is the indirect utility function for the normal representative consumer. 

For v(p,w) to exist, we are assuming a SWF, and assuming it is maximized by an optimal distribution of wealth according to some specified wealth distribution rule.

An example from MWG: When v(p,w) is of the Gormon form, and the SWF is utilitarian, then an aggregate demand function can always be viewed as being generated by a normative representative consumer.  

Applied Microeconomics: The Strong Axiom of Revealed Preference,Aggregation, and Rational Preferences

Professionally most of my focus has been empirical and to a great extent, has been agnostic when it comes to micro theory. Take data mining and machine learning, social network analysis,  text mining or issues related to big data for instance. Or many of the other issues I have taken up at EconometricSense. A lot of what I have worked on has been more about data, algorithms, and experimental design than the nuts and bolts of microeconomic theory.

However, there are some theoretical issues in microeconomics that I either have forgotten, or never really understood that well.

Particularly these issues have to do with the strong axiom of revealed preference, the market aggregated demand function, and welfare analysis as discussed in one of my graduate texts (Microeconomic Theory by Andreu Mas-Colell, Michael D. Whinston, and Jerry R. Green).  From that text  (MWG) I basically get the following:

• The strong axiom (SA) of revealed preference is equivalent to the symmetry and negative semi-definiteness of the slutsky substitution matrix
• Violations of the SA mean cycling of choices or violations of transitivity
• If observed demand follows the SA, then preferences that rationalize demand can always be recovered
• It is impossible to find preferences that rationalize a demand function when the slutsky matrix is not symmetric

That means, for an individuals' observed demand function, if the slutsky matrix is not symmetric, you can't make welfare statements based on the area beneath the demand curve.

What happens when we aggregate individual demand to get a market demand function? It seems to me that the data of interest in most applied work is going to be related to an aggregate market demand curve. Based on Green et al:

• the chances of the SA "being satisfied by a real economy are essentially zero"
• If we allow individuals in an economy to have different preference relations/utility functions, when we aggregate to get a market demand function, the negative semi-definiteness of the slutsky matrix (equivalent to the weak axiom of revealed preference) might hold, but "symmetry will almost certainly not." 
• While positive effects of an equilibrium might hold, without symmetry the SA does not and we therefore cannot make statements about consumer welfare based on the area beneath an observed empirical market demand function

This last conclusion leaves me with a lot of questions to ponder:

1. What does that imply with regard to empirical work? It seems to not matter for positive effects (for instance a conclusion that a wage set above equilibrium causes a surplus of labor). 
2. But, how much does it matter that I can't use an empirical demand function to calculate changes in consumer surplus for a change in prices? Maybe it only matters if I am interested in calculating some amount? 
3. For any individual, if the SA might holds (which is possible), we certainly know a price increase would reduce consumer surplus, put them on a lower indifference curve and make them worse off. Regardless of the conclusions above, wouldn't that hold for all consumers represented by the aggregate market demand curve? Can't we make a normative statement  (in  terms of a qualitative directional sense even if we can't calculate total surplus) about all consumers even if the SA fails in the aggregate but holds for each individual?

Now,  the MWG text mentioned above does go on in later chapters to discuss the notions of a positive and normative representative consumer as well as a social welfare function and wealth distribution mechanisms and implications for welfare analysis. But I'd really like to know about #3. Can we make directional statements about changes in welfare as long as we know that any attempt at quantification or calculation of surplus would be invalid due to violations of the SA?

Is this a case where one should just take the example of Milton Freidman's pool players who behave as if they know physics? Maybe all of the assumptions (like the SA) fail to hold for a market demand function, but we still feel confident making directional or qualitative welfare statements about price changes because everything else about the model predicts so well?

Any thoughts from readers?

I found it interesting, that the issues in the bulleted statements related to the MWG text were never addressed that I can tell in any of my undergraduate principles or intermediate micro texts, nor even in Nicholson's more advanced graduate text. It just seems like these texts jump from individual demand to market demand as a horizontal summation of individual's demand curves and go straight to welfare analysis and discussions about consumer surplus without discussing these issues related to the SA.

Note: I definitely spent some time with the issue of consumer surplus calculations based on compensated vs uncompensated demand curves. I don't think that is the issue here at all.

****updated modified on October 29, 2015

The New Deal and Enterprising Americans

One central theme behind Roosevelt's stimulus policies, like today, was that business was sitting on their hands and the government had to tax and spend to get things going and regulate to keep them going and prevent the next downturn. But as Chamberlain pointed out in his book Enterprising Americans: A Business History of the United States-

"the magnitude of the response of U.S. business to the war is in itself refutation of the thesis that in the thirties businessmen simply sat on thier hands…it simply would not have been able to produce the new type of goods when the war button was pressed"

While it was true that total investment was low, investment opportunities were proliferant. He points out the infinite number of industries ready to bust out with thier innovations, including such leaders as du Pont, Dow Chemical, American Cyanamid, and Monsanto that many in the ag industry would be familiar with. During this time GE was ready to go with flourescent lighting and Kodak with color photography and commercial air travel was in the making.

But these great ideas were suppressed and kept on the back burner under the massive interventions of Roosevelt's expanding government.

"Businessmen came to ask themseleves whether Roosevelt really understood a system where the hope of profit sparks expansion and investment. Or did he believe simply in centralizing decision and authority in boards and "planners" along the Potomac?"

Reference

The Enterprising Americans: A Business History of the United States
BY JOHN CHAMBERLAIN 1963

http://www.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/jcea.pdf

The Buffet Tax Deception

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance." - Murray Rothbard Making Economic Sense (1995)

Should we really be talking about national tax policies based on the random, anecdotal observations of a celebrity businessman? Recently there has been a lot of talk from the media, politicians, and other commentators about a ‘Buffet Tax’ to ensure that billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. The battle cry comes from comments by very successful businessman and investor Warren Buffet, who claims that his secretary pays more in taxes (as a percent of income) than he does.  There are also claims that income for middle Americans has stagnated, while the wealthiest Americans have enjoyed most of the gains in income growth over the last decade. This is a long post, but the short of it is that these claims may sound good politically, and make great headlines for the media, but they don’t stand squarely with the facts.

Let’s look at the first claim. Do billionaires really pay less in taxes as a percent of income than their secretaries? 

Source: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml  Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2005 Congressional Budget Office

Since these rates have not changed in the last 5 years, these numbers are still relevant, and show that historically the rich (like Warren Buffet) have always paid more. In fact, when it comes to ‘fairness’, the U.S. has one of the most progressive (meaning the rich pay more) tax systems in the world (see the data here at the Tax Foundation).  Sure it is possible that with the correct shelters/loopholes/wealth management, a wealthy person like Buffet could actually end up paying lower overall rates than their secretary. However, what the data shows is that overall, on average, the rich do pay more, with only a few rare and random cases like Buffet paying rates similar to or less than working class Americans. This brings up many questions. Why make major changes in the tax code that will affect millions to address the very few Warren Buffets of the world? Some would say to be ‘fair’ but as noted above, we already lead the world in terms of tax fairness based on income and the rich are already paying more. In terms of all income taxes collected by government, the wealthiest Americans pay most of the taxes.

The top 10% of earners make up about 10% of all households earn about 40% of all income, but pay 55% of all taxes (way more than their proportional share of income). The top 1% of earners make up only about 1% of households, earn about 18% of all income, but pay almost 30% of all taxes, again more than their share of national income.

Source: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8885/EffectiveTaxRates.shtml  Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2005 Congressional Budget Office

No matter how you slice the data, there is no way you can claim that the rich are not paying ‘their fair share’ of taxes. (Note this is even after the tax cuts in the early this decade)

Another myth related to this, is that income for middle Americans has stagnated, while the wealthiest Americans have enjoyed most of the gains in income growth over the last decade. Again, this is not supported by the data. The first problem is that commentators and politicians with axes to grind typically refer to the ‘median household income’ to represent ‘middle class.’   While using the median is statistically more robust (less biased) than just the average when it comes to skewed income data, using median household income is still inappropriate. As economists Thomas Sowell and Russ Roberts explain clearly here (video) and here, households have changed tremendously over time, and really aren’t comparable over time. But there are even more reasons why median household income can be misleading.  Researcher Steve Conover points out in a recent article at the American Enterprise Institute’s American magazine, just looking at the median to define middle class is a very restrictive definition. After assembling data on income over the last decade based on data from the US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Conover developed several definitions of ‘middle class.’  No matter how many different ways we could define ‘middle class’ when we actually look at data on income gains over the last few years, we find in fact that the middle class income gained much more than the top 20% of earners, while the top 5% actually lost.

 

  Source: The Myth of Middle-Class Stagnation, Steve Conover

Of course, if we are concerned about the distribution of income in society, the important thing isn’t so much who’s gaining in which category, but instead its how often people move up and improve their standard of living.  After all, the American dream is not based on how much the rich pay in taxes vs the poor, or who gets the biggest piece of the pie. The American dream is about going out and getting your own piece of pie, or in other words, income mobility.  As economist Steve Horowitz explains in this video, even if you insist on looking at ‘median’ income earned by ‘households’ vs. individuals, when we look at the data, and follow these people over time, we see lots of income mobility as they move from one part of the income distribution to another.  The data shows that income mobility in the U.S. has been very robust.    As reported in the U.S. Treasury report Income Mobility in the U.S. from 1996 to 2005:

"Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the period from 1996 to 2005. Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period. In addition, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups. The degree of mobility in the overall population and movement out of the bottom quintile in this study are similar to the findings of prior research on income mobility."

So, we’ve debunked the myth that the wealthiest Americans aren’t paying there fair share, we’ve shown that middle class Americans have received significant gains in income over the last decade, and that income mobility in the U.S. is a reality. What other excuses can we/they come up with to raise taxes? One might claim that this is necessary to increase revenues, or reduce the budget deficit. In a previous post I’ve already shown how revenues actually increased while the budget deficit drastically dropped after the Bush tax cuts.  Quite a bit of additional research actually shows that higher income individuals are extremely sensitive to tax increases, and that tax increases can contribute to decreased job creation and investment. 

Were it not for the recession, the data shows that the middle class and the American dream was thriving. Instead of focusing on class warfare inspired non-issues (at least when it comes to real data), the media, commentators and our law makers should focus on the real issues at hand, chiefly the regulatory climate and the uncertainty  (as mentioned last month) that it is creating. Besides being based on bad evidence and false perceptions, a ‘Buffet’ tax could also be detrimental to the economy and such talk only adds to the cloud of uncertainty preventing us from getting out of the current economic rut.

Efficient Markets and Prices

‎"I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much indetermined and unpredictable, to a pretence of exact knowledge" - F.A. Hayek

"The financial crisis invalidated a naïve notion of "efficient markets," but the most sophisticated version is still viable. Whereas the invalidated version holds that markets never err and always adjust instantaneously, the sophisticated version, associated with the ideas of Adam Smith and F. A. Hayek, holds that markets mobilize individuals to realize gains from trade and to innovate and thereby produce generalized prosperity."
"In the 1940s, Hayek warned his fellow economists of the misleading standards of perfect competition and static efficiency in assessing the market economy. As he wrote in Individualism and Economic Order, "[T]hese adjustments are probably never 'perfect' in the sense which the economist conceives them in his equilibrium analysis. But I fear that our theoretical habits of approaching the problem with the assumption of more or less perfect knowledge on the part of almost everyone has made us somewhat blind to the true function of the price mechanism and led us to apply rather misleading standards in judging its efficiency" (1948, 87)"

http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=762

"The great free market economic thinkers from Adam Smith to F. A. Hayek never argued that individuals were hyper-rational actors possessed with full and complete information, operating in perfectly competitive markets.... Efficient markets are an outcome of a process of discovery, learning, and adjustment, not an assumption going into the analysis."

http://theeuropean-magazine.com/348-boettke-peter/349-the-legacy-of-smith-and-hayek

Taxes, Elasticity, Revenue, and Economic Activity

Romer, Christina and David Romer, (2010). "The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks," American Economic Review, vol. 100(3), pages 763-801.

tax increases to be highly contractionary with a negative effect on investment

Alesina, Alberto and Silvia Ardagna (2010) "Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes versus Spending" In Jeffrey Brown, 2010. "Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 24," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research.

Fiscal stimulis based on tax cuts increases the probability of future economic growth greater than spending


Carroll, Robert, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mark Rider, and Harvey Rosen (2000) "Income Taxes and Entrepreneurs Use of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics, 18 (2), April pp. 324-55

Increases in marginal tax rates reduce the probability of future increased hiring and are associaed with reduced growth in wages.

Gruber, Jon and Saez, Emmanuel, 2002. "The elasticity of taxable income: evidence and implications," Journal of Public Economics, vol. 84(1), pages 1-32.

Finds a very elastic response for incomes over $100k, (.57) with an elasticity of about .17 for incomes < $100k.

Gentry, William and Glenn Hubbard (2000) "Tax Policy and Entrepreneurial Entry" American Economic Review, vol. 90, pp. 283-287.

Finds a significant increase in entrepreneurial activity when tax rates are less progressive.

Djankov, Simeon, Tim Ganser, Caralee McLiesh, Rita Ramalho, and Andrei Shleifer, (2010). "The Effect of Corporate Taxes on Investment and Entrepreneurship," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, vol. 2(3), pages 31-64, July.American Economic Association.

"our estimates of the effective corporate tax rate have a large adverse impact on aggregate investment, FDI, and entrepreneurial activity"

The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Taxable Income: A Panel Study of the 1986 Tax Reform Act Martin Feldstein Journal of Political Economy
Vol. 103, No. 3 (Jun., 1995), pp. 551-572

Estimates the elasticity of taxable income to range from about 1.0 -3.

Lindsey, Lawrence B. 1987. "Individual Taxpayer Response to Taxcuts, 1982-1984." J. of Public Economics 33 (July) 173-206

Found elasticity of taxable income by income category to be .728 for income > $50k, 1.023 for >$100k, 1.413 for >$250k, and 2.0 for > $1 million. Also derived the tax revenue responses to reductions in marginal taxes for those earning more than $200k / yr. Revenues increased by 19% in 1982, 35% in 1983, 56% in 1984.

WHY DO EUROPEANS WORK (MUCH) LESS? IT IS TAXES AND GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Economic Inquiry, 2008, vol. 46, issue 2, pages 197-207

And

Why Do Americans Work So Much More Than Europeans?
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review
Vol. 28, No. 1, July 2004, pp. 2–13

Finds that taxes, and particularly higher marginal tax rates have a negative effect on labor hours.

Greg Mankiw's Blog: What nation has the most progressive tax system?

Based on these numbers, the U.S. has the most progressive tax system in the world by far.

The top 10% of earners earn about 33.5% of all income on the U.S. but pay 45.1% of taxes. They in essence pay 35% more in taxes than what they earn as a share of income.

There is also an interesting discussion on how these numbers are used and interpreted.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-nation-has-most-progressive-tax.html

Constrained Capitalism? Not

From the Guardian and you can find an article entitled "Arguments for Constrained Capitalism in Asia."

And we wonder where people get ideas, like ending our addiction to economic growth.

The article is very thought provoking, but I'm not sure the author truly understands economics, prices, or capitalism, or they are confusing their terms.

They advocate "constrained capitalism – which limits the use of natural resources and inhibits the behavior of consumers" and state that  "Governments need to tell their people that they can't have everything"

Prices, interest rates, profits, property rights, torts- all the things that make up a system of capitalism, by definition, work to limit the use of natural resources and constrain the behavior of consumers. They serve as reminders that we can't have everything and that our choices always involve trade offs. Often times, it is the intent of government policy to override these constraints, sending the false signal that yes you can have everything. (i.e. socially planned interest rates  and the excess that lead up to the financial crisis that reminded us, no you can't have everything and prices matter).  Prices reflect information related to scarcity and the knowledge and preferences of multitudes (billions) of individuals, and force each of us (consumers and businesses), with nearly every decision we make, to consider the impacts of our choices on others and the environment.  There are of course instances when we think that prices don't capture the full impact of our behavior  (externalities- see Hardin, Coase, Demsetz) but many times over the answer isn't less reliance on market forces, but more.  Paul Ehrlich and Jared Diamond have tried to make similar arguments related  to 'constrained capitalism'  and economic growth, but technological change and economic growth have undermined their claims time and time again. 

"investment in rural areas to improve sustainable farming methods and raise farming incomes."

This is one area, perhaps, where I agree, but modern agriculture in general (with GM foods, the application of genomics, proteomics, and pharmaceutical technologies in livestock production, GPS, modern intricate supply chains) is an example of an industry that has drastically reduced its environmental impact, mostly as a result of voluntary decisions by farmers on a global scale to adopt these practices.  Investment in these green technologies has paid off. How much of it is due to government sponsored R&D I'm not sure.

"He uses a telling fact: 2.2 billion Asians now have mobile phones, but far fewer have access to drinking water or toilets."

Access to potable water is perhaps one of the areas where increased reliance on markets and the price mechanism could offer the greatest improvement.

"The problem is not about needing more technology but about restructuring an economic system to meet human needs."

Economics and capitalism are all about meeting human needs. There are cases, where according to the article, it may seem that capitalism has not favored nations or peoples that are less than well off, but take the case of Egypt for example, or the many countries in Latin American.  As Hernando DeSoto has pointed out, they suffer from a lack of markets and capitalism as opposed to suffering from markets and capitalism. In a market system, if needs are not met, then competition drives profits down. If needs are met with great difficulty or under constraints of scarcity (as the article in the Guardian implies), then prices and profits will reflect that.

"There is no future unless we constrain human behaviour, how you do that is the question of our time"

That is the question of all time, and the subject of economics, which is the study of people's choices and how they are made compatible. Understanding economics and the nature of the price mechanism and spontaneous order provides the analytical framework for addressing so many of the concerns of this article.

 

References:

Science 13 December 1968:

Vol. 162 no. 3859 pp. 1243-1248

DOI: 10.1126/science.162.3859.1243

The Tragedy of the Commons

Garrett Hardin

The Problem of Social Cost

R. H. Coase

Journal of Law and Economics

Vol. 3, (Oct., 1960), pp. 1-44

Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/724810

Toward a Theory of Property Rights

Harold Demsetz

The American Economic Review, Vol. 57, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Seventy-ninth

Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. (May, 1967), pp. 347-359.

Huffington Post: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession

This is an older article but still interesting: From the Huffington Post

A lot if interesting statements in the article, and I believe they get this correct:
 

"In the field of economics, the chairman remains a much-heralded figure, lauded for reaction to a crisis generated, in the first place, by the Fed itself. Congress is even considering legislation to greatly expand the powers of the Fed to systemically regulate the financial industry."

Not so much this:

"Paul Krugman, in Sunday's New York Times magazine, did his own autopsy of economics, asking "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?" Krugman concludes that "[e]conomics, as a field, got in trouble because economists were seduced by the vision of a perfect, frictionless market system." So who seduced them? The Fed did it."

I have a hard time believing that the Fed promotes or believes in a frictionless market system. If so, it certainly doesn't practice what it preaches.  Perhaps this belief is conditional on the their mandate for the social planning of money and interest.  But the housing crisis is a demonstration of just how 'frictionless' markets are given these interventions. If anything, what was missed was the consequences and frictions created by departures from market based information coordination and resource allocation.  (Fear the Boom and Bust)

Everything You Should Know About Economics and Politics

The Spontaneous Order

A wealthy class results from satisfying the needs of others, making the middle class lifestyle (homes, cars, technology) possible. Living the middle class lifestyle also (by creating a market for all the things that go into being middle class) sustains the wealthy, in addition to providing opportunities for the poorest members of society to Improve their lot (job opportunities + technologies and conveniences that make poverty less grinding). Economic growth perpetuates this system, which is really like a self sustainable ecological system, with stabilizing feedback mechanisms (prices, profit, loss, interest rates). These natural checks kick in when someone gets too 'greedy', takes excessive risks, or imposes excessive costs on others or squanders resources inappropriately. The price system ensures a 'spontaneous order' in which our individual choices are made compatible in a world of scarce and finite resources and infinite preferences,cultures, and interests.

The Role of Government and Politics

Government has a role in this 'spontaneous' order, primarily to enforce property rights and prevent fraud and force. There is little power or glory for politicians, other than a reputation for fair enforcement of the law and restraint of using government to grant favors or confiscate wealth.

If a clever politician can fabricate flaws in the order, and convince people that if we give them special powers and privileges to fix the problems, they have much to gain. Clever business owners and special interests also may fabricate flaws that can only be fixed by giving
some politician the power to make rulings that disproportionately benefit their business.

These fabrications may often be described in terms of leakages from the system, cases where prices, profits, or interest rates don't keep our interests in check. Admitting that every choice will have some side effect not totally captured in the price of a good, (referred to as an externality by economists)many of these problems can be handled within the system by an appropriate assignment and enforcement of property rights, torts, or contract law. Often times technological change and economic growth will take care of many of these issues. Unfortunately these solutions have little glamor for ambitious politicians. They are often able to convince others to give them the power to take a more dramatic approach, which involves a role for government to control or influence choices and resources.

The Political Order

No longer are choices guided by prices based on tradeoffs which reflect the knowledge and preferences of free people, but now they are heavily influenced by the narrow preferences of some self interested politician, business, special interest, or politically manipulated majority block of voters.

Suddenly the natural checks and balances of the 'spontaneous order' are upset, and our many choices become incompatible. We get shortages, surpluses, booms, and busts. We face the wrath that comes within a world unequipped to deal with the problems of scarce resources in the face of infinite preferences, personalities, cultures, and needs.(often referred to as the 'calculation problem' by economists)

To deal with these problems it may seem that the obvious solution is to expand the role of government and minimize the role of individual interactions. This leaves little opportunity for the harmonizing forces of a 'spontaneous order' to work. The politician with the most dramatic fabrication and solution with the greatest populist appeal will get elected. A new strongly entrenched political order unfolds with few checks and balances but strong self perpetuating political feedback mechanisms. The elites and most well connected businesses will prosper.

Conclusion

The spontaneous order created by free individuals appeals to cooperation for meeting the needs of society peacefully. The political order creates masters and servants and appeals to the use of force, either directly or vicariously through some agent of the state.

The Gausian Copula:

Nice demo on the copula. I'm not in full agreement with the conclusion.

"That does not mean it was useless. The Gaussian copula provided a
convienent way to describe a relationship that held under particular
conditions. But it was fed data that reflected a period when housing
prices were not correlated to the extent that they turned out to be when the housing bubble popped."

From:In defense of the Gaussian copula, The Economist

You have to ask, if you were basing risk correlation on the copula, how can you incorporate the uncertainty and instability created by the fed maintaining artificially low interest rates for so long. Bubbles/Booms usually result from an accumulation of mistakes. Markets typically by their very nature consist decentralized decisions. What would lead so many decentralized decision makers to all make the same mistakes when it came to the financial crisis? This kind of coordination and the accumulation of mistakes is very likely explained by the fed's interventions. Decisions about risk, leverage, and asset prices would very likely become more correlated in an environment of centrally planned interest rates than under 'normal' conditions.

MINIMUM WAGES- FOR WHO?

Are minimum wages really effective at alleviating poverty? A few weeks ago Walter Williams wrote a fact filled column regarding minimum wages. The facts reveal that minimum wage increases actually prove to be more beneficial to big business and the working middle class as opposed to the working poor.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams042606.asp

The following facts seem to shed light on many of the popular myths about why we should raise the minimum wage ( either at the state or federal level).

1) after 3 years 85% have found better paying jobs, or have recieved raises

2) only 5% of minumum wage earners are below the poverty line, while almost half have come from families earning $60,0000 or more per year.

3)80% of the people earning minimum wage have no dependents. They are either single, or a working couple with no kids. A vast number are aged 16-25.

Big business benefits because they are better able to manage the increased costs and disruptions to the labor market that result. Smaller businesses become less competitive. In the 90’s when we raised the minimum wage we saw an age of small towns becoming ghost towns while Wal-Mart dominated.

QUOTES

These are some great quotes from our founding fathers. I obtained them from the website of economist Walter E. Williams of George Mason University.

In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." -- James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817

"Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force."-- Thomas Jefferson, Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors, ME 17:380

"I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. [To approve the measure] would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded." -- President Franklin Pierce's 1854 veto of a measure to help the mentally ill.

"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit."-- President Grover Cleveland vetoing a bill for charity relief (18 Congressional Record 1875 [1877]

PRICE GOUGING III

Review: In my first article regarding price gouging I discussed how fuel markets are characterized by a Nash Equilibrium strategy that prevents long term 'price gouging.' In the second article I discussed how the Clean Air Act has increased capital expenditures by nearly 400% and reduced ROI by 42% between 1996 and 2001. This I explained has reduced investment and production capacity.

What happens when we take both of these effects into account? The decreased profitability acts as a barrier to entry preventing competitors from entering the market or increasing capacity. In fact there hasn't been a new refinery built since 1972. When demand exceeds supply, prices rise but there is very little supply response. As a result prices remain high for longer periods of time.

With barriers to entry, there are fewer 'players' in the price gouging game. With fewer players, it takes longer for the market to converge to the lower priced Nash Equilibrium.

Although environmental regulations have reduced return on investment, the resulting barriers to entry have increased the market power of existing firms. In essence, it is environmental regulations that make it possible for firms to ‘price gouge’ because of the increased market power that these laws create for oil companies.

PRICE GOUGING II

Are oil companies really that profitable? Not when it comes to refining. Between 1977 and 2002 net margins per barrel have averaged about 2.00. In 2001 they reached 2.78, then fell back to .19. From 1988-1992 environmental compliance costs went from an annual 560 million to 2.69 billion (400%).

As result return on investment dropped 42% per year between 1996 and 2001. With reduced ROI, refining capacity is severely limited, and the profitability of expansion is greatly reduced.

The recently hailed 'record profits' that oil companies have posted since last summer are in effect an anomaly. Instead of being an indication of future profitability and expansion, they simply are a reflection of scarcity produced by increased usage, instability from hurricane Katrina and the Middle East, and environmental policy.

In essence, what policy makers should focus on are policies that will allow refining to become a more profitable venture. Profits help direct resources to where they are needed most, and we are in desperate need for refining capacity.

PRICE GOUGING

Are oil companies price gouging? If you can define price gouging as charging a price greater than what competitive market fundamentals would support, then I wish I could say YES!

Ologopolistic markets (like fuel markets) are characterized by a non-cooperative Nash Equilibrium for defection. This means that if all of the oil companies are 'price gouging' now then there is a revenue increasing incentive for discounting.

The previous analysis indicates that with price gouging, the high prices at the pump are unsustainable, and cannot be maintained for long.

However, if the high prices we are now experiencing are related to fundamentals, like increased demand from China and India, Middle Eastern instability, reduced refining capacity due to EPA standards, and hurricane setbacks, then it is likely that we will see gas prices remaining near 3.00/gallon and oil at 70.00/barrel.

Of course, much of the 3.00/gallon is still artificially inflated. (the real price of gas since 1950 not adjusting for tax differences across time has ranged 1.90-2.00) While our gas prices are not artifially inflated nearly to the extent as in Europe, we still pay a significant portion of taxes at the pump.

In addition, provisions of the Clean Air Act make it impossible to reduce shortages in one market with surpluses from others. As a result supply fluctuations lead to price spikes.

While technological progress will lead to alternative fuels in the future, a more immediate solution can be found via changes in tax and regulatory policy.

Minimum Wages = Minimum Opportunities

Recently there has been talk about raising the minimum wage in Kentucky.
Basic economic theory and empirical evidence tells us that increases in the minimum wage leads to increased unemployment (via decreased hours,decreased hiring,consolidation of duties) especially among the low skilled. It also increases the potential of discrimination.

By cutting off the potential for low skilled workers to develop human capital ( ability to follow directions, be on time, communicate with others etc.) these policies condemn many to a life of poverty. In addition they give larger corporations like Wal-Mart a competitive advantage over small proprietors.

The assumption that a third party could arbitrarily determine the value of one's labor is not only arrogant but logically confusing. It makes an assumption of a 'just price' for labor.

In the case of goods, when you pay $15 for a CD you do so because you value the satisfaction that it brings to be worth $15 or more . When the retailer offers to sell you the CD for $15 he believes that the CD is worth at most $15, but probably much less. When two people have completely different valuations for a good, there cannot be ‘one’ price that is just. Increase the exchange to include millions of others, and the problem becomes much more complicated. It therefore seems an impossible feat for a third party to be able to calculate a price that even closely approximates a ‘just price.’

This same logic also applies to the price of labor.