FLAT TAX IN BELARUS

Belarus is another Eastern European economy joining the flat tax club. The Ministry of Finance has proposed the shift from progressive tax system (with 35 percent top tax rate) to 12 percent flat tax rate. Recently, Financial Times discussed (link) the state of Belarussian economy, focusing essentially on liberalization prospects, tax reform and regulatory reform. According to WB's Doing Business, Belarus's business climate is more favorable after liberalization efforts were endorsed (link).

RUSSIA'S ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

The Economist (link) has nicely discussed Russia's medium term macroeconomic outlook, focusing on energy prices, rubel's depreciation, inflation outlook and growth performance.

SLOVENIA'S ECONOMIC OUTLOOK IN 2009

As a candidate country, Slovenia has been under a detailed observation by the OECD, particulary in areas regarding macroeconomic outlook such as the stability of public finance, fiscal prudence and growth prospects in the short, medium and the long run. Recently, OECD published a preliminary edition of Slovenia's economic outlook in 2009 (link). As expected by estimates and short-term projections, output growth in 2009 will narrowly decline from this year's 4,8 percent to 2,1 percent. A detailed decomposition of growth contributions can be seen here.

Aside from curious structural analysis of the Slovene economy, this year has been accompanied by a turn in the election with center-left government being in charge of forming new coalition. Expectedly, the set of economic policies by the Ministry of Finance is fashioned in the light of this year's financial crisis and a lot of media attention has been devoted to the recovery from the financial crisis.

This year's financial crisis has affected the Slovene stock market. The annual return from SBITOP, Slovene blue-chip index, is -63,12 percent. The rate of return from SBI20, Slovene main stock market, hit -64,36 percent. The collapse of Lehman Brothers where the banking sector has put portfolio investment and mostly the stock market slump in the U.S, Asia and Europe has affected the Slovene economy respectively. Nonetheless, rachitic and inherent problems of the Slovene stock market are not a result of an integration with world capital markets but a harsh consequence of the prevailing insider trading and relative underdeveloped of Slovenia's capital market. The political opposition to the privatization of NKBM, Slovenia's second largest bank, resulted in a rapid decline in the rate of return of NKBM. From January to December, the share of NBKM yielded -73,48 percent respectively. While the correlation between annual yield trends for each enlisted share is very high for the entire SBI20 and SBITOP, the main structural weakness of the Slovene stock market is that stock prices have been heavily overrated as measured by the P/E ratio (link), reflecting the asymmetry of insider information with respect to the evaluation of share prices.

Macroeconomic outlook in 2009 is less favorable due to external shocks that would curb output activity and consequently restrain investment as well. The slowing of investment activity in construction sector, which contributed 1,7 percentage points to output growth in 2007, may curb output growth from medium-term trend line. While decreasing commodity prices boosted deflationary pressures in Q3, inflationary outlook, given ECB's accomodative monetary policy, will crucially depend on the nature of fiscal policy. A decrease in government spending or at least a neutral stance of fiscal policy is essential to the containment of inflationary pressures. Nonetheless, it is crucial to neutralize wage pressures that could boost the inflationary pressures and hinder macroeconomic stability.

TAX MISERY 2008

Forbes recently published 2008's Tax Misery Index (link).

THE WORLD IN 2009 IN FIGURES

The Economist designed an interactive mapping with data, factsheet and forecast for 80 countries in the world (link).

INCOME TAX RATES ARE FALLING, BUT NOT IN SLOVENIA

The newest study by the KPMG surveyed tax rates on individual income around the world (link). The study finds that average top rate on individual income is less than 29 percent. In Slovenia, it is 41 percent (link).

SAVE TAXPAYERS BY DROPPING THE BAILOUT

I will come back with more comments regarding government bailout of Detroit's "Big Three" auto industry. Gary Becker (link), Dan Mitchell (link), Matthew J. Slaughter (link), The Economist (link) and Mitt Romney (link) provided an opinion regarding the bailout of the auto industry.

IS KEYNES REALLY BACK?

Amity Shlaes nicely outlined (link) the upcoming return of Keynesian economic policy initiated by efforts to boost consumer spending despite the empirical evidence about the lifetime path of consumption pattern. While president Obama has a very smart and knowledgeable team of economic advisers such as Jason Furman, David Cutler and Jeff Liebman, he opposed free-trade agreements with South Korea and Columbia, while he supported the proposal to raise tariffs on Chinese goods in case Chinese government would not allow yuan to appreciate relative to the U.S dollar. There is an overwhelming evidence that an increase in government spending negatively affects output, employment and productivity while proposals to extend health care benefits over the boundaries of tax scheme are a worrying threat to growth and stability of the U.S economy and the overall fiscal stance of the United States.

WILL DEFLATION RESURGE?

Fed chairman says (link) deflation might resurge as a worrying threat to the U.S economy.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT HOUSING MARKET?

Allan Meltzer suggests an increase in demand for housing as a way to prevent mortgage defaults.

GLAESER ON EDUCATION

Ed Glaeser of Harvard University provides a detailed insight on the importance of human capital for economic growth (link):

"Schools can also attract more talent with an environment that welcomes talented outsiders instead of erecting bureaucratic barriers that prevent their success. The literature on teacher certification finds few benefits from that hurdle. By contrast, Teach for America has achieved remarkable results by putting capable young people, often with little formal training as teachers, in classrooms. The experience illustrates that it isn't easy to assess teacher quality with standard teaching credentials. If attracting a wave of good people into teaching is the first step, the second step is keeping the best teachers and redirecting the rest. Performance in the classroom is the best way to know if a teacher is a success. Teacher promotion and tenure needs to be based on clear performance measures, including student test scores. Perhaps teachers unions could start endorsing the use of test scores to evaluate their members and determine tenure."

DEFLATION SPREAD?

Nouriel Roubini writes that deflation is likely to spread through the global economy (link).

HARVARD ECONOMISTS ON FINANCIAL CRISIS

Here (link) is Harvard's Department of Economics web, listing articles and opinion by Harvard economists on current financial crisis.

Top suggesstions: here, here and here.

FED'S LIQUIDITY TRAP?

FT reports that Fed is likely to endorse a further interest rate cut (link):

"The Federal Reserve will probably end up cutting interest rates by as much as 50 basis points by the end of its policy meeting on Wednesday, but it will do so without any great conviction.
Senior policymakers do not think that reducing the federal funds rate from its already low level of 1.5 per cent will have a big effect on financial markets or the US economy..."

CHILLY NEWS FROM ICELAND

Iceland's central bank lifted the key interest rate to 18 percent from 12 percent after Icelandic krona lost 70 percent during this crisis (link). Secondly, Iceland's GDP is expected to contract by up to 10 percent, unemployment is expected to reach 8 percent or higher while inflation rate could hit as much as 20 percent. In fact, IMF recently predicted the rise in the inflation rate to 11,2 percent. Here (link) is a brief outline of Iceland's state of the economy, analyzing the macroeconomic background of country's current crisis as well as rapid expansion in the latter decade.

ARGENTINA'S STATIST SEIZURE OF PRIVATE PENSION FUNDS

Bloomberg reports that Argentina's president has announced a seizure of $29 billion of private pension funds (link).

ICELAND'S ECONOMY

The Economist has published an interesting insight into Iceland's recent economic crisis (link):

"Iceland has been growing smartly in recent years. The country has low unemployment and income per person is somewhat above the average in the European Union. Huge investments in green energy and aluminium smelting have drawn inflows of foreign investment and promise to underpin exports for years to come. But on these sound foundations, Iceland has also built a financial house of cards. The country’s three largest banks have expanded headlong abroad since two of them were privatised in 2003, amassing assets of about €125 billion ($180 billion) by the end of 2007, compared with an economy of just €14.5 billion. Many of these assets were funded by lenders in fickle wholesale markets. In early 2006 less than 30 cents in every loan issued was backed by deposits. Iceland’s households also racked up debts amounting to 213% of disposable income. Britons and Americans owed just 169% and 140% of disposable income respectively—figures that make them seem almost sober by comparison."

ICELAND'S RESCUE PACKAGE

Icelandic government announced $6 bn rescue package to stabilize the economy (link) after an increase in government debt which is expected to reach as much as 100 percent of the GDP. Here is some interesting insights into financial crisis in Iceland (link). Meanwhile, Fitch downgraded Iceland's long-term foreign currency rating to BBB- and long term IDR (issuer default rating) to A- (link). Here is also a brief factsheet of Iceland's economic indicators in this year's September (link). IMF's official inflation and output estimate for Iceland suggest output decline and inflation surge in 2009 (link).

INTERVIEW WITH ANNA SCHWARTZ

Here (link) is an interview with Anna J. Schwartz, the co-author of Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960 (link), highlighting the latest issues associated with Fed's policy measures, credit market shocks and economic fluctuations.

NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS 2008

The Nobel laureate in economics in 2008 is Paul Krugman (here):

"IT WAS widely expected that Paul Krugman, who won the the 2008 Nobel prize for economics on Monday October 13th, would claim the award one day. In 1991 he had received the John Bates Clark medal for the best young economist, which is widely seen as a stepping stone to a Nobel award. What is more of a surprise is that he was honoured rather sooner in his life than many other winners. Like most Nobel laureates in economics, Mr Krugman was recognised for research undertaken early in his career—in this case for his pioneering work on modelling trade between countries whose firms grow more profitable the bigger they become. At 55, he is only four years older than the youngest ever winner, Kenneth Arrow, who was 51 when he won in 1972. But he is a fresh-faced youngster in comparison with Leonid Hurwicz, one of last year’s winners, who was 90 when he shared the prize."