Demographic patterns and structural change in North Africa and the Middle East

The political turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt that precipitated the abrupt end of decades of political dictatorships that governed the vast majority of countires in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. The political revolution, influenced by democratic upheaval in Tunisia and Egypt, facilitated the attempts to overhaul the autocratic regimes in Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Libya.

One of the most interesting and highlighting puzzles to resolves is which features contributed to the rise of democratic revolutions sweeping across the entire region. In fact, MENA region is world's largest exporter of oil, enjoying the largest oil reserves in the world. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, Libya and Kuwait constitute more than 42 percent of world oil reserves. In recent decades, MENA region experienced a growing degree of macroeconomic stability with low and stable inflation rate and steady economic growth. Large oil inflows, driven by the growing oil consumption in emerging markets such as China and India, boosted local currency appreciation and current account surpluses. The rates of growth in recent decade were remarkable, reflecting the growth of domestic demand as well as robust investment as the engine of growth. Countries in the MENA region also enjoyed favorable demographic conditions with low old-age dependency ratio and high share of working-age population, resulting in a demographic dividend which brought robust economic growth.

The indices of political change in the MENA countries prior to the outburst of the political protests in Tunisia and Egypt were nearly impossible to predict since a variety of macroeconomic, demographic and structural indicators facilitate the course of political change in developing countries, shifting from authoritarian political leadership towards a democratic political institutions with free press, free election and a vibrant civil society. Prior to the onset of the protests against authoratic governments in the MENA countries, the latter experienced benign levels of economic freedom. In the MENA region, the majority of countries experienced rampant corruption, heavily regulated labor markets, financial underdevelopment and inefficient legal systems. Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia enjoyed the highest degree of economic freedom in the region while Yemen, Syria and Algeria were already suffering from institutional paralysis and bad governance which brought these countries on the brink of failed states. If political change could be predicted on the basis of the level of overall economic freedom, Yemen, Syria, Algeria and Libya would experience the highest likelihood of political protests that would eventually lead to the political change.

Prior to the independence from France, MENA countries have been plagued by authoritarian governments given the extensive reserves of oil and natural gas. The absence of market institutions based on the rule of law under good governance and independent judicial systems eventually intensifed the rise of hybrid political regimes prone to corruption and poor governance. Even though corrupt military rule and political dicatorship precipitated the rise of the protests against authoratic rule, the pattern of structural change could be easily seen from the changing demographic landscape across the MENA region.

For most of the 20th century, countries in the MENA regions experienced rising income per capita levels. In fact, the growth of per capita incomes in North Africa surpassed the regional average given the fact that North African countries enjoyed high relative levels of income per capita at the beginning of the 20th century compared to Sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, in 1913, Tunisia enjoyed higher per capita income than Mauritius. The change in the demographic structure of the population began after 1950s. In all countries of the MENA region, the fertility rate decreased substantially. In Syria, the fertility rate almost halved between 1950-1955 and 2005-2010, from 7.30 to 3.29. The same trend in the fertility rate swept across the entire region. In Libya, the fertility rate between 2005 and 2010 fell below 3 children per women while Tunisia's fertility rate dropped below 2 children per women in the same period. The astounding drop in fertility rates strongly reflected the growth in per capita incomes which boosted domestic consumption of durable and non-durable goods. In addition, oil-exporting countries such as Libya and Bahrain have experienced a substantial increase in export earnings. Large inflow of oil earnings, in fact, unleashed the income effect, brining higher spending on education and infrastructure. The distribution of literacy rates across countries (link) shows that literacy rates in MENA regions are remarkably high. In fact, Bahrain and Turkey boast of 88 percent literacy rate. Libya remained the North African leader in literacy rate (86.8 percent), ahead of Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria which, given the fragmentation and dichotomy of the population, enjoy literacy rates below 80 percent of the total population.

Countries from the MENA region differ substantially in the demographic projections of old-age dependency ratio. The estimates by the UN suggest that by 2030, the dependency ratio in North Africa and the Middle East is expected to experience a persistent rise. In fact, under constant fertility rates, the share of the population 65+ is expected to increase by 25 percentage points in Bahrain, 24 percentage points in Libya, 23 percentage points in Tunisia, 20 percentage points in Algeria, 15 percentage points in Syria and Saudi Arabia and 14 percentage points in Egypt. In Turkey, favorable fertility assumptions predict 7 percentage point increase in old-age dependency ratio until 2030. The empirics behind the clear explanation of fertility dyanmics across the MENA region reveals a persistent shift towards rapidly aging population across the entire region. The expedience of high fertility rates boosts the demographic dividend alongside the growth in income per capita until the break-even point when the pressure of aging population raises public pension expenditure and the introduction of social security schemes. These schemes, in fact, do not pose a systemic threat to the long-term solvency of public pension system as long as high fertility rates boost stationary population growth. The remarkable decrease in the fertility rates in the MENA is partly beared by the increasing amount spent on education. For instance, Tunisia's education spending amounted to 7.2 percent of the GDP. The ratio is higher than in many advanced countries in the world. In 2007, Italy spent 4.3 percent of GDP on education, the same ratio as Algeria in the year later. The increasing amount of education expenditure, in both absolute and relative sense, reflects robust literacy rates for middle-income countries of the MENA region. In fact, the increasing amount of education expenditures per inhabitant boosted the information awareness by driving up reading, mathematical and computer literacy. Higher literacy rates, compounded by free access to various Internet applications, could substantiate hypothetically greater awareness of the public demanding political liberties, freedom of assembly and free press.

The demographic transition in the Middle East and North Africa is remarkably uneven, reflecting the variation in income per capita across the region. One of the key drivers of the demographic adjustment is the chagning immigration landscape. Traditionally, North African countries have boosted one of the highest outward migration rates, particulary into Italy and France where Muslims account for about 9 percent of the population, the highest share in Western Europe. In addition, with 2.01 children per women, France enjoys one of the highest fertility rates in Europe. A brief overview of the ethnic fertility rates in France shows that French women of the Muslim origin boost significantly higher fertility rates compared to immigrants from Western countries. For instance, the fertility rates for women of Algerian and Morroccan descent exceed the fertility rates of Spanish and Italian immigrants by almost three times. In the next decade, income per capita across the Arab world is expected to increase robustly. Higher incomes would mean a shift towards the increasing amount of expenditures on durable goods. The change in the consumption pattern would be accompanied by a robust decline in the relative amount of income spent on food and other non-durables. Hence, the assumed fertility rates would converge to the Despite the prolonged decline in fertility rates across the Arab world, the demographic transition could precipitate the subsequent decline in robust economic growth rates which exacerbate the rapid rise in per capita incomes in the MENA region.

The peculiar feature of the majority of countries within the MENA region with the ecxeption of Turkey is the presence of natural resource barriers. The abundance of natural resources, such as oil, phosphate and natural gas, is a major constraint on the quality of public sector governance replaced by the seizure of the state by powerful political elites such as the military regime during the Mubarak rule in Egypt prior to the 2011 revolution. Unless accompanied by democratic institutions and systemic constraints on the executive power, the political revolution can eventually result in the organic evolution of the failed state with a strong persistence of the old elites pushing for the status quo to protect the privileges preserved under the old system. The Arab awakening signalled the beginning of the demographic transition with decreasing fertility rates and slowly growing old-age dependency ratios. Hence, diminishing returns to demographic dividend and the gradual relative decline of the share of the working-age population both indicate a tendency towards greater democratic governance.

Human capital, labor market and economic growth

The OECD recently published the international comparison of the gap in employment rates between university graduates and workers with secondary education or less (link). There is no single exception to the fact that the employment rate is the highest in the group of individuals with college and university degree. Nonetheless, the comparison of the variation in employment rate in the cross section of OECD countries is very interesting.

Among the OECD countries (link), Iceland enjoys the highest employment rate (94.7 percent) of those with college or university degree followed by Switzerland (93.9 percent), Norway (92 percent) and Denmark (91.4 percent). The lowest employment rate for university graduates in 2008 was in Turkey (81.4 percent), Italy (86.5 percent), Israel (86.6 percent) and Greece (87.2 percent). In contrast, the employment rate for those below the secondary education is the lowest in Slovakia (39 percent), Hungary (47.5 percent), Poland (55 percent) and Czech Republic (57.4 percent).

The persistence of high unemployment rate for those below the secondary education degree is a broad outline of the findings from the course of labor economics. The human capital, defined as the stock of years of education per capita, is highly positively correlated with career earnings. The evolution of human capital across the countries has been a subject of debate on economic growth. The empirical study by Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee (link) has shown that, for instance, upper secondary school attendence by males has a significant long-term impact on the economic growth. The level of education, sustained by the years of schooling, is not a sole determinant of economic growth in the international perspective. Although, the economic growth is strongly positively correlated with the average years of schooling, the relationship is less powerful considering different parameters of the educational attainment. In the Barro-Lee dataset (link), there is a significant variation between the share of female population that enrolled in a tertiary education and the share of female that completed the tertiary degree. The difference is significant not only in the cross section but also in the country-based time series.

By far the highest tertiary degree completion rate for female has been present in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States. Among other countries, the completion rate of Iceland and the Netherlands has been significantly higher compared to the countries of the Continental and Mediterranean Europe. The rate of return to an additional year of schooling significantly differed across countries and across the level of education. For instance, Barro and Lee estimated that the rate of return is the highest at the tertiary level (17.9 percent per annum) compared to the secondary level (10 percent) while the rate of return from an additional year of schooling at the primary level is statistically insignificant from zero. The picture shows the regional variation in the average rate of return from an additional year of schooling.

Rate of return from an additional year of schooling across the world

Source: R. Barro & J.W Lee: Educational Attainment in the World, 1950-2010 (link)

The creation of human capital is essential to higher economic growth. Ultimately, the investment in human capital is the essential means of higher standard of living in poor countries. An interesting theoretical question is what could account for a divergence across the countries? Considering the relevant economic theory as well as scholarly contributions to the theory and empirics of economic growth, there are several factors that explain the significance of divergence in the rate of return from an additional year of education.

First, the impact of behavioral patterns on education and labor market decisions explains a pretty large part of the difference between the effect of education and labor market structure on the rate of return from schooling. Although the field of behavioral economics (link) is still a largely evolving discipline within the economics, the existing empirical studies of the effects of institutional variables on education outcome try to capture these effects by different proxies such as the estimates of political freedom, the rule of law and civil liberties. The changes in the return to education may be related to these factors since the relative worth of education in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America may incur high opportunity cost given the payoff from predatory behavior or working in the informal sector of the economy.

Second, general and firm-specific human capital investment, the increase in college premium and the enormous increase in female labor force participation help explain high rate of return from an additional year of schooling in advanced countries and East Asia. In particular, East Asian tigers were able to sustain high economic growth rates partly because of well-trained and educated labor force able to use the modern technologies. The resulting outcome of the Asian economic miracles has been a steady growth in output per worker and a gradual convergence of wage rates in South Korea and Japan to the level of U.S. According to Kevin Murphy and Finis Welch (link), the premium of getting a college education in the U.S in 1980s was 67 percent. The growth in college and university attendence rates is largely explained by the robust increase in tertiary education premium.

And third, greater labor force participation of women has also led to higher rates of college and university attendence. In spite the persistent male-female pay gap, women have experienced a tremendous increase in lifetime earnings as a consequence of higher rates of college and university attendence. The persistence of the male-female pay gap can be explained by the rewards to education rather than by inherent gender bias. The U.S. Census published the relevant data (link) on the distribution of female earnings. In 2003, the female earnings of high school graduates in the 25-34 age thresold represented 78 percent of average male earnings. The earnings of the same female age thresold with bachelor's degree represented 89 percent of male earnings and 71 percent for those female with master's degree. What accounts for the gender earnings gap across the levels of age and education is the asymmetric self-selection that led to dispersed gender distribution of relative earnings. Men usually self-select into the areas of work requiring a significant amount of risk-taking and rather uncertain payoffs while the female labor market pattern is inclined towards less risk-taking and greater certainty regarding the stability of lifetime earnings.

The data by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (link) published in 2003, showed that female-to-male earnings ratio in high-paying jobs is the lowest in the field of chief executives where female earnings represented 80 percent of average male earnings in the same field of occupation. On average, the female-to-male earnings ratio declined in low-paying occupations such as cashiers (93 percent), cooks (91 percent), food preparation (93 percent) and hand packaging (101 percent). Contrary to the popular perception, female earnings in the field of computer systems management and legal industry represented 91 percent of average male earnings while the highest ratio in high-paying occupations was recorded in pharmaceutical industry (92 percent).

Indeed, there is a persistent and historically lowest male-female earnings gap. But, as the labor economic theory of human capital predicts, the gender pay difference reflects different cognitive abilities and preferences of occupational selection considering the degree of risk-taking and payoff uncertainty. Even the international test scores (link) confirmed that advantage of female cognitive abilities comprehends in verbal reasoning and reading skills (link) while the cognitive abilities of male are more inclined towards the use of computer technology (link) and mathematics (link).

Even in a cross-country perspective, the gender wage differential persists. The gap, defined as the female-male ratio, ranges from 0.9 in France to 0.7 in Canada. The gender wage differential is a cross section of major economies is shown in the table below.

The Gender Earnings Gap Across Countries

Source: F.D Blau & L.M Kahn, Gender Differences in Pay, 2000

The set of different institutional characteristics of labor market in different countries could easily complement the productivity growth rates as to explain the evolution of wage differential across countries. Even though wage rates are primarily determined by the productivity growth, the existence of collective bargaining schemes and rigid labor market mechanism determining wage rate and total compensation can add significantly to the enforcement of particular labor market policies affecting gender bias in wage determination. In the United States and other advanced countries, the main cause of the wider gender earnings gap is a significant gap between college education premium and high school premium. In addition, reductions in personal income tax rates furthermore increase the rewards to college education relative to the education levels of high school or less - which, by the empirical evidence, seems to be the main determinant of earnings gap in the labor market of advanced countries.

EARNINGS AND EDUCATION: A SURVEY

In 2009, the median weekly earnings of workers with bachelor's degrees were $1,137. This amount is 1.8 times the average amount earned by those with only a high school diploma, and 2.5 times the earnings of high school dropouts (link).

TAX WEDGE AND PRODUCTIVITY IN OECD COUNTRIES

The OECD Factblog highlighted a comparison of tax burden across the OECD countries. The main findings of the comparison is that overall tax burden, measured as a percentage of labor costs, is the highest in Western European countries. Belgium, Hungary, Germany and France are the countries with the highest overall tax burden while Ireland, Iceland, Australia and Korea have sustained low tax wedge. The data acquired by the OECD pose an intriguing question: is slow economic growth in European countries attributed to high tax burden of labor supply and, if so, has the gap between the U.S. and Europe grown further?

Let's decompose the data and underline the main findings. Tax wedge, measured as a percentage of taxes and transfers paid in the share of total labor costs, is a suficient measure of the overall level of taxation. In the analysis of the effect of taxation on labor supply, the economic theory distinguishes between substitution and income effect. The former means that tax rate on labor supply would reduce the number of working hours and shift the individuals to allocate more time into leisure. The income effect, on the other hand, states that the effect of tax on labor supply would be neutral and would, hence, not have an effect on the relative allocation of resources between working hours and leisure. In general, there are two largely opposing views in economic policy regarding the relationship between taxation and labor supply. Conservative and liberal economists tend to emphasize the role of incentives. Higher tax rate would raise the labor cost and the corresponding decline in wages would be offset by the re-allocation of resources into leisure sector of the economy. Left-wing economists mostly disagree with the abovementioned proposition. Instead, they emphasize the role of elasticity of labor supply. According to New Keynesian view, short-run tax elasticity of labor supply is low in absolute terms, meaning that the amount of working hours does not respond significantly to relative changes in tax rates. The Keynesian economists thus emphasize the significance of income effect while the conservative and liberal economists tend to emphasize the substitution effect. The distinctions and policy effects of these two theoretical propositions remains a controversial issue of economic policy debate.

The country distribution data is extensively underlined in the data (link). For example, one-earner married couple at 100 percent of earnings distribution is taxed at 20 percent of the overall labor cost in the United States, 22 percent in Australia, 18 percent in Switzerland and 13 percent in New Zealand. On the other tax wedge statistics for Western Europe is a completely different picture. In Sweden, one-earner married couple at 100 percent of earnings distribution will earn only 57 percent of net earnings, indicating a 43 percent effective tax rate on labor supply. In Belgium, the effective tax rate on labor supply is 42.6 percent. Is the difference in effective tax rates statistically significant feature of productivity variation across OECD countries. The OECD recently composed a breakdown in key productivity statistics in developed countries (link). To estimate the relationship between productivity and tax burden, I collected data on multifactor productivity dynamics from Groningen Growth and Development Center (link) and data on tax wedge across OECD countries (link). I estimated the noted relationship for 16 developed OECD countries. Multifactor productivity is a dependent variable while tax wedge is an explanatory variable.The estimates are displayed on the graph below.

Multifactor productivity in OECD relative to the U.S. and total tax burden (% of labor cost)

Source: GGDC, OECD Factblog

The horizontal line on the graphs marks the U.S. level of multifactor productivity. As the graph shows, the underlying relationship between multifactor productivity (MFP)and tax wedge is fitted with quadratic equation. Total tax wedge explains about 34.5 percent of the variation in multifactor productivity index across OECD countries. The trend exerts a decreasing MFP as the tax wedge rises and, after reaching a local minimum, a slight increase alongside the proporional rise in tax wedge. The relevant question is at which rate of tax wedge the MFP reaches the minimum. Setting the first-order derivate to zero (dy/dx=0) yields 0.0016x-0.0488=0. Rearranging the equation yields x=30.5. The first-order derivative implies that MFP reaches the minimum at 30.5 percent tax wedge. The estimate sample-based tax elasticity of productivity ((dy/dx)(x/y)) is 1.78. The elasticity indicates that 1 percentage point increase in tax wedge would reduce the multifactor productivity in a sample country by 1.78 percent, ceteris paribus. In other words, the estimated slope coefficient suggests that a 1 percentage point increase in tax wedge would widen the MFP gap between the average country and the US by additional 0.05 index points.

In economic terms, MFP would decrease as long as the countries in the sample would exert less than 30.5 percent tax wedge. In the horizon after the local minimum (30.5 percent), MFP would initially increase but at a smaller rate than before the function would reaches the minimum point. At 20 percent tax wedge (close to Japanese level), the expected decrease in MFP would be 0.0168 index point. At 40 percent tax wedge, the expected increase in MFP would be 0.0152 index point. Economically, the relationship between MFP and tax wedge should not be interpreted as a mixed effect of tax wedge on MFP. In countries, where tax wedge exceeds 30.5 percent (Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium etc.) , the multifactor productivity is close to the U.S. level. The only country with higher MFP level than the United States is Luxembourg. In these countries, the average number of annual hours worked per worker is lower than in the U.S. Hence, hourly productivity output is higher. The following graph illustrates the relationship between annual hours worked (per worker) and MFP level.

Average annual hours worked per worker and multifactor productivity relative to the US

Source: OECD Statistics (2010)

As the graph illustrates, there is a negative relationship between average annual hours worked and MFP. The estimated regression coefficient suggests that an increase in annual hours worked by 100 hours would reduce MFP level (compared to the U.S) by 0.06 index points. As expected, the implied elasticity of productivity is negative. Taking the average values ov both variables, an increase in average annual hours worked (per worker) by 1 percent would reduce the MFP relative to the U.S level by 1.16 percent, ceteris paribus.

The conclusion is that there is a significant and negative impact of tax wedge on multifactor productivity. Taking the differences in annual hours worked into account, tax wedge alone explains almost 35 percent of the differential in multifactor productivity across the OECD. The findings suggest that there is a relatively strong substitution effect in labor supply. The finding is underlined by the fact that higher tax wedge would correspondingly reduce annual hours worked. However, the interpretation should be taken with a grain of warning. As previous empirical studies have shown, there is a widespread disparity in the distribution of working hours in formal and household sector of the economy. A sizeable proportion of working hours in household sector of the economy is not officially measured. Consequently, a blick of distortion of the real relationship between labor supply and tax wedge, in its broadest sense, is a major impediment to the measurement of labor supply dynamics. These estimates will, in a large part, determine the future research of the effect of taxation on labor productivity.

PRODUCTIVITY AND LABOR COSTS INDEX IN THE UNITED STATES

Bureau of Labor Statistics has recently published quarterly productivity and costs figures in the US nonfarm business sector (link).

EMU: RECOVERY OR DECLINE?

NY Times recently reported on the agreed financial rescue assitance to Grecce from EMU (€110 billion) and IMF ($145 billion). Alongside Ireland and Mediterranean countries, the economic recovery of EMU is hampered by a high mountain of public debt and unfavorable macroeconomic data on growth, employment and current account.

Public debt in the European Union in 2009

Source: Eurostat (2009)

The graph I attached, shows the level of public debt in EU countries in 2009. Solid horizontal blue line shows the 60 percent debt-to-GDP ratio required by Maastricht criteria for each EMU entrant.

The underlying data (link) on economic recovery in the US point out a strong and robust recovery. The data from Bureau of Economic Analysis show that the US economy grew by 3.2 percent in Q1:2010 continued from a remarkable 4.6 percent growth in Q4:2009. While private consumption expenditure growth increased by 2 percentage points from the previous quarter, private domestic investment rebounded by 14.8 percent in Q1:2010 after a remarkable 46.1 percent increase in Q4:2009. In addition, labor productivity in Q4:2009 increased by 6.9 percent - the largest quarterly increase since Q3:2003 (link) On the other side, recent revision (link) of quarterly growth rate in the EMU has shown that quarterly GDP in Q1:2010 increased by 0.0 percent, revised from 0.1 percent. Industrial confidence, an important measure of manufacturing outlook, further decline by 12.2 index points.

The macroeconomic outlook for the EMU is downsized by high public debt and negative budget deficit which led 10-year bond premium spread between EMU economies and Germany (link). The premium spread between Greece and Germany stood at 8.57 percentage points on April 28 while the spread between Ireland and Germany was at 2.54 percentage points.

High level of fiscal deficits restrains the economic recovery of the EMU countries. In 2009, Spain, Ireland and Greece faced the highest deficit-to-GDP ratio while Denmark's 2 percent deficit-to-GDP ratio was the lowest in the European Union. NY Times recently collected annual dataset on public debt and budget deficit (link) in which an overview of key public finance indicators is availible.

The prospects of economic recovery in the EMU are further downgraded by unfavorable growth forecast. One of the key questions during the ongoing debt crisis has been whether the EMU will sustain fiscal discrepancy within the EMU since asymmetric fiscal policy undermine the ability of the common monetary policy. Even though Greece's debt crisis is the core of the debate regarding future viability of the single currency, growth estimates for Spain and Italy in 2010/2011 will determine the mid-term macroeconomic stability of the eurozone. European Commission recently updated the quarterly economic growth estimates for eurozone countries (link). Depending on the absorption of financial market spillovers into investment and net exports, economic growth estimates for Italy and Spain are quite pessimistic. After an estimated 0.1 percent growth rate in Q2, Spain's economy is likely to contract in Q3 by -0.2 percent and experience a slight rebound in Q4:2010. Quarterly economic forecast for Italy is positive throughout the year although the economic growth rate is likely to be close to zero. However, Italy's economic growth rate is likely to keep the increasing pace towards the end of the year although current macroeconomic outlook deters consumption, investment and inventories' contribution to GDP growth mainly because of high unemployment rate and sluggish productivity growth.

Robust economic growth is essential to the cure of high public debt. Since EMU countries have adopted a single currency, policymakers cannot trigger exchange-rate adjustment through currency depreciation. The latter would spill into higher inflation and modestly reduce the volume of public debt. Due to high unemployment and slower recovery of inventories, inflation rate is unlikely to rebound to pre-crisis levels.

EMU's most problematic countries' recovery is unlikely to be robust given public debt and deficit constraint on quarterly growth outlook. Without a prudent fiscal tightening, lower government spending, there will be a bleak economic outlook for the future of EMU countries which could result in a decade-long period of low growth, high unemployment and Japan-styled deflationary persistence.

GOOD NEWS ON GOOD FRIDAY

From BLS (link):

"Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in March, and the unemploymentrate held at 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Temporary help services and health care continued to add jobs over the month. Employment in federal government also rose, reflecting the hiring of temporaryworkers for Census 2010. Employment continued to decline in financial activities and in information. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (10.0 percent), adult women (8.0 percent), teenagers (26.1 percent), whites (8.8 percent), blacks (16.5 percent), and Hispanics (12.6 percent) showed little or no change in March."

TEXAS VS. CALIFORNIA

There's an interesting story from Washington Examiner (link) discussing the coming economic crisis in California (which has been notably called "The Greece of America") and the flourising economy in Texas which enjoyed a decade of robust growth, low taxes, favorable demographic outlook and superior public services. Not surprisingly, unions in free labor market in Texas did not allow public sector unions extracting $100 million from taxpayers for TV-adds in defence of the status quo for public employees:

"Californians have responded by leaving the state. From 2000 to 2009, the Census Bureau estimates, there has been a domestic outflow of 1,509,000 people from California -- almost as many as the number of immigrants coming in. Population growth has not been above the national average and, for the first time in history, it appears that California will gain no House seats or electoral votes from the reapportionment following the 2010 census... Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes -- and no state income taxes -- and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared with California's year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent."

READINGS FOR THIS WEEK

Here's a list of interesting readings for this week.

Gary Becker (link) and Richard Posner (link) briefly discuss the economic effects of fiscal stimulus and review the main literature on fiscal multiplier and the macroeconomic cost of the stimulus bill.

Congressional Budget Office published Budget Outlook 2010 (link) in which it analyzed the total effects of policy alternatives on federal budget deficit.

In NY Times, Paul Krugman discussed (link) the painfulness of financial crisis in Ireland and the U.S and suggesting what we should learn from banking regulation in Canada to prevent future crises of similar proportions.

In How to close the productivity gap between the US and Europe: A quantitative assessment using a semi-endogenous growth model, Werner Roeger, Janos Varga and Jan in 't Veld from the European Commission suggest (link) that to catch-up the US productivity level, the EU should strengthen market competition and eliminate administrative and financial barriers to market entry to start closing the gap in knowledge investment.

In Waging War on Black Teens, Richard W. Rahn and Izzy Santa wrote (link) about the high unemployment rate among young African Americans. Furthermore, they suggest that minimum wage mandate is the main cause of steep unemployment rise thereupon.

The Economist (link) summarized the estimated total cost of reconstruction after the earthquake in Chile at $20-30 billion (13-19 percent of the GDP). Chile's sovereign wealth fund has just over $11 billion saved during the pre-crisis period of high copper prices which, at that time, stood at record levels.

EUROPE VS. USA

In NY Times, Paul Krugman (link) wrote about the comparison of European and U.S economic model, concluding that in the last 10 years, the European model of social democracy led to higher standard of living and, compared to U.S in output per hour and standard of living, and relative convergence of European countries relative to the U.S respectively.

The real convergence is a complex mathematical and empirical issue, so I will rather outline the key patterns of GDP per capita gap between the U.S and Europe and the economic explanation of it. I downloaded the data from the IMF and composed a graph which shows the GDP per capita (PPP-adjusted) in European countries as a percentage of the U.S GDP per capita. Switzerland is the only European country whose level of GDP per capita is more than 90 percent of the U.S level. Ireland, where the output contracted by 7.5 percent in 2009 (link), was once the poorest country in the European Union. Today, its GDP per capita reached 85 percent of the U.S level. In spite of the notorious advantages of the Nordic model, the GDP per capita level of all Nordic countries (excluding Norway), is below 80 percent of the U.S level. The UK GDP per capita is also far below the U.S level (75 percent). The levels of GDP per capita of the less developed countries in European Union (Slovenia, Greece, Portugal, Czech Republic and Slovakia) are all below 62 percent of the U.S level.

Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook

The basic economic question is the length of the gap between the U.S and European countries. To answer the question, we have to set certain assumptions. So, let's assume that the U.S output will increase by 2 percent in the long run. The economic theory would predict faster growth of less developed countries, since countries with lower levels of standard of living (GDP per capita) tend to follow-up the countries with higher GDP per capita. In economic literature, that is the so-called "catch-up effect". So, what would happen if the UK economy increased by 3.5 percent in the long run. A quick estimate shows that the time gap between the UK and US is 19 years. So, what happens of the US economy increases by 2 percent in each of the next year while, at the same time, the UK GDP per capita is 75 percent of the U.S level? A fairly quick estimate shows that, if the UK GDP per capita will reach the U.S level in 10 years (although an unlikely scenario), the UK GDP per capita would have to increase by 4.9 percent each year to catch-up the U.S level of GDP per capita. If France's GDP per capita reached the U.S level in 10 years (assuming 2 percent growth in U.S GDP per capita), it would have to increase the economic growth to 5.3 percent in each of the next 10 years. If the convergence objective is set at 20 years, the French economy would still have to grow at the annual rate higher than 3 percent.

The main question is why the European countries are still behind the U.S level of GDP per capita? There are, of course, many plausible explanations. As far as the GDP per capita is concerned, the difference in the level and growth of productivity is the most important figure in setting conclusions. After all, in the long run, productivity determines the standard of living across countries.

First, the European disease is mostly the result of high tax burden. High tax rates diminished the incentives to work, since each additional hour of labor reduced worker's marginal productivity. Hence, as professor Mankiw explains, the rise of European leisure (link) is mostly the result of fewer working hours. In addition, early retirement is a common phenomena across Europe. By 2030, each worker will support one retired individual in Germany. The coming of Europe's pension crisis (link) is a consequence of generous PAYG pension systems. Lower employment-to-population ratio led to higher tax rates to finance the financial liabilities for the retired. In addition, high government spending and periodic budget deficits discouraged productivity growth.

Second, another key to the explanation of the anemic growth rates in Europe is rigidity of the labor market. In many European countries, labor costs are very high (link). If the cost of labor market entry is high, people prefer longer studying and working in the shadow economy. The shares of shadow economy are relatively high in all European countries (link). The highest rates of shadow economy are in the following countries:

1. Slovenia 27%
2. Greece 26%
3. Italy 24%
4. Spain 21%
5. Belgium 20%
6. Germany 15%
7. France 13%

Source: ATKearney (2009), Friedrich Schneider (2005)

Third, Europe's relative decline compared to the U.S, is not a consequence of the lack of R&D investment. High percentage of R&D investment in the GDP is not a cure for the real cause. In fact, European universities rank far below the top universities in the world. In the field of engineering and computer sciences, the first non-US university is in the 15th rank. Europe's brain-drain is a known phenomena since many bright European minds immigrate to places such as the U.S, Canada and Australia. The outcome is deteriorating international ranking of universities and low efficiency of R&D expenditure on misguided projects such as the intention of the European Commission to build a "European MIT" (link) to boost Europe's global technology leadership.

Without higher growth of GDP, productivity and market working hours, European countries will hardly sustain the convergence towards the U.S level of GDP per capita. To boost economic growth, bold structural reforms are required to cut the rates of shadow economy, reduce tax and social security burden, decrease government spending and deregulate the labor markets.

ECONOMIC COST AND BENEFITS OF GERMAN UNIFICATION

Yesterday, it has been 20 years since the fall of the Berlin wall and the eventual collapse of communist political and economic system in Central and Eastern Europe. However, there is still discussion about economic costs and benefits of German reunification (Wiedervereinigung). I've been motivated to open this debate by professor Becker's analysis (link) on the size of countries and by the recent article in Financial Times by the contributing German economist (link).

Economists in Germany and the rest of the world have long warned against the consequences of the unification of East and West Germany. After the unification, German central bank set the exchange rate at 1:1. Because East German workers' relative productivity level lagged far behind the West German level, East German workers migrated to West Germany in search of higher wages. When wage rates between West and East Germany were equalized in the absence of productivity catch-up in East Germany, the excess labor supply in the East led to high unemployment and slow changes in the economic structure. As the exchange rate was equalized and wages prevented from the natural adjustment to productivity growth, the unemployment soared as East German manufacturing sector couldn't employ labor anymore. The unemployed received massive transfer payments which, even more than a decade after the reunification, still present about 4 percent of total German income.

Today, the figures suggest that East German GDP per capita is roughly 70 percent of the Western German level and the unemployment rate exceeds 12 percent - more than twice the Western level. Low population density and high share of rural population are the main structural obstacle to higher productivity growth in the East. The majority of models in economic geography and urban economics suggests that agglomeration economies occur where population density is high. The latter yields significant advantages in terms of spillovers, search cost, factor mobility, know-how and economies of scale. Low population density is a major obstacle in attracting investment mostly because firms are not eager to locate at the periphery in the presence of high search costs and in the absence of high-skilled labor, agglomeration and linkages to economies of scale. In the U.S, for instance, Pittsburgh's industrial restructuring from resource-based steel industry into knowledge-intensive information technology, biotechnology and software development required agglomeration which combined high-skilled labor, human capital, access to regional and international markets as well as high population density.

In Germany, for example, Hamburg generated the highest GDP per capita (€51,000) among cities and Bavaria (Bayern) generated the highest GDP per capita (€36,000) among German states. Hamburg and Munich, as well as the linking cities located in their vacinity are among the most densely populated areas which enabled them to develop core industries, spillovers, know-how and dynamic knowledge externalities. There is an overwhelming evidence that differences in population density are a good source of growth difference between east and west Germany.

After the unification, German fiscal policymakers favored an expansive fiscal policy which directed federal expenditures into poorer regions of the East to boost the development of infrastructure. However, at an exchange rate 1:1, West German firms were reluctant to invest in East Germany mainly because of higher relative price of labor. As East German workers moved to the Western part of the country, west German firms hired eastern workers. As brain drain became widespread, the convergence of east German income per capita slowed.

East Germany were far better off, if the country remained independent. The reunification of Germany would yield singificant economic benefits, if the unification itself were based on close economic integration with the establishment of free trade area and free movement of capital, goods and labor. If East Germany remained independent and retained its own currency without the uncovered exchange rate realignment to to West German exchange rate parity, the relative price of East German labor wouldn't increase and thus the unemployment rate would be significantly lower than it has been ever since the reunification. Thus, West German firms would easily find attractive investments in East Germany. The process would dramatically reduce disparities in population density compared to the West. Under such scenario, East Germany's macroeconomic stabilization and institutional reforms would be a lot easier and the overall economic and political transition much less painful.