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Inequality and the Welfare State

A new book on inequality by Branko Milanovic adopts an international perspective. The Economist reviews the book:

Like Mr Piketty, he begins with piles of data assembled over years of research. He sets the trends of different individual countries in a global context. Over the past 30 years the incomes of workers in the middle of the global income distribution—factory workers in China, say—have soared, as has pay for the richest 1% (see chart). At the same time, incomes of the working class in advanced economies have stagnated. This dynamic helped create a global middle class. It also caused global economic inequality to plateau, and perhaps even decline, for the first time since industrialisation began. …

Mr Milanovic suggests that both [Kuznets and Piketty] are mistaken. Across history, he reckons, inequality has tended to flow in cycles: Kuznets waves.

In the FT, Martin Wolf argues that a significant part of the (British) welfare state is about insurance rather than redistribution:

Evidence for this comes from another IFS study  … This examined the effects of the tax and benefit systems on people born between 1945 and 1954 …

First, income is far less unequal over lifetimes than in any given year. This is because a big proportion of inequality is temporary … Second, largely as a result, more than half of the redistribution achieved by taxes and benefits is over lifetimes rather than among different people. Third, in the course of adult life, only 7 per cent of individuals receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes, even though 36 per cent of people receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes in any given year. Finally, in-work benefits are just as good as out-of-work benefits at helping people who remain poor throughout their lives but they do less damage to incentives to work. Higher rates of income tax, meanwhile, target the “lifetime rich” relatively well because mobility at the top is relatively modest.

Marcel Fratzscher also wrote a book on the topic, focusing on Germany. He argues that the “Verteilungskampf” (redistributive struggle) intensifies and that equality of opportunity is being lost. In the FAZ, Jan Hauser summarizes a critique of the book by another Berlin based professor, Klaus Schroeder, who argues that the text is very short on substance.

Blockchains in Banking (Commercial and Central)

The Economist reports about initiatives by commercial and central banks that aim at adopting the blockchain technology.

For commercial banks, distributed ledgers promise various advantages—but they also cause problems:

Instead of having to keep track of their assets in separate databases, as financial firms do now, they can share just one. Trades can be settled almost instantly, without the need for lots of intermediaries. As a result, less capital is tied up during a transaction, reducing risk. Such ledgers also make it easier to comply with anti-money-laundering and other regulations, since they provide a record of all past transactions (which is why regulators are so keen on them).

… Yet … [o]ne stumbling block is what geeks call “scalability”: today’s distributed ledgers cannot handle huge numbers of transactions. Another is confidentiality: encryption techniques that allow distributed ledgers to work while keeping trading patterns, say, private are only now being developed. … Such technical hurdles can be overcome only with a high degree of co-operation …

Meanwhile, central banks plan digital currencies built around the same technology.

Like bitcoin, these would be built around a database listing who owns what. Unlike bitcoin’s, though, these “distributed ledgers” would … be tightly controlled by the issuers of the currency.

The plans involve letting individuals and firms open accounts at the central bank …

Central banks … could save on printing costs if people held more bits and fewer banknotes. Digital currency would be tougher to forge, though a successful cyber-attack would be catastrophic. Digital central-bank money could even, in theory, replace cash. …

Better yet, whereas bundles of banknotes can be moved without trace, electronic payments cannot. … The technology first developed to free money from the grip of central bankers may soon be used to tighten their control.

Globally Famous Biographies

The Pantheon project at the MIT Media Lab provides a database of humanity’s who is who. The geographic distribution of world renown philosophers: Pantheon map. And of scientists: Pantheon map. Country of birth vs. cultural domain: Pantheon matrix.

The top ten people: Aristotle, Plato, Jesus Christ, Socrates, Alexander the Great, Leonardo da Vinci, Confucius, Julius Caesar, Homer, Pythagoras.

Measuring (Greek) Indebtedness

In a Vox column, Daniel Dias und Mark Wright propose various measures of the Greek, Portuguese and Irish public debt burden and emphasize the large variability of these measures.

The following figure, taken from Dias and Wright, shows the scheduled principal and interest payments of Greece, Portugal and Ireland as a percentage of 2014 GDP in the respective country. Not all public debt components are accounted for.

wright fig1 13 nov

Dias and Wright write:

[B]oth Portugal and Ireland face far larger cash flow requirements, relative to the size of their economies, than Greece for the next ten years. [A]fter this ten-year period, the required repayments on Greece’s debt will far exceed those of Portugal and Ireland, measured as a fraction of their economies. [W]hether or not we view Greece as more or less indebted than Portugal and Ireland depends on how we weigh cash flows in the near future (next ten years) versus cash flows in the far future (more than ten years).

… we can discount a country’s entire debt repayment cash flows by the interest rates embodied in their currently traded debts to obtain an estimate of the market value of a country’s debt. This assumes that the likelihood of repayment of Greece’s EFSF debt, for example, is the same as that for privately held bonds. Under these assumptions, as shown in Table 5, Greece appears to have less than half as much debt as either Portugal or Ireland. These numbers are closer to the estimates computed under the IPSAS standard, which records a debt at market value at the time of issue, and allows for the accretion of this debt if the contracted interest rate on the debt is less than the yield to maturity of the debt. This approach has the counterintuitive implication that the more likely a country is to default, the less indebted it will look.

Dias and Wright contrast a conventional face-value debt measure (the sum of the blue bars corresponding to principal repayment obligations in the figure) with more informative measures. With the latter, Greek indebtedness typically is not as high compared with the other countries as with the first measure.

See also this earlier post and this earlier post on the topic.

European Monetary Union: A Status Report

In the NZZ (August 7, 2015), René Höltschi provides an excellent overview over the status of European Monetary Union (EMU).

Issues:

  • EMU combines centralized monetary policy authority with decentralized fiscal powers. This creates the risk that national governments try to free ride.
  • Heterogeneity across Euro Zone member states renders centralized monetary policy difficult. Without national monetary policy instruments, prices and wages need to adjust more in the face of asynchronous business cycles.

Previous solutions:

  • The stability and growth pact was meant to address the first issue. It failed, for political reasons. Markets didn’t impose sufficient discipline either; they anticipated bailouts.
  • Hopes for reduced heterogeneity—as a consequence of EMU—have been shattered.

Reforms so far:

  • During the crisis, member states established rescue funds and agreed on various crisis measures.
  • They pursued a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, they tried to build on the decentralized approach of the Maastricht treaty. On the other, they aimed at closer integration in the form of banking, fiscal and eventually, political union.
  • Major responsibilities in the area of banking supervision and resolution have been transferred to the European Central Bank. Bail-in procedures have been agreed upon.
  • No major changes occurred in the fiscal policy domain. The “Six-pack” and “Two-pack” measures to strengthen fiscal discipline, coordination and supervision have proved ineffective (e.g., no action against France).

Proposals and discussion:

  • The recent “Five-presidents’ report” distinguishes between short-term (until 2017) and longer-term (until 2025) measures (see below). The report proposes to strengthen the existing framework before moving towards closer integration (Euro treasury, macroeconomic stabilization, fiscal and political union). France and Italy have voiced support.
  • Fiscal union entails a common budget and potentially, a common unemployment insurance. Unity of liability and control would require that fiscal competences are centralized as well. In turn, this would require changes of the European treaties.
  • A further strengthening of banking union, e.g. delegation of banking supervision to a newly created European authority (rather than the European Central Bank), also would require treaty changes.
  • But throughout Europe, there is no desire to delegate powers to “Brussels.”
  • Instead, skeptics like the Bundesbank or the German Council of Economic Experts advocate a bankruptcy procedure for Euro-zone governments: to strengthen discipline and encourage monitoring by financial markets any assistance by the European Stability Mechanism should be preceded by private creditor bail-ins (extensions of maturity, haircuts).
  • Some observers also advocate exit from the Euro zone as an ultima ratio measure. But others argue that this very possibility would undermine the stability of the Euro area.

Five-president’s report:

  • Commissioned in October 2014 by the heads of state and government, the report has been published in June 2015 by presidents Jean-Claude Juncker (European commission), Donald Tusk (European council), Jeroen Dijsselbloem (Euro group), Mario Draghi (European Central Bank) and Martin Schulz (European parliament).
  • In the short term, the report proposes: to improve elements of the previous “six-pack” and “two-pack” reforms, including streamlined coordination and supervision of national fiscal policies;
  • a common backstop for national deposit insurance systems;
  • a European fiscal council serving as watchdog; and
  • independent national agencies to monitor competitiveness.
  • For the longer term, the report proposes: completion of monetary union and fiscal union;
  • macroeconomic stabilization, stopping short of permanent transfers or income equalization schemes; and
  • a Euro zone treasury.
  • Accountability as well as the role of national parliaments and the European parliament in coordinating fiscal policy is to be strengthened. The Euro zone is to be better represented vis-a-vis third parties. Intergovernmental arrangements (for example the European Stability Mechanism) that were created during the crisis are to become integral parts of the EU treaties.

Time

In a science brief, The Economist covers the mystery of time.

In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley found to their surprise that the speed of light traveling in different directions relative to the movement of the earth’s surface is constant. In 1905, Albert Einstein provided an explanation—his special theory of relativity—for the constancy of the speed of light. Time is “malleable, passing differently in different places, depending on how those places are moving with respect to one another. Indeed, at the speed of light, it stops altogether.” In 1915, Einstein argued in his general theory of relativity that space and time are connected and that they interact with mass.

As a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics (temperature differences tend to vanish, Ludwig Boltzmann, 1877) “any system will become more disordered as time passes. That applies as much to two gases mixing as it does to a teenager’s bedroom.” In 1927, Arthur Eddington drew the conclusion that time is unidirectional: There is a fundamental asymmetry between a system moving towards the future (increasing disorder) or the past (decreasing disorder).

Time travel is possible—in particular if one has easy access to “wormholes”—or so it appears. But the grandfather paradox lurks: Can one travel back in time and kill one’s ancestor in order to render one’s one birth impossible …?

Why Does Music Give Chills?

David Shariatmadari suggests some answers in The Guardian.

  • What’s happening? An “autonomic nervous system arousal, the evolutionarily ancient preparation for fight or flight.” Plus a positive emotional component, related to brain activity and dopamine release.
  • To whom? Not to everybody. According to some estimates, only to every second non-musician.
  • Why? Emotional experiences can be related to specific musical structures like “enharmonic changes” or “appoggiaturas” (examples given in the article), connected with unexpected, dramatic shifts that force the listener to pay attention. Add to this memories and “feelings of transcendence.” Maybe music helps to form bonds with other human beings or it played a role in the development of language. “Music simply taps into [linguistic ability] in the same way that drugs tap into a system that wasn’t designed for drugs”.
  • Example: “The last few minutes of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, the last page or so of the Dona Nobis Pacem.”

Long-Term Interest Rates, Now and Then

A report by the White House Council of Economic Advisors surveys long-term interest rates. The “key takeaways” include:

Real and nominal interest rates in the United States have been on a steady decline since the mid-1980s. Declining interest rates are a global phenomenon. … [F]orecasters largely missed the secular decline of the last three decades.

The Ramsey growth model implies a link between labor productivity growth, per capita consumption growth and the real (inflation-adjusted) interest rate. Historically, periods of low real long-term interest rates have tended to coincide with low labor productivity growth. Projections of labor productivity growth, while imprecise, suggest 10-year real interest rates in the range of 1.5 to 3.5 per cent.

Asset-pricing models that incorporate risk suggest that the long-run nominal interest rate is the sum of expected future short-term real rates, expected future inflation rates, and a term premium. The 10-year rate in ten years that forward transactions in nominal Treasuries imply is currently 3.1 percent. Forward transactions in the market for TIPS suggest a long-term real rate just above 1.00 percent in ten years. Adding the CPI inflation rate implied by the Federal Reserve’s PCE inflation target would imply a forward nominal interest rate of 3.25 percent. The term premium in nominal Treasuries is currently estimated to be near zero, with a 2005-2014 mean of 1 percent. These components together suggest a 10-year nominal interest rate in the range of 3.1 (forward Treasuries) to 4.6 percent (based on FOMC forecasts of the long-run federal funds rate).

In a world with financially integrated national capital markets, the general level of world interest rates is determined by the equality of the global supply of saving and global investment demand. Capital markets of advanced economies are now tightly integrated while emerging market economies are becoming increasingly integrated into the global financial system. Low-income economies remain partially segmented from the global capital market. As a consequence of increasing international market integration, long-term real and nominal interest rates are increasingly moving in tandem and have declined along with U.S. rates. Nominal interest rates also tend to be correlated across countries though differences in inflation expectations can produce differences in nominal rates. In a world with uncertainty, global long-term real and nominal interest rates will include risk premiums that can reflect country-specific risk factors. Strong economic linkages, however, reinforce substantial correlation in countries’ long-term bond risk premiums.

Long-term interest rates are lower now than they were thirty years ago, reflecting an outward shift in the global supply curve of saving relative to global investment demand. It remains an open question whether the underlying factors producing current low rates are transitory, or imply long-run equilibrium long-term interest rates lower than before the financial crisis. Factors that are likely to dissipate over time—and therefore could lead to higher rates in the future—include current fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies; low-inflation risk as reflected in the term premium; and private-sector deleveraging in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Factors that are more likely to persist—suggesting that low interest rates could be a long-run phenomenon—include lower forecasts of global output and productivity growth, demographic shifts, global demand for safe assets outstripping supply, and the impact of tail risks and fundamental uncertainty.

The Euro/Swiss Franc Exchange Rate

Was it wise for the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to abandon the exchange rate floor vis-a-vis the Euro (EUR) half a year ago (see the blog entry on the decision and on the critique by Willem Buiter)?

Here are some considerations to keep in mind.

  • Is the Swiss France (CHF) overvalued? The following graph plots the nominal and real exchange rates since 1981 (the real rate is computed based on Swiss and Euro area producer price indices, 2010=100; data file).
    chf eur nom real exch rate
    Relative to the long-term average, the CHF currently is overvalued in real terms by 14%. In December 2014, it was overvalued by 4%; and in August 2011, by 11%. But in December 2007, it was undervalued by 21%. According to the real exchange rate metric, importers (households) thus suffered more in 2007 than exporters suffer today. For a related assessment based on consumer (Big Mac) prices, see this blog post.
  • The real exchange rate is just one metric to assess whether a currency is overvalued. There are many others, see for example this IMF paper or this book. Also, foreign exchange market participants are willing to buy and hold CHFs and EURs at the going market rate; they seem to think that the price is right.
  • If the price were right and policy weakened the CHF, then Switzerland would trade off “competitiveness” of the export sector on the one hand, and expected capital losses on the country’s EUR holdings that would have to be purchased to temporarily strengthen the EUR on the other. Back-of-the-envelope calculations by my colleague Harris Dellas suggest that weakening the CHF would not be worth it, financially speaking.
  • Even if, for whatever reason, society favored a weaker CHF it is not clear that the SNB should intervene. The SNB should only act if its mandate of pursuing price stability calls for such action. In the short run, a weaker CHF would indeed help to push the inflation rate in the desired range. In the longer run, however, a further lengthening of the SNB’s balance sheet (resulting from forex market interventions) could undermine the SNB’s flexibility, in particular if political constraints were to bind.
  • This does not rule out, however, that other institutions in Switzerland could or should enter the exchange rate business. In principle, fiscal policy makers could institute a sovereign wealth fund that is financed by issuing CHF bonds and invested in EUR assets. Fiscal policy makers could also try to redistribute from those currently benefiting to those suffering from the CHF/EUR exchange rate. Export subsidies could be an instrument. They would be hard to implement though if one wanted to account for intermediate inputs.
  • That Switzerland has an independent currency is a choice that reflects repeated, in depth deliberations. Advantages of pursuing an independent monetary policy include the option value to pursue price stability even if other currency blocs don’t; and the ensuing credibility benefits for Switzerland as a whole. Disadvantages include temporary, but potentially long-lasting real exchange rate misalignments that strain some groups (e.g., workers in the export sector) while benefiting others (e.g., consumers). These advantages and disadvantages do not come as a surprise; Switzerland has chosen them.

The Brussels Agreement of 13 July 2015

Graeme Wearden in The Guardian summarizes the results of the Euro summit that ended with no Grexit:

An agreement has finally been reached in Brussels after almost 17 hours of talks, Europe’s longest-ever summit. A deal on the new bailout for Greece has still to be thrashed out, however. Here are the key points:

Greek assets transfer

Up to €50bn (£35bn) worth of Greek assets will be transferred to a new fund, which will contribute to the recapitalisation of Greek banks. The fund will be based in Athens, not Luxembourg as the Germans had originally demanded.

The location of the fund was a key sticking point in the marathon overnight talks. Transferring the assets out of Greece would have meant “liquidity asphyxiation”, said the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras.

Bridging finance

Talks will begin immediately on bridging finance to avert the collapse of Greece’s banking system and help cover its debt repayments this summer. Greece must repay more than €7bn to the ECB in July and August, before any bailout cash can be handed over.

Debt restructuring

Greece has been promised discussions on restructuring its debts. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said the Eurogroup was ready to consider extending the maturity on Greek loans. There is now no need for a Plan B, she added.

New legislation

The Greek parliament must approve the deal before the German bundestag votes. It must also start passing legislation straight away to implement the agreed measures.

Creditors have insisted on immediate action on:

  1. Streamlining VAT
  2. Broadening the tax base
  3. Making further reforms to the pension system
  4. Adopt a code of civil procedure
  5. Safeguarding of legal independence for Greece ELSTAT — the statistic office
  6. Full implementation of automatic spending cuts
  7. Meet bank recovery and resolution directive

Radical reforms

Tsipras pledged to implement radical reforms to ensure that the Greek oligarchy finally makes a fair contribution. The agreement thrashed out overnight would allow Greece to “stand on our feet again”.

Implementation of reforms would be tough, the Greek prime minister said, but: “We fought hard abroad, we must now fight at home against vested interests.”

He added: “The measures are recessionary, but we hope that putting Grexit to bed means inward investment can begin to flow, negating them.”

Updates and additional links

More from the Guardian. An assessment by an analyst.

The official Euro summit statement.

Accounting for Sovereign Debt—Greece’s (Low) Debt Quota

An interesting conference organized by CESifo and Japonica Partners brought together accountants, lawyers and economists with interests in public finance and sovereign debt. Discussions about Greece took center stage.

According to estimates based on the accounting standards IPSAS, ESA 2010 or SNA 2008, Greece’s gross government debt quota at the end of 2013 amounted to roughly 70% and its net debt quota didn’t exceed 20%. The debt numbers give the present values of the contractual payments, discounted at the market yields at the time the debt was issued or restructured. The estimate of the gross debt position closely resembles estimates of the market value of Greek government debt by economists.

The claim that Greece urgently needs debt relief received only limited support, and least from people who worked for and with the Greek government. My reading was that any need for near term debt relief is mostly of a political nature.

Some relevant links:

  • Georgetown’s Anna Gelpern.
  • Duke’s Mitu Gulati.
  • IFAC, CIPFA.
  • “The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations” by Jacob Soll.
  • Japonica Partners.
  • IPSAS: IFAC page, Wikipedia, slides with background info and examples, comparison with GFS (see p. 11).
  • Chicago Fed Mark Wright’s “The Stock of External Sovereign Debt: Can We Take the Data at ‘Face Value’?“
  • European System of National and Regional Accounts in the European Union (ESA 2010), Chapter 20 (Government accounts):

    20.221: Debt operations can be particularly important for the general government sector, as they often serve as a means for government to provide economic aid to other units. The recording of these operations is covered in chapter 5. The general principle for any cancellation or assumption of debt of a unit by another unit, by mutual agreement is to recognise that there is a voluntary transfer of wealth between the two units. This means that the counterpart transaction of the liability assumed or of the claim cancelled is a capital transfer. No flow of money is usually observed, this may be characterised as a capital transfer in kind.

    20.236: Debt restructuring is an agreement to alter the terms and conditions for servicing an existing debt, usually on more favourable terms for the debtor. The debt instrument that is being restructured is considered to be extinguished and replaced by a new debt instrument with the new terms and conditions. If there is a difference in value between the extinguished debt instrument and the new debt instrument, it is a type of debt cancellation and a capital transfer is necessary to account for the difference.

  • UN, EC, OECD, IMF and World Bank System of National Accounts (2008 SNA):

    22.109–110: Debt rescheduling (or refinancing) is an agreement to alter the terms and conditions for servicing an existing debt, usually on more favourable terms for the debtor. Debt rescheduling involves rearrangements on the same type of instrument, with the same principal value and the same creditor as with the old debt. Refinancing entails a different debt instrument, generally at a different value and may be with a creditor different than that from the old debt. Under both arrangements, the debt instrument that is being rescheduled is considered to be extinguished and replaced by a new debt instrument with the new terms and conditions. If there is a difference in value between the extinguished debt instrument and the new debt instrument, part is a type of debt forgiveness by government and a capital transfer is necessary to account for the difference.

Major IMF-Internal Disagreement Preceded the First Greek Bailout

At the 9 May 2010 meeting at which the IMF board approved the first bailout program for Greece, not all members approved. In fact, many members, including the Executive Director representing Switzerland, challenged the proposal, suggested less optimistic scenarios and asked for modifications. The Wall Street Journal published excerpts of the minutes in October 2013, see below.

Sebastian Bräuer in the NZZ am Sonntag also reports on the issue. He points out that the Swiss Executive Director asked what would happen if the Greek government were not to implement the agreed reforms; and if IMF and European commission were to disagree. Bräuer also reports that some European banks would have been prepared to bear losses resulting from their Greek exposure, see below.

The WSJ writes:

Swiss executive director Rene Weber in a prepared statement to the board for the May 9, 2010 meeting: We have “considerable doubts about the feasibility of the program…We have doubts on the growth assumptions, which seem to be overly benign. Even a small negative deviation from the baseline growth projections would make the debt level unsustainable over the longer term…Why has debt restructuring and the involvement of the private sector in the rescue package not been considered so far?”

“The exceptionally high risks of the program were recognized by staff itself, in particular in its assessment of debt sustainability.”

“Several chairs (Argentina, Brazil, India, Russia, and Switzerland) lamented that the program has a missing element: it should have included debt restructuring and Private Sector Involvement (PSI) to avoid, according to the Brazilian ED, ‘a bailout of Greece’s private sector bondholders, mainly European financial institutions.’ The Argentine ED was very critical at the program, as it seems to replicate the mistakes (i.e., unsustainable fiscal tightening) made in the run up to the Argentina’s crisis of 2001. Much to the ‘surprise’ of the other European EDs, the Swiss ED forcefully echoed the above concerns about the lack of debt restructuring in the program, and pointed to the need for resuming the discussions on a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism.”

“The Swiss ED (supported by Australia, Brazil, Iran) noted that staff had ‘silently’ changed in the paper (i.e., without a prior approval by the board) the criterion No.2 of the exceptional access policy, by extending it to cases where there is a ‘high risk of international systemic spillover effects.’”

The NZZ writes:

[Swiss ED Weber asked:] “Wie reagiert der Fonds, wenn die Behörden die Sparmassnahmen und Strukturreformen nicht umsetzen?”

[IMF-deputy John Lipsky said:] “Es gibt keinen Plan B. Es gibt einen Plan A und die Absicht, dass Plan A erfolgreich ist.”

“Ich kann die Direktoren informieren, dass deutsche Banken Unterstützung für Griechenland erwägen”, sagte der deutsche IMF-Direktor Klaus Stein. Sein französischer Kollege Ambroise Fayolle ergänzte, auch die Banken seines Landes würden ihren Job tun.

Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job”

Charles Ferguson’s movie Inside Job portrays as

  • evil: Feldstein, Hubbard, Paulson, Rubin, Summers, Wall Street, … ;
  • clueless or not convincing: Bernanke, Campbell, Geithner, Greenspan, Mishkin, Portes, … ;
  • aware (at least ex post): Buiter, Johnson, Lagarde, Lo, Partney, Rogoff, Roubini, Strauss-Kahn, Tett, Wolf, … .

Economics and economists are considered part of the problem rather than the solution. While the movie

  • depicts Ragu Rajan as the hero,

it is silent about the fact that Rajan is one of the most prominent economists.

Simplify Your Life

Self-help manuals are for the rest of us what the airport bookstore bestseller on the latest management fad is for businessmen. They promise novel perspectives on fundamental questions but typically leave the reader disappointed. Past the enticing introductory chapter with interesting examples, the novel perspectives all too often reduce to new semantics without substantive value added. But then, there might be exceptions.

To “simplify one’s life” is a prominent search term on the web and the topic of many websites, blog posts and books. If popular search engines identify the most relevant contributions then a handful of top ranked sites should contain most of the pertinent information. So here is a selection of top ranked sites and their suggestions for simplifying one’s life.

becomingminimalist lists 10 most important things to simplify, namely

  • possessions; time commitments; goals; negative thoughts; debt; words; artificial ingredients; screen time; connections to the world; and multi-tasking

while Slow Your Home offers 21 mostly rather down to earth suggestions:

  • Perform a clutter bust; practice gratitude; rearrange your living room; add some life with indoor plants; keep your dining table surface clear; use the “good” tableware and glasses; create white space; prepare yourself for the morning; find storage for your kitchen appliances; create secondary storage for pantry items; meal plan!; make your bed each and every day; start an exit drawer; start a donate box; check your mindset; get your finances in order; be accountable by recording your simplifying efforts; declutter your wardrobe; daily meditation; start with acceptance; and unplug.

Zen habits suggests 72 steps but helpfully boils the list down to 2 points:

  • Identify what’s most important to you; and eliminate everything else.

The blog also recommends Elaine St. James and her book Simplify Your Life.

Other sites proceed more systematically and for that very reason, strike me as more convincing. wikiHow devotes a chapter to simplifying one’s life and lists four “methods” and corresponding actions:

  1. Eliminating clutter: Decide what stuff is unnecessary; do quick cleans; do big cleans every season; shrink your wardrobe; stop buying new things you don’t need; downsize (have a small but comfortable home and learn to live with less); create white space; and make your bed every day.
  2. Getting organized: Plan what you can, or embrace your inner chaos; split household chores evenly; streamline your finances; find a place for each thing; prepare quick meals; and simplify your parenting.
  3. Simplifying Your Relationships: Identify bad relationships and end them; make the effort to spend time with people you like; learn to tell people “no;” spend more time alone; and spend less time on social networking.
  4. Slowing Down: Put your phone away; stop reading self-improvement manuals, books, and blogs; work from a manageable to-do list; declutter your digital packrattery; do one thing at a time; leave your work at work; and meditate for 15 minutes each day.

mindbodygreen offers the most concise advice suggesting five simplifying steps:

  • Evaluate your relationships and those that are draining you; disconnect—fully—for one hour a day (at least); sweep every corner of your home; get really, really quiet; and shred your “To Do” list, and make an “I Want” list.

The international bestseller How to Simplify Your Life: Seven Practical Steps to Letting Go of Your Burdens and Living a Happier Life thoroughly covers the topic—from clearing off one’s desk to cleaning up one’s life. It proceeds in seven steps:

  1. Simplifying stuff: Desk; office; apartment; remembering things.
  2. Personal finance: Relax, be optimistic; fewer things, more money; no debt; courage; wealth is in the eye of the beholder.
  3. Time: Focus; less than perfect; say “no”; slow down; hide.
  4. Health: Happiness; flow; fitness; food; sleep.
  5. People: Networking; parents; death; no envy; don’t judge.
  6. Relationship: Talk; no drama; work-life; sex; plan for old age.
  7. Self: Your objective; strengths; no bad conscience; enneagram.
  8. The book’s new edition also features spirituality: Spiritual place; pray; empower routine work; engage your soul.

Now go and simplify or stay messy at your own peril.

More sites: Think simple now. The Art of Simple. Simple Chic. (See also minimalism, DAISY.)

Why Do Sovereigns Repay External Debt?

In a Vox blog post (that complements another post on Greece), Jeremy Bulow and Ken Rogoff review the academic discussion on a long-standing question—why sovereigns repay their external debt.

Bulow and Rogoff distinguish between

[t]he ‘reputation approach’ pioneered by Eaton and Gersovitz (1981) which builds on Hellwig (1977);
and the ‘direct punishments’ bargaining-theoretic approach of Bulow and Rogoff (1988b, 1989a) which in turn builds on Cohen and Sachs (1986).

They argue that the latter approach—attributing enforceable rights in foreign country courts to creditors—better explains observed outcomes.

[The] direct punishment/bargaining approach lends itself very naturally to incorporating moral hazard; …
reputation models suggest [counter factually] that the governing law of the debt is irrelevant;
[i]n standard reputation for repayment models, write-downs are decided unilaterally—creditors’ particular concerns do not really matter; …
[t]he interests and welfare of unrelated third parties does not matter in standard reputation models; …
[r]eputational debtors borrow in bad times and re-pay in good times, for purposes of income smoothing; [d]efaults, if they are to take place, occur in good times … In reality, many countries borrow as much as they can whenever they can. … Debt crises occur when countries do badly and creditors decide they want to reduce their loan exposure. To some extent, this issue can be addressed by assuming that income shocks are permanent and not transitory, but it remains difficult to rationalise country borrowing only on the threat of lost consumption smoothing. …
[c]reditor identity doesn’t matter; …
[u]nder … general assumptions, the existence of [the option to put savings abroad] leads to the unravelling of any purely reputational equilibrium.

Bulow and Rogoff add that

[a]nother important issue … is that in practice, sovereign debt renegotiations focus very much on the flow of repayments, and much less on how the stock of debt evolves. This is precisely because all sides realise that any future promises can be renegotiated.

Greece Benefited from Troika Support

In a Vox column, Jeremy Bulow and Ken Rogoff argue that perceptions of Greek net debt repayments over the last years are wrong.

[C]ontrary to widespread popular opinion, the net flow of funds (new loans and subsidies minus repayments) went from the Troika to Greece from 2010 to mid-2014, with a modest flow in the other direction after Greece stalled on its structural reforms.

They also make some other points:

  • Cash withdrawals, non-performing loans and capital losses in the wake of the 2012 Greek government debt default hurt the Greek banking system.
  • Mistrust of the Greek government by European partners and Greek citizens slowed down the recovery.
  • Greece has incentives to avoid a default on its official loans since default might trigger lower EU subsidies; the loss of other benefits of EU membership; less ELA funding and other forms of financing at below market rates. (Harris Dellas and I have argued the same in our paper Credibility for Sale.)
  • As Greece approached the point of being a net payer its bargaining stance hardened.

America’s World-Wide Justice System

The Economist critically reports about the US legal system’s international reach. The article identifies several reasons for the activity of American prosecutors:

  • The US feels entitled to run down anybody who directly or indirectly uses services of the US banking system “or plans an illegal scheme on its soil.”
  • Persons may also be charged on the basis of violations of the “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act” or the “Travel Act.” The latter stipulates that it is illegal to use “any facility in interstate commerce to carry out an illegal activity.”
  • Plea-bargaining is common, in contrast to Europe. This helps to build cases bottom up.
  • While European justice systems emphasize “comity”—not interfering with other countries’ legal affairs unless war crimes are concerned—this is not the case in the US.

In another article, The Economist reports about the US Treasury’s

powers to act against those who facilitate financial crime, anywhere in the world, by labelling them a “primary money-laundering concern”

based on section 311 of America’s “Patriot Act” of 2001. The report suggests that the section is used as a political instrument and that double standards apply. Moreover,

[i]t is an administrative procedure, not a judicial one. Only the Treasury knows how much evidence it has, and how reliable it is.