China: the debate over economic policy, from export led to consumer led growth

Roach v. Pettis (on China)

Blog The Humble Student of the Markets, July 4th, 2013

Stephen Roach recently penned an article entitled "Get Ready for the Next China" outlining the transformation that China is undergoing from an economy led by investment led growth to consumer growth:

The message from this new approach to Chinese macroeconomic stabilization policy is clear: Gone are the days of open-ended hyper growth. Significantly, this message has been reinforced by an important political overlay. Xi’s rather cryptic emphasis on a “mass line” education campaign aimed at addressing problems arising from the “four winds” of formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance underscores a new sense of political discipline directed at the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP is being urged to realign itself with the core interests of citizens and their need for fair and stable economic underpinnings.

This new mindset works only if China changes its growth model. A services-led growth dynamic, one of the pillars for a consumer-led Chinese economy, is consistent with a marked downshift in trend GDP growth. That’s because services generate about 30 percent more jobs per unit of Chinese output than do manufacturing and construction – allowing China to hit its all-important labor absorption and social stability goals with economic growth in the 7 to 8 percent range rather than 10 percent as before. Similarly, a more disciplined and market-based allocation of credit tempers the excesses of uneconomic investments, necessary if China is to begin absorbing its surplus saving to spur consumer demand.

He went on to say that this transformation presents a great opportunity for American business:

China’s consumer-led growth presents the United States with an important opportunity. With the American consumer on ice for more than five years – underscored by average annualized growth of just 0.9 percent in inflation-adjusted consumption expenditures since the first quarter of 2008 – the US is in desperate need of a new source of economic growth. China is America’s third largest and most rapidly growing export market. Washington negotiators should push hard on market access, ensuring that US companies and their workers have the opportunity to capitalize on China’s transformation.

Second, and related to the first point, is a potential bonanza in Chinese services. At 43 percent of its GDP, China has the smallest services sector of any major economy in the world. Under reasonable assumptions, the scale of Chinese services could increase by around $12 trillion by 2025. Increasingly tradable in a connected world, the coming explosion in Chinese services could translate into a windfall, up to $6 trillion, for foreign services companies from retail trade and transportation to hotels and finance. For the United States, with the world’s largest and most dynamic services sector, this could be an extraordinary opportunity. US negotiators should push especially hard for access to Chinese services markets.

How do you get from A to B?

In recent years, Stephen Roach has changed from the global bear to the cheerleader for China. In his article, he glosses over the little detail of how China can effect this transformation without a significant slowdown. 

Michael Pettis has a different take. He wrote a Foreign Policy article about the credit crunch related convulsions within the context of the transformation from an investment-led to a consumer-led economy and also urged caution by the West in their approach to China:

Last week is a reminder that Beijing is playing a difficult game. The rest of the world should try to understand the stakes, and accommodate China's transition to a more sustainable growth model. As policymakers in China continue to try to restructure the economy away from reliance on massive, debt-fueling investment projects that create little value for the economy, the United States, Europe, and Japan must implement policies that reduce trade pressures. Any additional adverse trade conditions will further jeopardize the stability of China's economy, especially as lower trade surpluses and decreased foreign investment slow money creation by China's central bank. A trade war would clearly be devastating for Beijing's attempt to rebalance its economy and have potentially critical implications for global markets.

Here is his key conclusion [emphasis added]:

Regardless of what happens next, the consensus expectations that China's economy will grow at roughly 7 percent over the next few years can be safely ignored. Growth driven by consumption, instead of trade and investment, is alone sufficient to grow China's GDP by 3 to 4 percent annually. But it is not clear that consumption can be sustained if investment growth levels are sharply reduced. If Beijing can successfully manage the employment consequences of decreased investment growth, perhaps it can keep consumption growing at current levels. But that's a tricky proposition.

In other words, Pettis estimates that the consumer-led Chinese economy can only grow at 3-4%. If the Chinese economy changes the tone of its growth from investment and infrastructure to consumer led growth, the consensus of growth in the 7% range is unrealistic.

In addition, what happens to all the leverage in the system? Who eats the non-performing loan (NPL) losses from all of the infrastructure spending by the SOEs and local governments? In past eras, the Chinese government had taken the brunt of the NPL losses through classic financial repression - through artificially low interest rates that repressed the household sector and blew an property asset bubble.

Now that the Plan is to grow the consumer sector, the old trick of household sector financial repression won't work. In a separate interview with Ron Rimkus of the CFA Institute, Pettis stated:

You can only resolve a bad debt problem by assigning the cost to some sector of the economy. In the past it was the household sector that implicitly paid to clean up the debt, but if we expect rapid growth in household consumption to lead the economy going forward, and this is what rebalancing means in the Chinese context, we cannot also expect the household sector to clean up the bad debt in the same way it has done so over the past decade.

So who pays? In the worst case, it could lead to a disorderly unwinding of the excess leverage in China which, given how the global financial system is inter-connected, spark a global financial crisis.

In addition, Kyle Bass sounded a warning on China (via Zero Hedge) [emphasis added]:

The speed and depth of the Chinese policy response will help determine the severity and duration of this crisis. If the Chinese address the issue quickly and move decisively to rein in credit expansion and accept a period of much lower growth, they may be able to use the government and People’s Bank of China’s balance sheet to cushion the adjustment in the economy. If, however, they continue on the current path and allow this deterioration to reach its natural and logical limit, we will likely see a full scale recession as well as a collapse in asset and real estate prices sometime next year.

Even Stephen Roach sounded an implicit warning of potentially higher interest rates as China transforms itself:

But there is another twist. As China shifts to consumer-led growth, it will start to draw down its surplus saving and current-account surplus. That could lead to a reduction in its vast $3.4 trillion foreign exchange reserves, thereby dampening China’s demand for dollar-based assets. Who will fund a seemingly chronic US saving shortfall – and on what terms – if America’s largest foreign creditor ceases doing so?

China's transformation from investment led growth to consumer led growth is a story of short-term pain for long-term gain. The only questions are:

1. When? And
2. How much pain?

Cam Hui is a portfolio manager at Qwest Investment Fund Management Ltd. ("Qwest"). This article is prepared by Mr. Hui as an outside business activity. As such, Qwest does not review or approve materials presented herein. The opinions and any recommendations expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or recommendations of Qwest. 

None of the information or opinions expressed in this blog constitutes a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security or other instrument. Nothing in this article constitutes investment advice and any recommendations that may be contained herein have not been based upon a consideration of the investment objectives, financial situation or particular needs of any specific recipient. Any purchase or sale activity in any securities or other instrument should be based upon your own analysis and conclusions. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Either Qwest or Mr. Hui may hold or control long or short positions in the securities or instruments mentioned.

About the Blog: 

HUMBLE STUDENT OF THE MARKETS

Mr. Hui has been involved in the equity markets since 1980, both on the buy side and the sell side. He serves as the portfolio manager principally responsible for making investment decisions for the Qwest Global Tactical Balanced Class of QE Funds Corp. He is also a director of Qwest Investment Fund Management Ltd and a CFA charterholder. Mr. Hui has presented numerous papers to quantitative discussion groups. Sample topics include: How Global are Resource Sectors; Hidden Biases in Quantitative Models; and Hedge Fund Replication.

Economic Growth: R. Barro - Xavier Sala-i-Martin

A very important book, for students of all social sciences. Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Economic Growth
Robert J. Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin
2nd Edition; Cambridge, Mass.; The MIT Press, 2003

This graduate level text on economic growth surveys neoclassical and more recent growth theories, stressing their empirical implications and the relation of theory to data and evidence. The authors have undertaken a major revision for the long-awaited second edition of this widely used text, the first modern textbook devoted to growth theory. The book has been expanded in many areas and incorporates the latest research.

After an introductory discussion of economic growth, the book examines neoclassical growth theories, from Solow-Swan in the 1950s and Cass-Koopmans in the 1960s to more recent refinements; this is followed by a discussion of extensions to the model, with expanded treatment in this edition of heterogenity of households. The book then turns to endogenous growth theory, discussing, among other topics, models of endogenous technological progress (with an expanded discussion in this edition of the role of outside competition in the growth process), technological diffusion, and an endogenous determination of labor supply and population. The authors then explain the essentials of growth accounting and apply this framework to endogenous growth models. The final chapters cover empirical analysis of regions and empirical evidence on economic growth for a broad panel of countries from 1960 to 2000. The updated treatment of cross-country growth regressions for this edition uses the new Summers-Heston data set on world income distribution compiled through 2000.

About the Authors
Robert J. Barro is Robert C. Waggoner Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

About Robert Barro:
"He has changed the way economists think about everything from the long-run effects of government deficits to the forces that favor economic growth."
--Sylvia Nasar, New York Times

Xavier Sala-i-Martin is Professor of Economics at Columbia University, and visiting professor at the University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

Table of Contents

Economic Growth, 2nd Edition
Robert J. Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin

Preface
Download Chapter as PDF Sample Chapter - Download PDF (24 KB) xvii
Introduction
Download Chapter as PDF Sample Chapter - Download PDF (167 KB) 1
1. Growth Models with Exogenous Saving Rates (the Solow-Swan Model)
Download Chapter as PDF Sample Chapter - Download PDF (341 KB) 23
2. Growth Models with Consumer Optimization (the Ramsey Model) 85
3. Extensions of the Ramsey Growth Model 143
4. One-Sector Models of Endogenous Growth 205
5, Two-Sector Models of Endogenous Growth (with Special Attention to the Role of Human Capital) 239
6. Technological Change: Models with an Expanding Variety of Products 285
7. Technological Change: Schumpterian Models of Quality Ladders 317
8. The Diffusion of Technology 349
9. Labor Supply and Population 383
10. Growth Accounting 433
11. Empirical Analysis of Regional Data Sets 461
12. Empirical Analysis of a Cross-Section of Countries 511
Appendix on Mathematical Methods 567
References
Download Chapter as PDF Sample Chapter - Download PDF (80 KB) 627
Index
Download Chapter as PDF Sample Chapter - Download PDF (69 KB) 641

Endorsements
"Barro and Sala-i-Martin have done a superb job of synthesizing much of the existing theoretical and empirical research on the mechanisms and determinants of economic growth and convergence. Though it incorporates much new material, this updated version is fully accessible to a third year undergraduate student, while remaining of invaluable use to any research scholar seriously interested in growth and development economics."
--Phillipe Aghion, Department of Economics, Harvard University

"This is an invaluable book for a first graduate course in economic growth. The exposition is clear and easy to follow, but also rigorous. It is an excellent stepping stone for research in the field."
--K. Daron Acemoglu, Professor of Economics, MIT

"Barro and Sala-i-Martin provide an outstanding and comprehensive treatment of growth theory and empirics--an instant classic! I learn something new every time I pull my copy from the shelf."
--Charles I. Jones, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley

China's booming cities: lessons for Europe? - The New York Times

OPINION

What China Can Teach Europe

China Photos/Getty Images

Farmers cover vegetable plants with plastic film in the Chongqing municipality in China in April 2008.

By DANIEL A. BELL

The New York Times, January 7, 2012

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Shanghai

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• Times Topic: China

The New York Times

FROM the outside, China often appears to be a highly centralized monolith. Unlike Europe’s cities, which have been able to preserve a certain identity and cultural distinctiveness despite the homogenizing forces of globalization, most Chinese cities suffer from a drab uniformity.

But China is more like Europe than it seems. Indeed, when it comes to economics, China is more a thin political union composed of semiautonomous cities — some with as many inhabitants as a European country — than an all-powerful centralized government that uniformly imposes its will on the whole country.

And competition among these huge cities is an important reason for China’s economic dynamism. The similar look of China’s megacities masks a rivalry as fierce as that among European countries.

China’s urban economic boom began in the late 1970s as an experiment with market reforms in China’s coastal cities. Shenzhen, the first “special economic zone,” has grown from a small fishing village in 1979 into a booming metropolis of 10 million today. Many other cities, from Guangzhou to Tianjin, soon followed the path of market reforms.

Today, cities vie ruthlessly for competitive advantage using tax breaks and other incentives that draw foreign and domestic investors. Smaller cities specialize in particular products, while larger ones flaunt their educational capacity and cultural appeal. It has led to the most rapid urban “economic miracle” in history.

But the “miracle” has had an undesirable side effect: It led to a huge gap between rich and poor, primarily between urban and rural areas. The vast rural population — 54 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people — is equivalent to the whole population of Europe. And most are stuck in destitute conditions. The main reason is the hukou (household registration) system that limits migration into cities, as well as other policies that have long favored urban over rural development.

More competition among cities is essential to eliminate the income gap. Over the past decade the central government has given leeway to different cities to experiment with alternative methods of addressing the urban-rural wealth gap.

The most widely discussed experiment is the “Chongqing model,” headed by Bo Xilai, a party secretary and rising political star. Chongqing, an enormous municipality with a population of 33 million and a land area the size of Austria, is often called China’s biggest city. But in fact 23 million of its inhabitants are registered as farmers. More than 8 million farmers have already migrated to the municipality’s more urban areas to work, with a million per year expected to migrate there over the next decade. Chongqing has responded by embarking on a huge subsidized housing project, designed to eventually house 30 to 40 percent of the city’s population.

Chongqing has also improved the lot of farmers by loosening the hukou system. Today, farmers can choose to register as “urban” and receive equal rights to education, health care and pensions after three years, on the condition that they give up the rural registration and the right to use a small plot of land.

While Chongqing’s model is the most influential, there is an alternative. Chengdu, Sichuan’s largest municipality, with a population of 14 million — half of them rural residents — is less heavy-handed. It is the only city in China to enjoy high economic growth while also reducing the income gap between urban and rural residents over the past decade.

Chengdu has focused on improving the surrounding countryside, rather than encouraging large-scale migration to the city. The government has shifted 30 percent of its resources to its rural areas and encouraged development zones that allow rural residents to earn higher salaries and to reap the educational, cultural and medical benefits of urban life.

I recently visited a development zone composed of small firms that export fiery Sichuan chili sauces. Most farmers rented their land and worked in the development zone, but those who wanted to stay on their plots were allowed to. So far, one-third of the area’s farmland has been converted into larger-scale agricultural operations that have increased efficiency.

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• Times Topic: China

More than 90 percent of the municipality’s rural residents are now covered by a medical plan, and the government has introduced a more comprehensive pension scheme. Rural schools have been upgraded to the point that their facilities now surpass those in some of Chengdu’s urban schools, and teachers from rural areas are sent to the city for training.

Empowering rural residents by providing more job opportunities and better welfare raises their purchasing power, helping China boost domestic consumption. And in 2012, Chengdu is likely to become the first big Chinese municipality to wipe out the legal distinction between its urban and rural residents, allowing rural people to move to the city if they choose.

Chengdu’s success has been driven by a comprehensive, long-term effort involving consultation and participation from the bottom up, as well as a clear property rights scheme. By contrast, Chongqing has relied on state power and the dislocation of millions to achieve similar results. If Chengdu’s “gentle” model proves to be more effective at reducing the income gap, it can set a model for the rest of the country, just as Shenzhen set a model for market reforms.

There are fundamental differences, of course: Chengdu’s land is more fertile and its weather more temperate, compared to Chongqing’s harsh terrain and sweltering summers. Life is slower in Chengdu; even the chili is milder. What succeeds in one place may fail elsewhere.

Ultimately, the central government will decide what works and what doesn’t. And that’s not a bad thing; it encourages local variation and internal competition.

European leaders ought to take note. Central authorities should have the power not just to punish “losers” as Europe has done in the case of Greece, but to reward “winners” that set a good example for the rest of the union.

Daniel A. Bell is a professor at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University and Beijing’s Tsinghua University, and co-author of “The Spirit of Cities.”

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on January 8, 2012, on page SR5 of the New York edition with the headline: What China Can Teach Europe.

China and its growth - Stratfor

Dispatch: China's GDP and Questions of Strength
Rodger Baker
Video Stratfor, August 16, 2010

China’s gross domestic product (GDP) is close to surpassing Japan’s to become the second largest in the world. Analyst Rodger Baker explains the multiple fundamental weaknesses in China’s economic system and why GDP is not the only indicator of a state’s economic strength.

Dispatch: China's GDP and Questions of Strength

Rumores sobre a morte do euro - Vaclav Klaus

Bem, eu não seria tão condenatório do euro, mas acredito que o presidente da República Tcheca tem toda a razão em seus argumentos econômicos.
Um mercado comum completo, acredito, ganha muito em abolir o câmbio, pois os fatores de produção possam a circular mais livremente. Mas, uma moeda comum exige políticas comuns em vários outros campos e uma total liberdade para a circulação de fatores, o que não é o caso, ainda, da UE e muito menos da zona do euro.
Creio que ele tem razão, em apontar a "sem-razão" (no sentido cervantino da palavra) para essa aventura do euro. Ou estamos falando de uma economia unificada, ou a moeda tem uma vida atribulada.
A Europa não constitui, a despeito do que disseram alguns economistas, uma zona monetária ótima, longe disso.


When Will the Eurozone Collapse?
by Vaclav Klaus
Vaclav Klaus is president of the Czech Republic.
Cato Institute, Economic Development Bulletin
No. 14, May 26, 2010

As a long-standing critic of the concept of a single European currency, I have not rejoiced at the current problems in the eurozone that threaten the very survival of the euro. Before discussing the events surrounding the Greek debt crisis further, I must provide at least a working definition of what the word "collapse" means. In the context of the euro, there are at least two interpretations that come to mind. The first one suggests that the eurozone project or the project establishing a common European currency has collapsed already by failing to bring about positive effects that had been expected of it.

The creation of the eurozone was presented as an unambiguous economic benefit to all the countries willing to give up their own currencies that had been in existence for decades or centuries. Extensive, yet tendentious and, therefore, quasiscientific studies were published prior to the launch of the single currency. Those studies promised that the euro would help accelerate economic growth and reduce inflation and stressed, in particular, the expectation that the member states of the eurozone would be protected against all kinds of unfavorable economic disruptions or exogenous shocks.

The Euro Has Not Led to Higher Growth in the Eurozone
It is absolutely clear that nothing of that sort has happened. After the establishment of the eurozone, the economic growth of its member states slowed down compared to the previous decades, thus increasing the gap between the speed of economic growth in the eurozone countries and that in major economies such as the United States and China, smaller economies in Southeast Asia and parts of the developing world, as well as Central and Eastern European countries that are not members of the eurozone. Since the 1960s, economic growth in the eurozone countries has been slowing down and the existence of the euro has not reversed that trend. According to European Central Bank data, average annual economic growth in the eurozone countries was 3.4 percent in the 1970s, 2.4 percent in the 1980s, 2.2 percent in the 1990s and only 1.1 percent from 2001 to 2009 (the decade of the euro) (see Figure 1).1 A similar slowdown has not occurred anywhere else in the world.

The Eurozone Economies Have Not Converged
Not even the expected convergence of the inflation rates of the eurozone countries has taken place. Two distinct groups of countries have formed within the eurozone ╉ one with a low inflation rate and one (Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and some other countries) with a higher inflation rate. We have also seen an increase in long-term trade imbalances. On the one hand, there are countries with a balance of trade where exports exceed imports and, on the other hand, those countries that import more than they export. It is no coincidence that the latter countries also have higher inflation rates. The establishment of the eurozone has not led to any homogenization of the member states' economies.

The global financial and economic crisis only escalated and exposed all economic problems in the eurozone ╉ it did not cause them. That did not come as a surprise to me. The eurozone, which comprises 16 European countries, is not an "optimum currency area" as the elementary economic theorems tell us it should be. The former member of the Executive Board and chief economist of the European Central Bank Otmar Issing has repeatedly pointed out (most recently in a speech in Prague in December 2009) that the establishment of the eurozone was primarily a political decision.2 That decision did not take into account the suitability of this whole group of countries for the single currency project. However, if the existing monetary area is not the optimum currency area, it is inevitable that the costs of establishing and maintaining it exceed the benefits.

My choice of the words "establishing" and "maintaining" is not accidental. Most economic commentators (not to speak of the non-economic commentators) were satisfied by the ease and apparent inexpensiveness of the first step (i.e., the establishment of the common monetary area). This has helped to form the mistaken impression that everything was fine with the European single currency project. That was a mistake that at least some of us have been pointing out since the very birth of the euro. Unfortunately, nobody has listened to us.

I have never questioned the fact that the exchange rates of the countries joining the eurozone more or less reflected the economic reality in Europe at the time when the euro was born. However, over the last decade, the economic performance of individual eurozone members diverged and the negative effects of the "straight-jacket" of a single currency over the individual member states have become visible. When "good weather" (in the economic sense) prevailed, no visible problems arose. Once the crisis or "bad weather" arrived, however, the lack of homogeneity among the eurozone members manifested itself very clearly. In that sense, I dare say that ╉ as a project that promised to be of considerable economic benefit to its members ╉ the eurozone has failed.

The Hidden Costs of the Euro
Of greater interest to non-experts and politicians (rather than economists) is the question of the collapse of the eurozone as an institution. To that question, my answer is no, it will not collapse. So much political capital had been invested in the existence of the euro and its role as a "cement" that binds the EU on its way to supra-nationality that in the foreseeable future the eurozone will surely not be abandoned. It will continue, but at an extremely high price that will be paid by the citizens of the eurozone countries (and, indirectly by those Europeans who have kept their own currencies).

The price of maintaining the euro will be low economic growth in the eurozone. Sluggish eurozone growth will result in economic losses in other European countries, like the Czech Republic, and in the rest of the world. The high price of the euro will be most visible in the volume of financial transfers that will have to be sent to eurozone countries suffering from the biggest economic and financial problems. The idea that such transfers would not be easy without the existence of a political union was known to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl back in 1991 when he said that "recent history, and not just that of Germany, teaches us that the idea of sustaining an economic and monetary union over time without political union is a fallacy."3 He seems to have forgotten it, unfortunately, as time went by.

The amount of money that Greece will receive in the foreseeable future can be divided by the number of the eurozone inhabitants and each person can easily calculate his or her own contribution. However, the "opportunity" cost arising from the loss of a potentially higher growth rate, which is much more difficult for a non-economist to contemplate, will be far more painful. Yet, I do not doubt that for political reasons this high price of the euro will be paid and that the eurozone inhabitants will never find out just how much the euro truly cost them.

To summarize, the European monetary union is not at risk of being abolished. The price of maintaining it will, however, continue to grow.

The Czech Republic has not made a mistake by avoiding membership in the eurozone so far. And we are not the only country taking that view. On April 13, 2010, the Financial Times published an article by the late Governor of the Polish Central Bank Slawomir Skrzypek ╉ a man whom I had the honor of knowing very well. Skrzypek wrote that article shortly before his tragic death in the airplane crash that carried a number of Polish dignitaries near Smolensk, Russia. In that article, Skrzypek wrote, "As a non-member of the euro, Poland has been able to profit from flexibility of the zloty exchange rate in a way that has helped growth and lowered the current account deficit without importing inflation." He added that "the decade-long story of peripheral euro members drastically losing competitiveness has been a salutary lesson."4 There is no need to add anything more.

Notes
The original Czech version of this article was published in Ekonom, a Czech weekly magazine, on April 22, 2010.
1. The European Central Bank, "Statistics Pocket Book," March 2010, http://www.ecb.int/pub/pdf/stapobo/spb201003en.pdf.
2. Otmar Issing, The Birth of the Euro (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
3. Quoted in Otmar Issing, "The Euro: Does a Currency Need a State?" International Finance 11, no. 3 (2008): 303.
4. Slawomir Skrzypek, "Poland Should Not Rush to Sign Up to The Euro," Financial Times, April 13, 2010.

Download the PDF of Economic Development Bulletin no. 14 (458 KB)

Contact:
Ian Vasquez, director, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, (202) 789-5241, ivasquez@cato.org - Tanja Stumberger, research associate and manager of global external relations, (202) 789-5205, tstumberger@cato.org

Cato Institute • 1000 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. • Washington D.C. 20001 • (202) 842-0200 - Fax: (202) 842-3490 • www.cato.org/economicliberty/

1882) O mapa monetario da America Latina...

Talvez se pudesse repensar os atuais mapas geográficos, ou até os mapas econômicos (PIB per capita, etc) e fazer uma nova geografia econômica da estabilidade monetária e da apreciação cambial.
Nesse sentido, teríamos países com moedas fortes, como o próprio Brasil, o Chile, a Colômbia, e outros, onde a moeda simplesmente degringola...

Las monedas fuertes de Latinoamérica
Andrés Oppenheimer
El Nuevo Herald (Miami), Domingo, 03.14.10

Justo cuando todos estábamos celebrando que Latinoamérica ha salido relativamente indemne de la crisis económica mundial, una nueva amenaza podría poner en peligro el crecimiento de la región: las monedas cada vez más fuertes.

A simple vista, la constante valorización de muchas monedas latinoamericanas es una buena noticia para muchos en la región. Una vez más, muchos latinoamericanos podrán importar con mayor facilidad productos de lujo, irse de vacaciones al extranjero, y tal vez hasta regresar a los buenos tiempos cuando los comerciantes de Miami o Madrid los conocían como ``los dame dos'', porque pedían dos pares de cada cosa que compraban.

Pero, por otro lado, la constante apreciación de las monedas podría perjudicar las exportaciones de la región.

Marcelo Giugale, director de la Oficina de Política Económica y Pobreza para América Latina del Banco Mundial, me hizo notar ese peligro en una conversación pocos días atrás. Subrayó que, irónicamente, las economías de mejor desempeño de la región serán las más afectadas por la fortaleza de sus monedas.

Los países latinoamericanos más exitosos tendrán que aprender a vivir con monedas fuertes, dijo Giugale. Eso los hará menos competitivos.

El razonamiento es simple: con las tasas de interés en Estados Unidos a casi cero, cada vez más inversores estadounidenses y europeos están comprando monedas locales de América Latina para aprovechar las tasas de interés más altas de la región, ganar más intereses, y luego convertir sus ahorros nuevamente a dólares.

Es cierto que muchos inversores extranjeros perdieron hasta la camisa con este juego en las últimas décadas, cuando varios países de la región sufrieron crisis financieras y devaluaron sus monedas repentinamente. Pero la mayoría de los economistas coinciden en que los países latinoamericanos financieramente responsables no caerán en crisis económicas en el futuro inmediato, y que la región en general crecerá más del 3 por ciento este año.

Ya sea por la caída del dólar o por la constante apreciación de las monedas latinoamericanas, lo cierto es que en los últimos doce meses la moneda de Brasil se apreció un 24 por ciento respecto del dólar, la de Colombia un 25 por ciento, la de Uruguay un 19 por ciento, la de México un 17 por ciento, la de Chile un 12 por ciento y la de Perú un 10 por ciento.

En casi todos estos países, un constante flujo de dólares del exterior está creando una gran demanda de moneda local, que hace apreciarse a sus monedas.

Entre las excepciones a la regla está Argentina, cuya moneda se depreció en un 7 por ciento durante los últimos doce meses, en gran medida porque el país no atrae capital extranjero.

``Exportar desde lugares como Bogotá, Lima, San Pablo o Santiago será más caro'', dijo Giugale, explicando que los costos laborales locales serán más altos en dólares estadounidenses. ``Les resultará más difícil vender sus productos en Estados Unidos y en cualquier otro país que mantenga su moneda atada al dólar estadounidense, incluyendo a China''.

Entonces, ¿qué deberían hacer los países de la región? Según Giugale y muchos otros otros economistas, firmar nuevos acuerdos de libre comercio para expandir sus mercados todavía será una buena opción, pero no será suficiente. Para crecer, la región tendrá que generar nuevos --y cada vez mejores- productos de exportación.

En otras palabras, para ser competitivos, los países latinoamericanos con monedas fuertes le tendrán que apostar a la innovación. Ese va a ser un reto enorme, porque la región apenas está recibiendo el 2 por ciento de la inversión mundial en investigación y desarrollo, mientras que los países asiáticos están recibiendo el 28 por ciento, según la Red de Indicadores de Ciencia y Tecnología Iberoamericana (RICYT).

Mientras que China invierte el 1.4 por ciento de su producto interno bruto en investigación y desarrollo, Brasil invierte el 1 por ciento, Argentina el 0.6 por ciento, México el 0.4 por ciento, y Colombia y Perú 0.1 por ciento cada uno, según RICYT.

Aun más preocupante, la mayor parte de la inversión latinoamericana en investigación y desarrollo son proyectos teóricos financiados por el Estado, sin ningún valor comercial. Por increíble que parezca, mientras Corea del Sur registró 80,000 patentes en todo el mundo el año pasado, Brasil registró apenas 580, México 320, y Argentina 80, según la Organización Mundial de la Propiedad Intelectual.

Mi opinión: Las monedas fuertes generalmente son señal de economías saludables, y deben ser el objetivo de cualquier país. Pero los países latinoamericanos deberían tratar de que la valorización de sus monedas sea gradual, y no especulativa, y asegurarse de que no perjudique a sus exportaciones. Para exportar con monedas fuertes, tendrán que vender productos cada vez más sofisticados, lo que requerirá más innovación, y más educación.

1785) Livro da OCDE sobre retomada do crescimento

Economic Policy Reforms 2010
Going for Growth
Paris: OECD, 2010

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Language: English Pages: 246 Tables: 22 Charts: 236 ISBN: 9789264079960 OECD Code: 122010031P1 Frequency: Annual

The world is currently facing the aftermath of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Going for Growth 2010 examines the structural policy measures that have been taken in response to the crisis, evaluates their possible impact on long-term economic growth, and identifies the most imperative reforms needed to strengthen recovery. In addition, it provides a global assessment of policy reforms implemented in OECD member countries over the past five years to boost employment and labour productivity. Reform areas include education systems, product market regulation, agricultural policies, tax and benefit systems, health care and labour market policies. The internationally comparable indicators provided enable countries to assess their economic performance and structural policies in a wide range of areas.

In addition, this issue contains three analytical chapters covering intergenerational social mobility, prudential regulation and competition in banking, and key policy challenges in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa.
Other Versions: E-book - PDF Format

Multilingual summaries: English, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Finnish, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, Danish, Japanese

Table of contents:

Editorial: Shifting Gears by Pier Carlo Padoan
Executive Summary
PART I. TAKING STOCK OF STRUCTURAL POLICIES IN OECD COUNTRIES
Chapter 1. Responding to the Crisis while Protecting Long-term Growth
-Growth-enhancing structural policy responses to the crisis
-Sustainable growth after the crisis
Chapter 2. Responding to the Going for Growth Policy Priorities: An Overview of Progress since 2005
-Introduction
-Notes
-Bibliography
-Annex 2.A1. Constructing Qualitative Indicators of Reform Action
-Annex 2.A2. Incorporating Terms-of-Trade Gains and Losses into International Income Comparisons
Chapter 3. Country Notes
Chapter 4. Structural Policy Indicators
PART II. THEMATIC STUDIES
Chapter 5. A Family Affair: Intergenerational Social Mobility across OECD Countries
-Intergenerational social mobility reflects equality of opportunities
-Assessing intergenerational social mobility and its channels
-Cross-country patterns in intergenerational social mobility
-How do policies and institutions affect intergenerational social mobility?
-Concluding remarks
Chapter 6. Getting it Right: Prudential Regulation and Competition in Banking
-Introduction and main findings
-Prudential banking regulation
-Prudential regulation and competition in banking
Chapter 7. Going for Growth in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and South Africa
-Introduction
-Overview of performance differences among the BIICS and vis-a-vis OECD countries
-Applying the Going for Growth framework to the BIICS
-Other Policy Reforms to speed up convergence