31 March 2008

The Gold Standard-2

Part 1

In part 1 I briefly outlined the periods of gold standards and gold exchange standards.

Oddly, the concept became significant with the introduction of paper money, since pure commodity money had entirely different dynamics. In fact, the period of commodity money naturally begat the widespread use of bimetallism, since many of the world's financial systems prior to 1800 had evolved out of coins with different alloys and constituent metals. The masters of the royal mint were typically concerned with maintaining a fairly high local price of gold and silver, the one so that private reserves of gold would accumulate domestically, the other so that there was an ample supply of small denomination coins for daily use.

Braudel (1992, p.357) suggests that the connection between a trade surplus and inflows of gold were discovered after Gresham ("Gresham's Law" being roughly dated 1558). The discovery that a strong currency could be used to strengthen the revenues of the kingdom produced a strong incentive by princes to focus very narrowly on foreign/trade policy that favored trade surpluses and offset Gresham's law.1

The period of pure commodity money seems to have been accompanied by wars explicitly over access to markets and resources. Explaining the frenzy of pre-ideological wars of the 15th-18th centuries is otherwise fairly difficult. After the French Revolutionary wars of 1792-1815, major conflicts within Europe became rare and ideological; balances of power were no longer invoked by diplomats trying to form coalitions.2 While British state expenditures had grown very fast prior to and during the Revolutionary epoch, they fell from about 23% of gross product (1810) to about 8% (1890); there followed an arms race in Europe that drove British state expenditures to 14% (1900) and then to historic highs after 1929.3


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30 March 2008

The Gold Standard-1

There is actually a surprising amount of confusion about the gold standard, what it meant, where it was applied, and why it was eventually abandoned everywhere. In this post, I'd like to clear up what I regard as a few misconceptions about it. Therefore, I'll be linking to sources that substitute entirely for a detailed discussion. Chief among these is Lawrence H. Officer's 2008 essay, "Gold Standard."

The second point is that this post will be using some economic terms in unusual ways. These are:
  • Gold standard: currency regime characterized by commodity money; money is either physical gold (specie), or certificates matching some physical quantity of gold. In a gold specie standard, banks may issue credit but international balances of payments are restored by reductions in the deficit country's money supply, and concomitant reductions in the general price level (and hence a recession).
  • Gold exchange standard: currency regime in which paper money is in circulation, but the central bank maintains a fixed ratio of the national currency to gold. In some cases this may mean the monetary authorities maintain a "gold window" in which gold is bought and sold freely at a permanently fixed price.
  • Run on currency: a crisis caused by massive public sale of a particular currency. For example, in 1907 there was a panic during which investors demanded huge amounts of gold in exchange for dollars, bringing the US Treasury to the brink of illiquidity. In another case, viz., Argentina (2002), holders of australs demanded euros or US dollars, forcing the Argentinean currency board to abandon the peg of 1 austral = 1 US dollar. The risk of a run is especially severe when the authorities maintain an official peg.
  • Fiat money: a currency regime in which the value of the currency is fixed by the authorities by decree; there is a state monopoly on foreign exchange, and rates are likewise set by decree. In most countries where fiat money regimes are in force, commerce in gold is illegal or at least tightly regulated.

    In some cases, authors use the term "fiat money" to refer to any money whose value is not pegged to anything else, even when deep markets exist for alternative monies. Hence, the US dollar is called "fiat money" despite the fact that open markets exist for most other currencies and for precious metals. The US Federal Reserve is obligated to maintain whatever exchange rate it finds desirable through interest rates and reserves (Open Market Operations); it is "backed" by the productive potential of the United States, and not hoards of gold or silver. Nevertheless, most common usage insists that the US dollar is a fiat money, as if it were the Soviet ruble.
Prior to the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), paper money was rare and money mainly took the form of coins or or letters of credit. In marginal areas of European settlement, such as North America, paper money was used as script—as an IOU rather than legal tender.1 Subsequently, in the early 1700's, John Law was retained as a financial adviser to the French throne and introduced securities backed by shares in the Compagnie des Occidents, which were (in turn) given the status of legal tender for some transactions.2 In effect, Law's scheme leapfrogged the next 150 years of monetary evolution to create a currency based on a complex network of transactions. The scheme was a debacle.

A semi-modern scheme of paper money appeared in 1789 with true fiat money: the assignats, backed by land expropriated from the Church (also in France). This was badly managed and resulted in an episode of hyperinflation. It did lead to an interesting brush with totalitarianism when the state was obligated to use force to induce markets to accept the currency. The revolutionary government of the USA (the Continental Congress) issued negotiable bills of credit which bore 4% interest, called "Continental dollars." These also suffered from galloping inflation.3

The issue of coins in England was under the control of the Royal Mint, which had long fixed the pound to sterling silver (not gold).4 Owing to its peculiar economic relationship with the Continent, gold was overvalued in England and flowed to London. As a result, London was on a de facto gold standard by the 18th century, and an official gold standard by 1816. In 1821, Britain resumed convertibility of the pound (which had been suspended since 1797); it was now convertible to gold, not silver, and Britain remained on the gold standard to 1914. The USA adopted a bimetallic standard in 1792, which lasted until 1853/73.5 Spanish-speaking nations also mostly had bimetallic standards at some time during the 19th century. France had a bimetallic system from 1803 to 1865 (free coinage of silver ended in 1874).6


Between 1873 and 1898, most of the Western powers adopted a universal gold specie standard. Using the USA as an example: in 1879 the US adopted a gold exchange standard in which the dollar was fixed at $20.67/ounce of gold, and £4.24/ounce.
The “gold specie” standard called for fixed exchange rates, with parities set for participating currencies in terms of gold, and provided that any paper currency could on demand be exchanged for gold specie at the central bank of issue. The system was designed to bring automatic adjustment in case of external deficits or surpluses in transactions between countries, that is, balance of payments imbalances. The underlying concept was that any deficit country would have to surrender gold to cover its deficit, with the result that the volume of its money would be reduced, leading to lower prices, while the influx of that gold into the surplus country would expand the volume of that country’s money and lead to higher prices.
(Cross 1998)
The gold specie standard had permitted issuance of credit under rigorous accounting standards: banks were required to maintain large reserves, and the entire national banking system had supplies of reserves tightly restricted by each nation's system of accounts. Under the gold exchange standards set up between the Wars (1924-1931) and under Bretton Woods (1946-1971), national governments had a much less rigorous set of accounting constraints: they were obligated to maintain balances of payments such that they could defend pegs to gold (or, in the Bretton Woods framework, to the US dollar). The IMF existed to facilitate such defense provided national governments ran their fiscal affairs responsibly and avoided inflationary policies.

(Part 2)

Notes
  1. See Prof. Michael Sproul, "A Quick History of Paper Money and Banking" CSU Northridge (undated)

  2. John Law's scheme was actually very complicated:
    On 6 January [1718]... Law ...presented the overall plan to solve France's dual crises, the monetary crisis and the financial crisis... To solve the monetary crisis he... recommended that the General Bank be converted into a state bank and that all transactions above 500 livres would be obligatorily made in banknotes. To address the problem of the financial crisis he proposed developing the Company of the West in such a way that the public would convert its state debt into equity of the company: 'and to form a powerful trading company whose shares would interest the public the capital of which would be subscribed in paper owed by the King would thereby be discharged of it.'
    (Antoin E. Murphy, John Law: economic theorist and policy-maker, Oxford University Press (1997), pp.176-177). Law was apparently surprised by the bubble in shares of the Company, whose tangible assets consisted of the then-undeveloped coast of Louisiana (p.216). Law had not only pioneered the speculative share, he also introduced the call option, which made the collapse of the Mississippi Bubble a profoundly complicated affair.

  3. For assignats, see Florin Aftalion (Martin Thom, translator), The French Revolution : an economic interpretation, Cambridge University Press (1990), p.65-173. For continentals, see Jerry W. Markham, A financial history of the United States, M.E. Sharpe (2002), pp.60-68.

  4. The pound was pegged to a pound of sterling silver by Henry II in 1158, but underwent a massive debasements under Henry VIII ('43-51, in which the silver content of pounds was reduced by 73%). Elizabeth I and her adviser, Thomas Gresham restored the silver content at great cost to the public.

    See Fernand Braundel (1992), p357ff.

  5. James Laurence Laughlin, History of bimetallism in the United States (1895; complete text available online at link); the periods of metallic standards are clearly indicated in the table of contents. Bimetallism requires that governments define the exchange ratio between the two metals; for the USA, this was 1 oz. Au = 15 oz Ag until 1834, when the ratio was boosted to 16. The real ratio in 1834 was 15.6 or so; gold was hence overvalued, and silver disappeared from circulation. In 1853, Congress adopted a de facto gold standard, in that it reduced the amount of silver in small denomination coins so that the silver content conformed to the market ratio relative to gold. The result was that silver coins resumed circulation, but price ratios were now determined by that of gold exclusively.

  6. William A. Scott, Money And Banking, Henry Holt And Company (1903)

Sources 🙵 Additional Reading

Fernand Braundel (Siân Reynolds, translator), Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The perspective of the world, University of California Press (1992)

Sam Y. Cross, All About... The Foreign Exchange Market in the United States, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1998), "Chapter 10: Evolution of the International Monetary System" (PDF)

James Laurence Laughlin, The history of bimetallism in the United States, D. Appleton 🙵 Co. (1895)

Barbara Oberg. "New York State and the "Specie Crisis" of 1837" (PDF), Business and Economic History., 2nd Series, Vol. XIV (1985)

Lawrence H. Officer, "Gold Standard" EH.net (26 March 2008)

Bruce Smith, "The Relationship Between Money and Prices" (PDF) Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (Fall 2002)*

* In order to read, right click link and select "save link as," then open in PDF reader.

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19 March 2008

Import Substitution

Import substitution is a policy for stimulating economic development in which the immediate object is to stimulate the domestic production of items the country usually imports. An example would be an African nation whose authorities try to replace imports of furniture with local production of furniture.

The purpose of import substitution is manifold. First, a country may well be stuck exporting only items with a low value-added content, such as raw lumber. Such a country might have a ruling elite (indeed, it almost certainly would) for whom a large volume of foreign luxuries are imported, such as cell phones and motorcars. Such a country would suffer from chronic unemployment (with no industries) and current account deficits. The local currency would be worth so little that one could, for example, buy an immense amount of land with euros and expel the subsistence farmers living there, perhaps for use as a game preserve; or one could build a large, extremely polluting factory, contaminating vast amounts of the local groundwater. This was a common thing in the late 1950's, and naturally motivated a lot of independence struggles. But with foreigners or agents of foreigners owning virtually everything, independence was meaningless unless there was some way the local population could get out of debt to the foreigners. Hence, both development economists (in rich countries) and nationalists (in poor ones) favored import substitution because it incorporated a plan to pay the bills.

Another purpose of import substitution, mainly of interest to nationalists, was the development of a middle class. Underdeveloped countries suffer from a weak or nonexistent manufacturing sector, which means any middle class (urban professionals, middle managers, and small entrepreneurs) will be both small and wholly dependent on the government. Such a county will have no constituency for any public investment, no sense of national solidarity, and no civil society. The economy will consist solely of getting raw materials out of the country with as little obstruction as possible from anyone who happens to live there. As it happens, this is a problem endemic to underdeveloped nations and tends to be self-perpetuating.

There are two alternative concepts to IS:
  1. A generalized rejection of modern industry or economic growth; this usually takes the form of a decentralized insurgency;
  2. A neoliberal policy of export stimulation, in which the country's authorities foster existing industries as a comparative advantage."
Alternative one is usually an ad hoc reaction to colonial/neocolonial degradation or social collapse; I am not aware of any state actually adopting this as a policy (because states are inherently expensive and need development to exist); it's a philosophy adopted by conservative insurgents, such as Deobandis or Salafists.1 Alternative two is usually based on the doctrinaire application of abstract economic doctrines to policymaking, while disregarding plausible market conditions. It assumes that the demand for any good can expand indefinitely, provided its production becomes more efficient.


Kindred Concepts: The Developmental State

The policy recommendations for the expansion of a nation's economy take two general forms. One is based on the minimalist state, and is regarded as economically orthodox. It assumes that any nation has a comparative advantage in certain goods, and therefore will benefit by specializing in producing those things for which it is already strong. Accordingly, a country which already exports mainly raw lumber needs to focus on becoming better at exporting raw lumber. This may involve a favorable tax structure favoring investment in logging and barge loading, gutting of environmental regulations, and minimal government services. Economists usually advocate such policies regardless of a country's state of development.

The other policy recommendation is for a developmental state in which state revenues are channeled into some strategic program for economic growth. Developmental states usually include import substitution because a current account deficit or poor terms of trade pose the greatest threat to the less-developed economy.


The Decline of Import Substitution

Import substitution flourished during the 1950's through the 1970's. In regions where it was attempted, results could be categorized three ways.
  1. In countries with a ruling military establishment, such as Brazil (1964-1985), Thailand (1936-present, with interruptions), and Indonesia (1965-1999), import substitution mainly targeted strategic items such as weapons, metallurgy, chemicals, and specialized machinery. Some consumer goods were protected and pressure was applied to foreign companies to add some value domestically. This would be a source of illicit revenue for the ruling elites.
  2. In countries with a civilian political establishment, or those sharing power with the military, IS tended to target consumer goods, such as furniture and some electronic components (e.g., TV sets). The motivation was logical, i.e., it served the general economic needs of the nation rather than the narrow needs of the ruling elite. Over time, these industries stabilized and became competitive. When protection was withdrawn, the substitute industries survived.
  3. In countries with a very weak, precarious political establishment, such as many African nations, IS was determined mainly by urgent conditions; for example, where unemployment was a serious problem, IS targeted labor intensive industries like textiles. The preservation of local jobs was a form of patronage that became more valuable as the jobs themselves became more vulnerable. At a certain point, the regime was compelled to withdraw protection, and the substitute industries collapsed (e.g., textiles in Zambia).
These three distinct patterns have strongly reinforced older distinctions between LDCs. The contrast between regions with rising levels of wealth (China, India) and those with stagnating levels (much of Africa, Latin America) has become more pronounced largely as a result of IS being withdrawn as a viable policy option.
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NOTES:

1 Salafism is usually referred to as "Wahhabism," after its founder; it is the state religion of Saudi Arabia. See "Salafism," Hobson's Choice. The Deoband movement that has come to dominate in Pakistan’s seminaries can itself be traced to the reformist Deoband movement established in 1867 in Deoband in Northern India. See Prof. Barbara D. Metcalf, "Traditionalist" Islamic Activism: Deoband, Tablighis, and Talibs," Social Science Research Council (2002?)

Deobandism and Salafism are closely identified with the Taliban of Afghanistan, Lashkar-e-Toiba, and al-Qaeda. Unlike other forms of radical Islam, the Deobandi and Salafism represent hard right movements in their respective societies: movements generally favorable to the established economic elites, if not their current political lackeys. They are also obscurantist and violently oppose developmentalist policies. It is my view that terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba, et. al., are motivated chiefly by anti-developmentalism, obscurantism, and dread of a strong nation-state; and Islam is co-opted so that such ideologies can compete ideologically with earlier reformist movements such as al-Ikhwan Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood).
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SOURCES & ADDITIONAL READING:

Bruce G. Carruthers & Sarah L. Babb, Economy/society: Markets, Meanings, and Social Structure, Pine Forge Press (1999)

Susan Margaret Collins & Jeffrey Sachs, Developing Country Debt and Economic Performance: Country Studies--Indonesia, Korea, Philippines, Turkey, University of Chicago Press (1989)

Interesting subtopic:
A.C.M. Jansen, "The economics of cannabis-cultivation in Europe," 2nd European Conference on Drug Trafficking and Law Enforcement, Paris, (Sep 2002)

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12 March 2008

Enterprise Groups: Notes

This post is dedicated to notes from Aoki & Patrick (1994; see "Sources" below). Note the book is now 14 years old and it's mainly of historical interest, since the Japanese financial system has experienced such drastic transformation since. For future reference, I have used the terms "business group" and "enterprise group" interchangeably.

The enterprise group (held together largely by the financial system) is not merely a Japanese phenomenon:
In Korea, for instance, the top thirty business groups, known as chaebols, accounted for 40 percent of Korea's output in the mining and manufacturing sectors and 14 percent of GNP in 1996. In Thailand, Malysia, Singapore, and Taiwan, business group affiliates [...] that were listed on these countries' stock exchanges accounted for 24.3, 24.9, 39.6, and 56. percent, respectively, of those exhanges' total market capitalization in 2002. Further, many East Asian business groups have a significant international presence.
(Chang, 2006-p.1)
My interest in business groups (or enterprise groups) arises from their great importance in economies outside of the USA. Except for the USA and a few other countries, enterprise groups have been the predominant means of business organization.

Since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the Japanese galaxy of enterprise groups has been severely disrupted.1 Likewise, several of Korea's major chaebols have been sharply reduced in size and cohesion.2

However, outside of Japan and Korea, enterprise groups have been paramount to national development strategies.3 In most cases, this seems to reflect later "globalization" of the economy: while Japan went through a century-long period in which its economy was dominated by enterprise groups, it has now been a global trading nation for even longer and enterprise groups are in decline. Korea, likewise, experienced five decades of enterprise group-dominated development, which is gradually winding down. China's enterprise group experience dates back to 1987. India has long experience with enterprise groups, but South Asia is generally a special case; Russia's "oligarchs" are defined by their mastery of large industrial agglomerations similar to business groups.4

Japan and Korea (and Taiwan?) as B-Group Killers
While the most famous and powerful business groups in the world are from Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, several defining features of their host countries made them particularly vulnerable to reform. One was technical sophistication of the economies: Japan and Korea, dominated by high-tech industries, require transparent administration. The USSR could function with both a space program and opaque business governance because it didn't export consumer goods into competitive markets, and because it had vast natural resources. In some cases, a highly disciplined management and labor force can do without transparency, but eventually the bad decisions become insuperable.

In the 1980s, serious literature on the Japanese "miracle" acknowledged a distinction between effectiveness and efficiency: Japanese enterprise seemed capable of absolutely anything, provided cost was no object--and it never was. It was effective, but burned through resources. The export sector, in particular, was reliant on an indirect subsidy from the rest of the economy (in the form of a severely undervalued yen). In 1986-87, this subsidy was abruptly withdrawn, but instead of "market pressure" maneuvering Japan's economy away from exports, enterprise management "tried harder" against unfavorable winds. It broke into more technically demanding sectors by substituting capital for labor. Eventually the strain was more than Japan's industrial system could manage.5

The effect of endaka on Japan's kigyō shūdan was complex. First, Japanese firms were compelled to adapt to remain competitive, and most did--heroically.6 In other words, the firms became even better at their old jobs than they had ever been. It was the financial engineering required to make this possible that instigated the bubble.

Second, the firms faced with the bubble and the challenges it posed performed quite differently from each other. The onset of endemic financial distress (and great financial successes) placed fresh strains on the informal mutual assistance arrangements of the kigyō shūdan, while punishing keiretsu whose leading firms were loyal to 2nd and 3rd tier members. In effect, companies like Sharp, Sony, and Matsushita (which tended to keep production in Japan) lost out to companies like Mitsubishi Electric and Hitachi.7 And the informal mutual assistance arrangements of the Japanese economy tended to become more obvious as they were strained. They were more vulnerable to WTO complaints lodged by major trade partners.

Third, the financial system bore an unusually large share of the damage from the economic crisis.

Notes
  1. Lincoln & Gerlach (2004), Chapter 6; Lincoln & Shimotani (2009) is available online. The literature (including my article on enterprise groups) sometimes distinguishes between kigyō shūdan (horizontal enterprise groups) and keiretsu (vertical enterprise groups). Lincoln & Gerlach analyze the evolution and structure of the entire enterprise groups as interlocked. The decline of the vertical component was correlated with the decline of the horizontal one.
  2. Kim, Hoskisson, Tihanyi, & Hong (2004); Lee (2008). Chaebols in the Republic of Korea have never been comparable in size to the kigyō shūdan of Japan; they are closer in size (measured by assets, turnover, or employees) to keiretsu. Informal estimates suggest that the "enterprise group sector" in both Japan and Korea was about 40% of GDP, and this represented a more passive component of enterprise. For example, group affiliates were more risk averse (Lincoln & Gerlach, 2004, "The Structural Analysis of the Network Economy").
  3. For example, in Taiwan, see Chung (2003); Chung, incidentally, cites a far higher estimate of GDP-share for chaebols in the Republic of Korea (p.6) than the one I gave in the previous footnote. Here I will only say that I strongly suspect the lower figure is more accurate. For China, see Ma & Lu (2005) & Huang (2008), who also mention that qiye jituan in the PRC are almost entirely agglomerations of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
  4. For enterprise groups in India, see Chakrabarti, William L Megginson, & Pradeep K Yadav (2007); for the Russian oligarchs, see Guriev & Rachinsky (2005). The first paper is critical of India's overall business climate, but concludes that business groups facilitate access to credit. The second makes surprisingly favorable judgments of the performance of oligarch-controlled enterprise.
  5. R. Taggart Murphy, The weight of the Yen: how Denial imperils America's Future and ruins an Alliance, W. W. Norton & Company (1997), "Coping with Endaka," esp. after p.198. "Endaka" is Japanese for "expensive yen," which it had become after 1986-87.
  6. Chikara Higashi, Geza Peter Lauter, The internationalization of the Japanese economy, Springer, (1990), "Endaka or the High Yen," p.184. Note the date of publication. Higashi & Lauter were impressed by managers' use of zaitech (financial engineering) to finance the massive technical investments required to do this.
  7. Megumi Oyanagi, "Japanese Global Electronic Companies – Why Winners and Losers?" Those in Media blog (2012). Readers will notice an anachronism here--Ms. Oyanagi was writing about winners and losers in 2011, whereas I am alluding to 1988-1995. But the general idea applies.


Sources & Additional Reading
" , Business History, Vol.51 (1): 77-99 (2008). Tests three alternative (and non-exclusive) motivations for the transformation of Chinese state-owned enterprises into business groups.

  • Sook Jong Lee, "The Politics of Chaebol Reform in Korea: Social Cleavage and New Financial Rules" , Routledge (2008)


  • James R. Lincoln & Michael L. Gerlach, Japan's Network Economy: Structure, Persistence, and Change, Cambridge University Press (2004). This is an exhaustive statistical analysis of Japanese enterprise structure during the high-water mark of the kigyō shūdan (1964-1997). One interesting feature (not discussed here) is the use of blockmodel (network clustering) analysis to determine the connectedness and benefits of various enterprise groups.


  • James R. Lincoln & Masahiro Shimotani, "Whither the Keiretsu, Japan's Business Networks? How Were They Structured? What Did They Do? Why Are They Gone?" Clans for Markets: the Social Organization of Inter-Firm Trading Relations in China's Automobile Industry
  • " ,Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, Seoul National University (August 2006)

  • Xufei Ma & Jane W. Lu, "The critical role of business groups in China" , Ivey Business Journal (May/June 2005)


  • Sea-Jin Chang, Business Groups in East Asia: Financial Crisis, Restructuring, and New Growth, Oxford University Press (2006)
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