Der Zusammenhang zwischen Beschäftigung und Inflation bleibt bestehen
Gestern habe ich mich mit den Mythen zur Inflation beschäftigt. Heute schaue ich mir mal genauer die Phillips-Kurve an, die bekanntlich einen Zusammenhang zwischen Beschäftigung und Inflation herstellt – und das mithilfe des ehemaligen Chefvolkswirts von Goldman Sachs, Gavyn Davies. Die Phillips-Kurve besagt: je geringer die Arbeitslosigkeit, desto höher die Lohnsteigerung und damit die Inflation. Also eine Entwicklung, die wir in Deutschland schon spüren sollten. In den USA auch, meinen zumindest einige Beobachter. Hier nun Davies:
- “(…) it is naive to argue that the underlying relationship between inflation and unemployment has broken down simply from a plot of these two variables against each other. Many other variables can influence the behaviour of inflation, and shocks to these variables can disguise the underlying relationship between inflation and unemployment.” – bto: Das gilt natürlich für jede Analyse!
- “(…) if the relationship has indeed disappeared, then the theoretical underpinnings for modern monetary policy suddenly look very shaky.”
- “There are five main areas to consider. 1. Are we using the right measures of inflation and unemployment? (…) The use of the average hourly earnings series, and similar official data, may have exaggerated the stickiness of low wage inflation. This is because new workers entering the labour market may have lower wages than incumbent workers, so composition effects reduce reported average wages as the economy expands. (…) the San Francisco Fed suggests that these compositional effects may have reduced recorded wage growth by 2 percentage points per annum in recent years – a huge effect. (…) The measurement of economic slack may also present problems. This is usually defined as the difference between the unemployment rate and the natural rate. (…) Labour market slack may be larger than shown in the unemployment rate, because the participation rate of prime age workers remains low, and many part time workers might prefer to work full time. Furthermore, (…) structural demographic factors may have reduced the natural rate (…).” – bto: Wir messen also die Lohninflation nicht richtig, die eigentlich pro Kopf gleicher Qualität an Arbeitskraft gemessen werden müsste. Vermutlich war das zur Zeit der Erfindung der Philipps-Kurve auch noch einfacher.
- “2. Global forces may be holding US inflation down (as) that the slack in the global economy, notably in the Euro Area, may be exerting downward pressure on US inflation. (…) wage increases in any given country may be increasingly affected by labour market slack in other countries. (…) structural forces like the entry of China into global trade may have materially restrained wages and price margins in the US over the long term. Furthermore, it is clear that (…) when import prices fall sharply, because energy prices fall or the dollar rises, this can produce disinflation in the US that disguises the PC relationship.” – bto: Auch das leuchtet ein, würde aber bedeuten, dass es eben noch schwerer ist, in einem Land/einer Region Inflation zu erzeugen, eben weil es einen globalen Wettbewerb gibt. So könnte auch in Deutschland die Inflation relativ zur Auslastung geringer bleiben, als man erwartet, weil der „Slack“ in Europa wohl unübersehbar ist.
- “3. The Phillips Curve is still visible in state-by-state data in the US (…) For example, work published in 2014 by Christopher Smith, an economist at the Fed Board, showed a large and stable negative relationship between wage inflation and unemployment on cross sectional data from individual states.” – bto: weil es eben doch noch lokale Angebote gibt, die nicht handelbar sind – Friseur als Beispiel.
- “4. The role of inflation expectations. (…) As expectations fall, price and wage inflation are expected to change in the same direction, even if unemployment is stable or declining. After the Great Financial Crash, inflation expectations remained stable at around 2 per cent, and this helped to stabilise inflation even as unemployment rose very sharply. In those days, the puzzle for the PC was one of ‚missing disinflation‘. (…) The central bank emphasis nowadays is on household price expectations, rather than expectations in the bond market, and it is suspected that some elements in the consumer price index, such as oil prices, may have larger effects on households’ perceptions of inflation than other elements that are observed less frequently. Hence the effect of the 2015 oil price crash on inflation expectations. This drop in inflation expectations could partially explain why recorded inflation has remained low, even though unemployment has dropped below the natural rate.” – bto: weil die Haushalte weniger den Druck verspüren, mehr Geld zu verlangen? Real ist das seit Jahrzehnten in der westlichen Welt der Fall.
- “5. Inflation shocks are larger than changes in coefficients of the Phillips Curve. (…) work finds evidence that the unemployment/inflation relationship has not changed very much, but that different types of shock, including financial ones, have recently dominated, hiding the Phillips Curve in the data.” – bto: womit also doch Hoffnung auf Inflation besteht.
- “On balance, empirical work seems to support the existence of a negative relationship between unemployment and inflation in the US and the Euro Area in recent years. This relationship has been disguised by other shocks, unconnected to unemployment, that have had important effects on inflation. These include the role of globalisation, structural price disinflation in the US, demography and inflation expectations. (…) These arguments suggest that the Federal Reserve should eventually be able to restore inflation to target if unemployment falls further, or even stays at present levels.” – bto: zur Erinnerung: Die Deutsche Bank hat gestern vorgerechnet, dass die Inflation sich in völlig normalem Rahmen befindet und die Fed eigentlich das Ziel erhöhte, weil sie den Indikator geändert hat, mit dem sie Inflation misst. Dennoch, wenn es stimmen sollte, könnten wir tatsächlich Inflation bekommen. Frage wäre dann, wie hoch und würden die Notenbanken gegenhalten? (natürlich nicht!)
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