Competitively Priced Electricity Costs More, Studies Show – New York Times

The problem with monopolies, as our AP students have learned, is that a monopolistic firm, left to its own accord, will most likely choose to produce at an output level that is much lower and provide their product at a price that is much higher than would result from a purely competitive industry. A monopolist will produce where its price is greater than its marginal cost, indicating an under-allocation of resources towards the product. By restricting output and raising its price, the monopolist is assured maximum profits, but at the cost to society of less overall consumer surplus or welfare.

Unfortunately, in some industries, because of the wide range of output over which economies of scale are experienced, it sometimes makes the most sense for only one firm to participate. Such markets are called “natural monopolies” and some examples are cable television, utilities, natural gas, and other industries that have large economies of scale. (click graph to see full-sized)

Government regulators face a dilemma in dealing with natural monopolistic industries such as the electricity industry. A electricity company with a monopoly in a particular market will base its price and output decision on the profit maximization rule that all unregulated firms will; they’ll produce at the level where their marginal revenue is equal to their marginal cost. The problem is, for a monopolist its marginal revenue is less than the price it has to charge, which means that at the profit maximizing level of output (where MR=MC), marginal cost will be less than price: evidence of allocative inefficiency (i.e. not enough electricity will be produced and the price will be too high for some consumers to afford).

Here arises the need for government regulation. A government concerned with getting the right amount of electricity to the right number of people (allocative efficiency) may choose to set a price ceiling for electricity at the level where the price equals the firm’s marginal cost. This, however, will likely be below the firm’s average total cost (remember, ATC declines over a WIDE RANGE of output), a scenario which would result in losses for the firm, and may lead it to shut down altogether. So what most governments have done in the past is set a price ceiling where the price is equal to the firm’s average total cost, meaning the firm will “break even”, earning only a “normal profit”; essentially just enough to keep the firm in business; this is known as the “fair-return price”.

Below AP Economics teacher Jacob Clifford illustrates and explains this regulatory dilemma. Watch the video and see how he shows the effect of the two price control options on the firm’s output and the price in the market.

The article above examines the differences in the price of electricity in states which regulate their electricity prices and states that have adopted “market” or unregulated pricing, in which firms are free to produce at the MR=MC level:

“The difference in prices charged to industrial companies in market states compared with those in regulated ones nearly tripled from 1999 to last July, according to the analysis of Energy Department data by Marilyn Showalter, who runs Power in the Public Interest, a group that favors traditional rate regulation.

The price spread grew from 1.09 cents per kilowatt-hour to 3.09 cents, her analysis showed. It also showed that in 2006 alone industrial customers paid $7.2 billion more for electricity in market states than if they had paid the average prices in regulated states.”

The idea of deregulation of electricity markets was that removing price ceilings would lead to greater economic profits for the firms, which would subsequently attract new firms into the market. More competitive markets should then drive prices down towards the socially-optimal price, benefiting consumers and producers by forcing them to be more productively efficient in order to compete (remember “Economic Darwinism”?). It appears, however, that higher prices have not, as hoped, led to lower prices:

“Since 1999, prices for industrial customers in deregulated states have risen from 18 percent above the national average to 37 percent above,” said Mrs. Showalter, an energy lawyer and former Washington State utility regulator.

In regulated states, prices fell from 7 percent below the national average to 12 percent below, she calculated…

In market states, electricity customers of all kinds, from homeowners to electricity-hungry aluminum plants, pay $48 billion more each year for power than they would have paid in states with the traditional system of government boards setting electric rates…”

That $48 billion represents higher costs of production for other firms that require large inputs of energy in their own production, higher electricity bills for cash-strapped households, and greater profits and shareholder dividends for the powerful firms that provide the power. On the bright side, higher prices for electricity should lead to more careful and conservative use of power, reducing Americans’ impact on global warming (since the vast majority of the country’s power is generated using fossil fuels).

Here arises another question? Should we be opposed to higher profits for powerful electricity firms if their profits result in much needed energy conservation and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? An environmental economist might argue that if customers are to pay higher prices for their energy, it might as well be in the form of a carbon tax, which rather than increasing profits for a monopolistic firm would generate revenue for the government. In theory tax revenue could be used to subsidize or otherwise promote the development and use of “green energies”.

Whether customers paying higher prices for traditionally under-priced electricity is a good or bad thing depends on your views of conservation. But whether higher profits for a powerful electricity company are more desirable than increased tax revenue for the government are beneficial for society or not seems clear. If we’re paying higher prices, the resulting revenue is more likely to be put towards socially desirable uses if it’s in the government’s hands rather than in the pockets of shareholders of fossil fuel burning electricity monopolies.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do governments regulate the prices in industries such as natural gas and electricity?
2. Why would a state government think that de-regulation of the electricity industry might eventually result in lower prices in the long-run?

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YouTube - Chinas empty city – 10 Nov 09.

My buddy living in Shanghai posted this video to his Facebook profile today. It demonstrates how misaligned incentives in China lead local government officials to launch massive government infrastructure projects, all with the goal of meeting the growth targets handed down from Beijing.

Building roads to nowhere and cities that stand empty certainly creates jobs and new spending by the workers employed in their construction, so in that regard at least one goal of such projects is achieved. But whether or not all growth is good growth depends on whether efficiency in the economy is increase or decreased as a result of the growth strategies used.

Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of resources in China are currently being allocated by the government in Beijing towards massive public works projects such as this sparkling new city in remote Inner Mongolia. But it seems that government plans don’t always fall in line with the wishes of the nation’s people. A wise man once said, “build it… and they will come.” Apparently in China, that’s not always true.

I happen to have traveled in Inner Mongolia a few years ago with a group of students from my school in Shanghai. It was a sad thing in my opinion to witness the rampant development of the once pristine and culturally rich Inner Mongolian steppes. Ethnic Mongolians had been put on large reservations (not unlike the Native American people 150 years ago) and turned into tourist attractions. The cities were populated almost entirely with ethnic Han Chinese, there for the purpose of building more new cities, mining raw materials, and selling them to the rest of China’s industries.

Fiscal policy (the use of government spending and taxes to stimulate or reduce the overall level of demand in an economy) is a powerful tool for achieving the macroeconomic goals of full-employment, economic growth and price level stability. When used effectively, government spending can also improve efficiency in an economy by allocating society’s scarce resources towards socially and economically valuable projects. In China, it appears, the government’s incentives are aimed more towards pleasing the higher ups and continuing to inflate the speculative  bubble in real estate that has almost certainly formed, rather than pursuing socially desirable and allocatively efficient projects that actually help the Chinese people. Damn shame!

Discussion Questions:

1. What type of fiscal policy is the government in China pursuing? Expansionary or contractionary? What is the difference?
2. Why is government spending sometimes less efficient than private sector spending?
3. What would have been an alternative policy to allocating over $220 billion of public money into infrastructure projects that may have resulted in a more efficient allocation of China’s resources than projects such as the “empty city” in the video above?

Econ professor and blogger Tim Haab has posted a great story on market failure, efficiency and corrective taxes at his blog, Environmental Economics: I love when someone else does my work for me.

With appreciation, I re-post his blog here in its entirety. Tim’s “Questions to consider” are perfect for IB and AP Econ students to answer in their Market Failure unit. Read and answer Tim’s discussion questions in the comments:

Today’s Econ 101 topic–actually AED Economics 200 but same diff–the deadweight loss from taxes in otherwise well-functioning markets. In my neverending–futile?–attempt to stay current, I plan to use this example from today’s Wall Street Journal:

Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to help pay for an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system.

The taxes would pay for only a fraction of the cost to expand health-insurance coverage to all Americans and would face strong opposition from the beverage industry. They also could spark a backlash from consumers who would have to pay several cents more for a soft drink.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based watchdog group that pressures food companies to make healthier products, plans to propose a federal excise tax on soda, certain fruit drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and ready-to-drink teas. It would not include most diet beverages. Excise taxes are levied on goods and manufacturers typically pass them on to consumers.

…

The Congressional Budget Office, which is providing lawmakers with cost estimates for each potential change in the health overhaul, included the option in a broad report on health-system financing in December. The office estimated that adding a tax of three cents per 12-ounce serving to these types of sweetened drinks would generate $24 billion over the next four years. So far, lawmakers have not indicated how big a tax they are considering.

Proponents of the tax cite research showing that consuming sugar-sweetened drinks can lead to obesity, diabetes and other ailments. They say the tax would lower consumption, reduce health problems and save medical costs. At least a dozen states already have some type of taxes on sugary beverages, said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Questions to consider:

1. How do you reconcile the seemingly conflicting goals of reducing soda consumption and raising revenues to pay for health care?
2. Which effect do you expect to dominate: reduction in quantity demanded due to higher prices or increased revenue from higher prices?
3. Assuming the market for sodas (pop around here) is currently working efficiently, what effect do you expect a new tax to have on consumer well-being, producer well-being, government revenue and total social welfare?
4. What role do the elasticity of demand and elasticity of supply play in your answers to 1,2 and 3?

The Fed should focus on deflation | The greater of two evils | The Economist

Deflation: a decrease in the general price level of goods and services of an economy. Sounds great, right? Lower prices mean the purchasing power of our income increases, making the “average” person richer! On the surface, it could be concluded that deflation may actually be a good thing. And in some cases, it is!

If prices of goods are falling because of major technological advances (think of the price of cell phones and laptop computers over the last 20 years) or because of massive improvements in the productivity of labor and capital (think of the price of manufactured consumer goods during the Industrial Revolution), then deflation could be considered a sign of healthy economic growth. Put in terms an IB or AP Economics student should understand, a fall in prices caused by an increase in a nation’s aggregate supply is good, since it is accompanied by greater levels of employment and higher real incomes. But if the fall in prices is caused by a decline in spending in the economy (in other words, by a decrease in aggregate demand), the consequences can be catastrophic.

It just so happens that the United States, Great Britain, and my own home of Switzerland are all faced with demand-deficient deflation at this very moment. I’ll allow the Economist to elaborate:

…With unemployment nearing 9% (in the United States), economic output is further below the economy’s potential than at any time since 1982. This gap is likely to widen. House prices are not part of America’s inflation index but their decline is forcing households to reduce debt , which could subdue economic growth for years. As workers compete for scarce jobs and firms underbid each other for sales, wages and prices will come under pressure.

So far, expectations of inflation remain stable: that sentiment is itself a welcome bulwark against deflation. But pay freezes and wage cuts may soon change people’s minds. In one poll, more than a third of respondents said they or someone in their household had suffered a cut in pay or hours…

Does this matter? If prices are falling because of advancing productivity, as at the end of the 19th century, it is a sign of progress, not economic collapse. Today, though, deflation is more likely to resemble the malign 1930s sort than that earlier benign variety, because demand is weak and households and firms are burdened by debt. In deflation the nominal value of debts remains fixed even as nominal wages, prices and profits fall. Real debt burdens therefore rise, causing borrowers to cut spending to service their debts or to default. That undermines the financial system and deepens the recession.

From 1929 to 1933 prices fell by 27%. This time central banks are on the case. In America, Britain, Japan and Switzerland they have pushed short-term interest rates to, or close to, zero…

…inflation is easier to put right than deflation. A central bank can raise interest rates as high as it wants to suppress inflation, but it cannot cut nominal rates below zero… In the worst case, rising debts and defaults depress growth, poisoning the economy by deepening deflation and pressing real interest rates higher….Given the choice, erring on the side of inflation would be less catastrophic than erring on the side of deflation.

Discussion Questions:

1. Deflation poses several threats to an economy that is otherwise fundamentally healthy, such as the United States’. What are some the threats posed by deflation?
2. The expectation of future deflation can have as equally devastating effect. Why is this?
3. What evidence does the article put forth that an economy experiencing deflation may eventually “self-correct”, meaning return to the full employment level of output in the long-run?
4. Why don’t governments and central banks just sit back and let the economy self-correct? In other words, why are fiscal and monetary policies being used so aggressively by the US, Great Britain and Switzerland during this economic crisis?

Deflation or Inflation:Watch the video below, see if gives you any clues as to the causes and effects of deflation. What do you think John Maynard Keynes would say in response to the deflationary fears expressed in the Economist article?

Inside Obama’s Green Budget – Forbes.com

Some say that Global Warming may be the greatest market failure of all. This podcast was originally broadcast in January of 2007 while George Bush was still in office. The commentator claims that global warming is “nothing but one giant market failure”, arguing that the United States therefore must get serious about tackling the problem.

 

 Global Warming - one giant market failure [1:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The allocation of resources towards carbon emitting industries has almost undoubtedly contributed to the warming of the planet over the last half century. Only recently have governments begun taking active measures to reduce the impact of industry on the environment through greater regulation of polluting industries, employing corrective taxes in some instances and market-based approaches to pollution reduction in others.

US President Barack Obama, unlike his predecessor, appears to be serious about correcting the “market failure” represented by global warming:

Obama’s budget, announced Thursday, looks to fund a host of new energy programs, from carbon sequestration to electric transmission upgrades. It would also provide the EPA with a $10.5 billion budget for 2010, a 34% increase over the likely 2009 budget. Nineteen million dollars of that would be used to upgrade greenhouse gas reporting measures.

The Interior Department would get $12 billion for 2010. The agency would use part of the money to asses the availability of alternative energy resources throughout the country.

Funding comes from elaborate carbon “cap and trade” program, which puts a price on emitting pollution and is the core of Obama’s plans. Starting in 2012, the government would sell permits giving businesses the right to emit pollution, generating $646 billion in revenue through 2019.

During those years, the number of available permits would gradually decline, forcing businesses to buy the increasingly scarce, and costly, rights to pollute on an open market. Obama hopes that the rising cost of permits will encourage businesses to invest in clean technologies as a cheaper alternative to meeting pollution mandates, helping to cut greenhouse gas production to 14% below 2005 levels by 2020.

Below is a diagram that illustrates precisely how the Obama cap and trade plan is meant to work. Notice that between 2012 and 2020 the cost to firms of emitting pollution will increase dramatically, while at the same time the total amount of carbon emissions in the US economy will fall due to regular reductions in the number of permits issued to industry.

The Obama cap and trade scheme is not the first experiment with such a market based approach to externality reduction:

Europe established such a market in 2005. But some E.U. governments allocated too many credits at the outset, causing the value of some permits to fall by half and making it relatively easy for large polluters to simply buy credits rather than cut emissions. Overall emissions grew in 2005 and 2006. In 2008, E.U. emissions dropped 3%; 40% of that drop was attributed to the carbon trading scheme.

Europe’s cap and trade program took a few years before it began having any noticeable impact on the emission of carbon by European industry. While unpopular among the firms who are forced to pay to pollute, the fall in emissions in Europe shows that a market for carbon may be effective in forcing firms “internalize” the costs of carbon emissions, which until now have been born by society and the environment in the form of the negative effects of global warming.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you think tradeable pollution permits are more politically viable than a direct tax on firms’ carbon emissions?
2. Why did Europe’s carbon emission permit market fail to reduce emissions over its first couple of years of implementation?
3. Is making firms pay to pollute a good idea in the middle of a recession? Do you think that we should even be worrying about the environment when millions of people are losing their jobs and entire industries are struggling to survive?

YOUmoz | Price Discrimination in Pay Per Click Advertising

The article above gives a great introduction to and several examples of price discrimination among firms with market power. Read the excerpt below then discuss the questions that follow in your comments:

For any product or service, different people have different prices they are willing to pay. If you ever took an Economics course you surely remember the downward sloping demand curve, which is a graphical way of saying that you’ll get more buyers at a low price and fewer buyers at a high price. For a business that cannot price discriminate, this poses a problem. What price to offer?

There might be some consumers willing to pay 80, but twice as many consumers willing to pay 50. If you set the price at 50, you get more revenue, but the people who are willing to pay 80 are happy that your offering was 30 less than they were willing to pay. (Economists call this consumer surplus.) The ideal situation for the business would be to sell to some consumers at 80 and others (the price sensitive ones) at 50. Price discrimination – charging each consumer close to what he or she is willing to pay – increases revenue for the business.

Business strategists are forever trying to figure out ways to price discriminate. For commodities it can be difficult, but some markets are conducive to price discrimination. The classic example is the airline industry. Travelers have different itineraries and routes, and the airlines purposely impose complex pricing rules (e.g. cheaper if you stay over a Saturday) in order to price discriminate. Business travelers typically end up paying more than leisure travelers, and if you fly into or out of a small city you pay more than between large cities. On a flight with 100 passengers, it is possible that everyone paid a different price for the seat – 100 different prices for the same product. Consumers often resent these schemes, but economists love them.

Movie theaters price discriminate by charging lower admission for kids and seniors. Everyone gets the same product – a seat in the theater – but consumers that are more price sensitive pay less. Car dealers discriminate based on how much the customer haggles. Sellers of new products, especially consumer electronics, often price discriminate over time. When the iPhone was first released, consumers willing to pay $600 got to buy it. A couple months later, Apple lowered the price and a larger segment of the public was willing to buy. Apple could have charged $400 from the beginning, but then they would have lost all that revenue from the people willing to pay $600.

Buyers often feel like they are being played for chumps when they learn about price discrimination, but many economists absolutely are crazy about it and wish we had more price discrimination. Businesses are encouraged to make prices secret – create a fog of uncertainty – to get customers to accept prices offered to them. Preston McAfee, an economics professor at the California Institute of Technology, gave a talk about prices. He raves about Dell selling the same computer at different prices based on how the consumer identifies themselves at the website (small business, large business, home users).

Discussion Questions:

1. Who suffers as a result of price discrimination?
2. Who benefits from price discrimination and how do they gain?
3. Is society as a whole better or worse off when a monopolist is able to price discriminate? Explain…

FT.com | The Economists’ Forum | Will Americans demand the cars that Congress wants the big three to build?

It’s been driving me nuts, this whole bailout debate. My frustrations are definitely appartent to my students, who have had to put up with my occasional rants about the insanity of the whole affair since the issue came to the media forefront over a month ago. Here are some of the issues that just don’t add up from the perspective of a high school economics teacher:

The three companies asking for a bridge-loan supposedly want the money so that hundreds of thousands (some reports say as many as 2.6 million) jobs can be saved. But how could Ford, Chrystler and GM possibly maintain their labor force in a time of a recession when nobody is buying new cars in the first place? In the parlance of AP or IB Economics, automobiles are normal goods, ones for which demand falls as incomes fall. By definition, a recession in the United States means falling incomes. A government loan may allow the Big Three to keep making cars for the time being, but WHY WOULD THEY KEEP MAKING CARS when falling incomes point to falling demand in the immediate future? Making cars that nobody will buy represents a gross misallocation of the nation’s productive resources, not to mention taxpayers’ money. What is required of these industries is precisely what the government loan will prevent them from doing, DOWNSIZING, meaning the shrinking of their labor force as well as the number of plants in operation.

The US recession can not be avoided by allocating the nation’s scarce resources towards a bailout of the auto industry. In fact, it will be worsened because the capacity of any nation to emerge from a cyclical downturn requires the flexibility of the country’s labor force to adapt to the structural changes the country is experiencing in the era of globalization and free trade. America’s future does not reside in labor-intensive manufactured goods, especially in the production of a very expensive durable good for which demand falls drastically during recessions; specifically, automobiles.

The Finanacial Times Economists Forum approaches the issue of long-term falling demand for automobiles from another perspective. One of the conditions of the Big Three accepting a loan from the federal government is the mandate that Detroit will begin producing more fuel efficient automobiles to assure Americans more affordable, more environmentally friendly alternatives to the gas-guzzling SUVs that have dominated the industry for the last two decades. But here’s the problem, gasoline has fallen to a price as low as it was when SUVs were at their peak popularity back in the early 2000s! As any high school economics student knows, gasoline and SUVs are what we call complementary goods, or two goods for which demand and price are inversely related. As gas prices fall to their 2000 levels, demand for SUVs promises to rise once again, while demand for fuel-efficient automobiles will likely decline, creating market pressures for the Big Three to make not more fuel-efficient cars, but more SUVs instead! From the Financial Times:

The basic problem is that Americans like to drive sport-utility vehicles, minivans and small trucks when gasoline costs $1.50 a gallon…

Consumers may have regretted their behaviour when gasoline prices soared above $4 a gallon, but as gas prices descend, there is no reason to believe that left unchecked they will not return to their gas-guzzling ways.

Indeed, there is a distinct possibility that if they really do increase their small car production, in a few years the big three will be back asking for more help, on the grounds that they are losing money by doing exactly what Congress asked.

The only reasonable solution to this dilemma? If Congress DOES begin mandating that Detroit increase its production of fuel-efficient cars and phase out its manufacture of SUVs, any such requirement should be accompanied by a government-set price floor on gasoline. Several months ago, my colleague and fellow blogger Steve Latter blogged about a proposed price floor of $4 per gallon on gasoline. Such a scheme would likely prove nearly impossible to initiate politcally, but may be exactly what’s necessary to add legitimacy to any government requiremens of Detroit to manufacture fuel efficient automobiles. The FT appears to support such a scheme:

Congress should put their mouths where their money is. They should make binding commitments to ensure higher US oil prices and thereby sufficient demand for fuel-efficient cars and trucks in the future.

Discussion Questions:

1. What message does falling demand in the auto market send from buyers to sellers, and what contradictory message does a subsidy from the government send to auto makers?
2. If the auto makers receive a low-interest bridge loan (subsidy) from the government, how will this actually undermine the efficient functioning of markets in America?
3. Why would a price floor on gasoline be needed to accompany a government requirement that the Big Three make more fuel efficient automobiles after receiving a government loan?

Automakers turnaround plans sent to Congress – Dec. 2, 2008

…and hopefully every other American with a functioning cerebral cortex. Ford Motor Company announced today its ambitious plan to cut costs and restore its profitability as it appeals once again to Washington for a $25 billion “low-interest bridge loan” (aka bailout).

The company announced that the salary of Ford CEO Alan Mulally would be cut to $1 a year if Ford actually borrowed money from the government. When Mulally appeared before the House Financial Services Committee last month, he did not agree to the suggestion of such a paycut…

Ford and GM also announced plans to get rid of corporate jets. Mulally, Wagoner and Nardelli were all roundly criticized at a House hearing last month when they admitted they had each flown their corporate jets to Washington to ask for help…

Mulally and Wagoner will be driving to Washington in hybrid vehicles made by their companies when they return to Capitol Hill later this week to make their case for loans. Nardelli is also not planning to fly to Washington but Chrysler has not disclosed any more specifics of his travel plans.

So the CEOs of the three largest auto companies are agreeing to be exploited for one year by accepting a salary of one dollar. The combined savings from the salary cuts of the three companies’ CEOs  equal roughly $6 million, or about 0.024% of the sum the companies are asking for from the government. Selling corporate jets during a recession when demand for such frivolous luxuries is at a record low will also do little to cut the costs of the incredibly inefficient US automakers.

As for any serious cost cutting plans, Ford had little to report:

…the Ford plan is perhaps most notable for what it did not include. The company did not mention that it would be dropping any brand or unprofitable models…

There was also no announcement of additional plants being closed or capacity being eliminated. Ford said it continues to work with its unions and dealers to achieve additional savings, but it did not set any cost savings targets for those discussions.

Ford highlighted many of the cuts it has already made, including closing 14 plants and reducing salaried personnel by 36% over the past three years. The company also touted labor cost savings that would bring the cost of factory workers’ pay and benefits close to those of the nonunion U.S. plants operated by Asian automakers

Real cost savings will only be achieved by the further closing of plants. With the economy in a deep recession and auto sales at their lowest in decades, the demand for new cars is just not there. Until Ford and its American competitors begin adjusting their plant capacities to the realities of market demand, the chances of achieving profitibility seem slim.

Allow me to make a connection between the situation faced by American auto makers and a basic economic concept we are currently studying in Microeconomics class. Firms, as any first year econ student knows, are profit maximizers. In fact, all companies are trying to make the same thing as all other companies, profits. When a firm experiences negative profits, or losses, as American auto makers are today, it can do one of two things to restore profitability: 1) Increase its revenues or 2) Lower its costs. Since demand for new cars is so low, the revenue increasing option is just not there, so American auto makers must reduce costs to restore profits.

There are two main types of costs we study in microeconomics. Short-run and long-run costs. In the short-run, which in the case of the auto industry we can consider the last few months since the financial crisis began, firms can do one thing to lower their costs: reduce the use of labor. Workers can be asked to take unpaid vacations, jobs can be eliminated, work hours can be cut back. In the short-run, plant size is fixed, meaning firms cannot add nor eliminate capital and land resources. The only variable resource is labor. By “reducing salaried personnel by 36% over the past three years” Ford has taken steps to lower its short-run costs of production.

Long-run costs must also be considered when firms are faced with negative profits. The long-run in the automobile industry is considered the period of time over which auto makers can either add new plant facilities or shut down existing facilities, lowering the costs of capital and land to firms. Long-run cost reductions have also been undertaken by Ford, including “closing 14 plants… over the past three years”.

Clearly, Ford has made an effort to reduce short-run labor costs and long-run capital costs by eliminating some of its work force and closing some of its factories in recent years. But today, as the US officially enters what is likely to be a deep, long recession, the announcement by Ford and its competitors that its new strategy for further cutting costs hinges on paying its CEOs one dollar and making them travel across the country in hybrid cars represents a laughable insult to the intelligence of high school Econ students.

Discussion Questions:

1. What is the “variable resource” that firms can use less of in the short-run if cost reductions are needed?
2. In Microeconomics, we sometimes refer to the long-run as the “variable plant period”. Explain the meaning of this concept.
3. The law of diminishing marginal returns would indicate that if Ford were to close additional factories, it would almost certainly have to simultaneously lay off thousands of additional workers. What is the law of diminishing marginal returns and why does it require firms to lay off workers as plants are closed?

This week the CEOs of the “Big Three” US auto makers boarded their private jets in Detroit and touched down in Washington to beg and plead in front of Congress for a “low-interest bridge loan” from the US government to help them avoid bankruptcy. They are asking Congress for $25 billion of taxpayer money to give them the chance to re-structure and re-equip themselves for the future.

Below are eight arguments based on basic economic principles for why a bailout of the United States automobile industry is a bad idea and is bound to fail:

1. Incentives matter: A bailout of the US auto industry ignores the basic economic principle that incentives matter. Individuals and firms respond to incentives, pursuing behavior that is likely to bring them the greatest rewards. In the face of falling demand for their product and ever-increasing competition from more efficient foreign producers, providing a $25 billion bailout creates a disincentive to drastically reduce costs and increase competitiveness, and an incentive to continue using tired old techniques and providing the same old models for which demand has declined among Americans for over a decade.
2. Comparative advantage: The basic economic principle of comparative advantage states that in an era of free trade and globalization, countries should produce the types of goods for which they have the lowest opportunity cost. Since the average American car of a particular class costs the Big Three $2000 more in wages and benefits for workers than its Japanese counterpart, it makes sense that Japan (and other lower-cost countries) produce more cars, and the Big Three produce less.
3. Efficient allocation of resources: The United Auto Workers Union has a member ship of over 400,000 workers. Since the 1970s the union has lost over 1 million workers. Clearly the US auto industry has been in decline for decades, a fact that should be taken as a sign: resources employed in America’s car industry are inefficient and represent a over-allocation of resources. A drastic down-sizing of the auto industry, while resulting in short-run hardships for the hundreds of thousands whose jobs will be lost, will in the long run strengthen the US economy as labor and other resources will be freed up to be employed in sectors in which the US has comparative advantage.
4. Economic Darwinism or “the survival of the most efficient”: America has stood for free trade in the world since helping found GATT in 1948 and later the WTO. The gains from embracing free trade are shared among all stakeholders in the economy. Consumers enjoy lower prices (thus higher real income), firms enjoy access to cheaper inputs and larger markets for their products, and governments enjoy the increased tax revenues from rising incomes driven by export-led economic growth. To bail out an uncompetitive, inefficient, and long-declining industry is to spit in the eye of free trade and denies America any moral suasion it may hold in the future over potential trading nations in our attempt to open their markets to our nation’s products. To protect our own dying industry now will send a clear message to our trading partners. “America does NOT stand for free trade”. If we believe in free trade and the allocative power of markets, then we must let the dinosaurs of American industry meet the fate the natural selection of the marketplace has determined for it.
5. The benefits enjoyed by the few represent costs born by the many: A bailout by the US government of the auto industry will protect a few hundred thousand jobs for a few years at the most but spells a reduction in the disposable incomes and spending power of millions for years to come. The US does not have $25 billion laying around to give the Big Three, which means the money must be borrowed. Increased government borrowing raises interest rates now (further tightening the credit markets) and will result in increased taxes down the road. All government debt must eventually be paid off, and in the immediate future interest on this debt must be paid directly from tax revenue. A $25 billion bailout is the same as a subsidy, meaning it redistributes income and welfare from consumers to producers. Millions are asked to sacrifice for the continued survival of a few hundred thousand in an industry that has failed to evolve in a global auto market that has seen increased competition and efficiency from foreign firms for decades.
6. Moral hazard: Bailing out the Big Three today represent a classic case of moral hazard. When American industries fail to take steps to increase their efficiency and remain competitive in the face of increased global competition, they find themselves not surprisingly on the brink of collapse. To reward these firms by taking money out of Americans’ pockets and handing it to them to do as they will, we send the wrong message and create the wrong incentives in the American economy. The message is: “Don’t worry, the market doesn’t choose the winners and losers in the economy, the government does, and certain industries are too big to fail”.
7. Market failure, or Firm Failure?: The fate of the auto industry is in the hands of the US government. But so is the fate of the free market. My fear now is that the pendulum will swing too far to the left in America’s state of panic over the ill-fated downfall of the financial markets, rooted in the irrational exuberance and over-leveraging of big financial institutions. The failure of the financial markets, however, is an entirely different story from that of a dinosaur industry like automobiles. The Big Three have had decades to reform themselves, lower their costs, improve their products, and remain competitive. THEY have failed, NOT the market. Government intervention is necessary in instances of market failure, but NOT IN CASES OF FIRMS’ FAILURE TO COMPETE IN A WELL FUNCTIONING MARKET like the global auto industry.
8. Inflexible labor markets: I saw the president of the UAW on the news today giving 101 reasons why the government should approve a bailout deal for the Big Three. In fact, the unions that supposedly represent American Auto Workers are a big part of the problem the industry is facing. For decades the UAW has fought against wage and benefit cuts for auto workers, lobbying instead for higher tariffs and other barriers aimed at keeping foreign cars out of the country. This anti-competitive behavior is a major reason the Big Three cannot compete with European and Asian car makers today. Wage inflexibility leads to higher unemployment. Unions keep wages from going down, leaving the Big Three with one of two choices: Drastically downsize your workforce and employ fewer high paid auto workers, or beg the government for a multi-billion dollar subsidy to that the unions can be placated and you can survive for a couple more years until you’re in the same situation all over again. The unions helped cause the problem, now they should pay the price by experiencing the downsizing their demands inevitably foretold.

The US government should allow the free market to function and let the dinosaurs go extinct. Cars will still be made in America, they’ll just be made by the better, more efficient firms that emerge from bankruptcy when this is all over, as well as the numerous foreign firms already making cars in the US. Survival of the most efficient, that’s what markets are all about. Allowing the market to work will strengthen the US auto industry far more than a “short-term low-interest bridge loan” ever will, it will free up labor and capital resources to be employed by industries the country is better at, and make sure household income is NOT reallocated to inefficient firms to be squandered on the manufacture of a product for which demand has steadily declined for the last decade plus.

“This post was originally published in April, 2008. It has been re-published today for the benefit of my year 2 IB Econ students, who are currently studying barriers to free trade.

Bloomberg.com: Economy – Korea Beef Deal Won’t Yield Trade Vote

Free trade: everyone either loves it or loves to hate it. South Korea and the US have been in negotiations for a landmark free trade agreement for years. Korea, however, has had a “beef” with US beef imports since 2003, when a case of Mad Cow Disease gave Korean officials the jitters and all imports were halted.

Even though Mad Cow has disappeared from American beef, the ban has remained, making it difficult for negotiators to come to any major agreements on the reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade in other markets in which the US and Korea trade. Just last week, South Korea removed the beef ban, giving some analysts hope that a free trade deal may soon be agreed upon.

President Bush signed the agreement last year but has hesitated to pass it on to Congress; where certain Democratic politicians have refused to approve the agreement until S Korea removed the beef ban. Now that the ban has been lifted, however, it appears that the issues keeping an agreement from being reached may run deeper than the simple beef ban:

In addition, Ford Motor Co., unions and Democrats, including both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, all say the accord must be reworked to address what they call South Korea’s barriers to U.S. manufactured goods.

“I understand there are foreign policy considerations, but this is too important for us,” Stephen Biegun, vice president for government affairs at Ford said in an interview earlier this month. “We don’t see any sign that they are ready to change.”

Levin, who represents autoworkers in suburban Detroit, said the accord will need to be changed to address what he calls South Korea’s non-tariff barriers to U.S. manufactured goods, especially autos.

Clinton, in a response to questions from the Pennsylvania Fair Trade Coalition, said the agreement with South Korea “will cost America jobs.”

The S Korea / US Free Trade Agreement should bring a boost in trade between the two countries:

The U.S. is South Korea’s second-largest export market behind China, with shipments totaling $45.8 billion in 2007. Imports from the U.S. last year reached $37.2 billion. The trade agreement would eliminate or reduce tariffs on a wide range of goods including automobiles, vegetables and electronics.

Through free trade there are winners and losers. This is a theme we’ve explored in some depth already during our International Economics unit. The winners, in the case of the S Korea/US FTA will likely be manufacturers in S Korea and service industries in the US. Judging by Ford Motor Company’s response to the FTA, we can assume that American manufacturers will be losers from the accord.

Does this make it bad, however? According to macroeconomic theory, no. The removal of tariffs on imports from S Korea will force American manufacturers to become more competitive and achieve greater efficiency, both which will result in a more efficient allocation of resources in both S Korea and the US. If Ford, for example, sells fewer cars because of in influx of high quality, affordable Korean automobiles, then Ford may be forced to shut down some of its plants in the US. This will lead to the loss of American jobs, just as Hillary Clinton claims it will.

But in the long-run, America as a whole should be better off for it. Manufacturers in the US will focus more on capital intensive goods such as industrial equipment, the manufacture of which requires highly skilled labor, which America has in abundance. In addition to industrial equipment and other high skilled manufactured goods, the US service sector should benefit from freer trade with S Korea.

With beef being resolved, the U.S. banks, insurance companies and other services companies that stand to gain the most from this accord are gearing up their lobbying efforts.

Beef “has been our biggest obstacle in having a meaningful dialogue on the benefits of this agreement,” said Matt Niemeyer, vice president for the business insurer ACE Ltd. and a former U.S. trade official. “It’s now time to work with Congress to find a way to move this important agreement this year.”

As any student of economics knows by now, politics and economics don’t always mix well. The opposition to the S Korea/US FTA among Congressional Democrats is more political than it is economic. Jobs will be lost, that’s true, but overall trade between two technologically advanced, developed countries like the US and S Korea should do more for improvements in efficiency and in resource allocation than it will in harm for a handful of American workers who may find themselves out of work due to greater demand for imported automobiles.

*A tariff on Korean automobiles results in the following outcomes:

• The quantity demanded of automobiles is less than it would be without a tariff (Q4 rather than Q3)
• The quantity supplied by American auto manufacturers is greater than it would be without the tariff (Q2 rather than Q1)
• The difference between Q2 and Q1 represents an overallocation of resources in America towards automobile manufacturing.
• The domestic quantity demanded exceeds the domestic quantity supplied. The difference (Q4 - Q2) is made up for by imports from S Korea.
  
• The government earns revenue equal to the area of the yellow rectangle (amount of tariff x number of cars imported)
• Society experiences a loss of efficiency (deadweight loss) equal to the combined areas of the green triangles Y and X. This is consumer surplus lost, accounted for by the higher price paid by American consumers imposed by the tariff.

In the model above, the removal of a tariff on Korean automobiles will result in a decrease in output by American firms from Q2 to Q1, an increase in imports from Q4 – Q2 to Q3 – Q1, and an increase in consumer surplus, efficiency, and better overall allocation of resources in America.

Discussion questions:

1. How does the graph illustrate the concept of “winners and losers from free trade”?
2. Who gains and who loses from free trade with the US within Korea?
3. Is it possible that a free trade agreement with Korea would actually create jobs in America? Explain…
4. Why do politicians oppose free trade deals that would result in such improvements in efficiency, allocation of resources, and even in the employment opportunities for American workers?

Is international trade really as good for a nation’s standard of living as economists say? And, what the heck is comparative advantage anyway? And what about the foreign currency market and those confusing supply & demand curves? Yes, the quest to understand the economic benefits of international trade is enough to make any citizen or first-year economic student vomit, tremble, get a headache, or at least curse.

Having been an AP Economics’ teacher for 8 years now, I must candidly admit that it took me a few years of study and research to try to reduce international trade to pure simplicity and understanding. Let me give it a shot below. I love simplicity.

The average “Joe Citizen” in almost any country in the world is suspicious of trade, and rightfully so, since he reads or observes factories being closed, jobs lost, and the feeling that somehow his country is going down the toilet as his own home fills up with foreign-made products. Unfortunately, what Joe Citizen does not understand is that the money his own nation is spending for those foreign products (imports) is spent right back into the pockets of his own country, increasing employment and income.

Let’s take a single, real-world, international trade example being careful to accurately explain the whole economic story:

Let’s say that the United States (we’ll say Wal-Mart) decides to buy several shirts costing $400 from a Chinese shirt manufacturer, in lieu of buying those same shirts from a shirt manufacturer in Elon, North Carolina (USA). As a US AP Economics’ teacher I am one of about only 47 Americans in Fairfax County Virginia, which not coincidentally ties to the number of AP Students I taught this year, that quickly understand that the decision to purchase the shirts from China, in lieu of the US manufacturer in North Carolina, is actually BETTER for America and will make my home country better off in the long run! What? Mr. Latter, are you Benedict Arnold, the American traitor, reincarnated?

Let me explain how the US benefits (and China too!) in simple terms ignoring foreign currency transactions, which will just confuse the discussion and cause the student to lose sight of what is really happening:

The first key point is that when Wal-Mart buys the shirts from China for $400 it can only pay China with US dollars. Why? Because Wal-Mart has only US dollars! It has no Chinese currency (Yuan). It literally drains its bank account of US dollars that are transferred/paid to China!

The second key point is that when China receives that same $400 US dollars for the shirts, China cannot, unfortunately, spend any of the $400 in its own economy since only the Yuan is accepted as a medium of exchange in China! China is now forced to either throw the currency away (not advised!), or immediately spend the money back to the USA (advised!).

In summary, China has actually traded a product (shirts!) for paper (US dollars!), and those US dollars cannot be spent in China. For China to receive any value at all for the shirts it sent to America, China must now spend the $400 back into the US economy for, say, a global positioning system (GPS) from FleetMatics out of Waverly, Massachusetts (USA). Cutting through to simplicity, in essence, it’s almost as if Wal-Mart (USA) just paid FleetMatics (USA) $400 directly for the shirts!

Yes, the “punch line” is that all home-currency spending by the domestic nation on foreign products (imports), in turn, are spent right back to the domestic nation increasing the domestic nation’s employment, income, and standard of living. (Note; this is shown in a nation’s balance of payments schedule which always nets to zero, but, yuk, who cares about that right now with summer coming!)

And, yes, let’s not forget that Elon, North Carolina shirt maker that did not get the original $400 from Wal-Mart in our above example! Our nation loves competition (ready for the Olympics?) and I am excited to see if that North Carolina shirt manufacturer can “raise their game” (increase productivity), and hopefully get the next shirt contract from Wal-Mart or some other firm! If not, well, that North Carolina firm may just have to close down.

If you are still reading this post at this point, you may be thinking the following if you have a little economics’ background: “But the US has a growing trade deficit with China, so China may not immediately buy that GPS system from FleetMatics for $400”. And, you are correct, but that is also not a problem for either the United States or China. What China is really doing right now is deciding to temporarily save or invest a minority percentage of their US dollars received back into America in lieu of buying US products. Said another way, China is not buying as many GPS’ as the US is buying shirts and, of course, we call that phenomenon the US trade deficit which immediately seems to speak “problem”. But it is really no problem at all! China is still spending their “saved” US dollars back into the US economy, but in different ways. China is saving and investing some of those US dollars directly into the United States economy by building plants in America, buying US stock to fund American companies’ expansions, and temporarily saving some of their dollars, for future US purchases, by buying US bonds to help the US government pay for the war in Iraq, the war against terrorism, and several other US government initiatives necessitating borrowing. Eventually, China will sell these US bonds and buy that GPS system or build more plants to employ more Americans!

Now one last thing. Promise! Let’s get back to why trade is really so economically advantageous to any nation that pursues it. And by advantageous, I mean how it increases our incomes and standards of living. In one word, the answer is “productivity”. If we go back to the original example of the US buying shirts from China and China taking the US dollars to buy the GPS, we remember that the shirt manufacturer from North Carolina was “left out in the cold” because Wal-Mart did not buy the shirts from them. We can logically conclude that perhaps some Chinese manufacturer of GPS systems was “left out in the cold” because some Chinese business elected to buy from FleetMatics in the USA, and not the Chinese GPS manufacturer. Wow, I love global competition! What a great way to incent businesses in both the USA and China to compete against each other and increase their productivity and conserve our nations’ scarce resources, increase our choice, and lower our costs!

Discussion Questions:

1. Which basic economic principles underly the emergence of international trade as a global economic force.
2. Who are the winners and losers of trade between the US and China as explained above?
3. Why do you think free trade is such a controversial topic among certain groups of Americans an other Western nations’ people?

At $4, Everybody Gets Rational – Washingtonpost.com

Here is another excellent gas price article containing accurate economic principles.

Yes, the non-economist (ie, average citizen) doesn’t get it on how higher gas prices will ultimately lead a nation’s economy to conservation, energy independence and efficiency in the long run.

Hey, I’ll be honest: I don’t like higher gas prices any more than I do going to the dentist, but I am glad they are rising as I see and read about SUV purchases falling off a cliff, driving habits changing right before my very eyes, and the quantity demanded for gasoline falling fast.

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER | Posted Friday, June 06, 2008

So now we know: The price point is $4.

At $3 a gallon, Americans just grin and bear it, suck it up, and, while complaining profusely, keep driving like crazy.

At $4, it is a world transformed. Americans become rational creatures. Mass transit ridership is at a 50-year high. Driving is down 4%. (Any U.S. decline is something close to a miracle.) Hybrids and compacts are flying off the lots. SUV sales are in free fall.

The wholesale flight from gas guzzlers is stunning in its swiftness, but utterly predictable. Everything has a price point. Remember that “love affair” with SUVs? Love, it seems, has its price too.

America’s sudden change in car-buying habits makes suitable mockery of that absurd debate Congress put on last December on fuel efficiency standards. At stake was precisely what miles-per-gallon average would every car company’s fleet have to meet by precisely what date.

It was one out-of-a-hat number (35 mpg) compounded by another (by 2020). It involved, as always, dozens of regulations, loopholes and throws at a dartboard. And we already knew from past history what the fleet average number does.

When oil is cheap and everybody wants a gas guzzler, fuel efficiency standards force manufacturers to make cars that nobody wants to buy. When gas prices go through the roof, this agent of inefficiency becomes an utter redundancy.

At $4 a gallon, the fleet composition is changing spontaneously and overnight, not over the 13 years mandated by Congress. (Even Stalin had the modesty to restrict himself to five-year plans.)

Just Tuesday, GM announced that it would shutter four SUV and truck plants, add a third shift to its compact and midsize sedan plants in Ohio and Michigan, and green-light for 2010 the Chevy Volt, an electric hybrid.

Some things, like renal physiology, are difficult. Some things, like Arab-Israeli peace, are impossible. And some things are preternaturally simple. You want more fuel-efficient cars? Don’t regulate. Don’t mandate. Don’t scold. Don’t appeal to the better angels of our nature. Do one thing:

Hike the cost of gas until you find the price point.

Unfortunately, instead of hiking the price ourselves by means of a gasoline tax that could be instantly refunded to the American people in the form of lower payroll taxes, we let the Saudis, Venezuelans, Russians and Iranians do the taxing for us — and pocket the money that the tax would have recycled back to the American worker.

This is insanity. For 25 years and with utter futility (starting with “The Oil-Bust Panic,” the New Republic, February 1983), I have been advocating the cure: a U.S. energy tax as a way to curtail consumption and keep the money at home.

In May 2004 (and again in November 2005), I called for “the government — through a tax — to establish a new floor for gasoline,” by fully taxing any drop in price below a certain benchmark.

The point was to suppress demand and to keep the savings (from any subsequent world price drop) at home in the U.S. Treasury rather than going abroad. At the time, oil was $41 a barrel. It is now $123.

But instead of doing the obvious — tax the damn thing — we go through spasms of destructive alternatives, such as efficiency standards, ethanol mandates and now a crazy carbon cap-and-trade system the Senate debated last week. These are infinitely complex mandates for inefficiency and invitations to corruption. But they have a singular virtue: They hide the cost to the American consumer.

Want to wean us off oil? Be open and honest. The British are paying $8 a gallon for petrol. Goldman Sachs is predicting we will be paying $6 by next year. Why have the extra $2 (above the current $4) go abroad? Have it go to the U.S. Treasury as a gasoline tax and be recycled back into lower payroll taxes.

Announce a schedule of gas tax hikes of 50 cents every six months for the next two years. And put a tax floor under $4 gasoline, so that as high gas prices transform the U.S. auto fleet, change driving habits and thus hugely reduce U.S. demand — and bring down world crude oil prices — the American consumer and the American economy reap all of the benefit.

Herewith concludes my annual exercise in futility. By the time I advocate the tax floor again next year, you’ll be paying for gas in bullion.

One of the many reasons that I find the study of economics so fascinating is that what so often appears to be a negative situation to the average citizen is actually a positive one. In other words: “down is often up” and “black is often white”. One of my favorite examples of this “180 degree moment”, and why I love to teach AP Macroeconomics, relates to the study of unemployment.

Foreign Policy: Why We Trade

Professor Russ Roberts, host of the EconTalk podcast, has an essay in the latest issues of Foreign Policy journal titled “Why We Trade”. In this piece, Roberts defends the benefits of trade from a broad perspective, beyond the popular political view of trade, usually along the lines of “exports, good – imports, bad”. Roberts compares this line of thinking (characteristic of presidential candidates of both the Republican and Democratic parties), to the 14th century, pre-Adam Smith view of world trade, known as mercantilism.

Mercantilism was a view of global economic interaction that placed emphasis on the accumulation of gold and other precious metals from abroad in exchange for your country’s exports. The doctrine failed to recognize the importance of imports from abroad, as this was viewed as a loss of wealth to foreigners. Mercantilists viewed wealth in terms of bullion or the amount of precious metals a country owned. Today, of course, our understanding of wealth has evolved to account for the amount of output, or products (goods and services), we are able to consume. Herein lies the flaw in the rhetoric of modern politicians who, “are always talking about the necessity of other countries’ opening their markets to American products. They never mention the virtues of opening U.S. markets to foreign products.”

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