BERKELEY – The first two
components of the euro crisis – a banking crisis that resulted from
excessive leverage in both the public and private sectors, followed by a
sharp fall in confidence in eurozone governments – have been addressed
successfully, or at least partly so. But that leaves the third,
longest-term, and most dangerous factor underlying the crisis: the
structural imbalance between the eurozone’s north and south. Illustration by Chris Van Es
First,
the good news: The fear that Europe’s banks could collapse, with
panicked investors’ flight to safety producing a European Great
Depression, now seems to have passed. Likewise, the fear, fueled
entirely by the European Union’s dysfunctional politics, that eurozone
governments might default – thereby causing the same dire consequences –
has begun to dissipate.
Whether
Europe would avoid a deep depression hinged on whether it dealt
properly with these two aspects of the crisis. But whether Europe as a
whole avoids lost decades of economic growth still hangs in the balance,
and depends on whether southern European governments can rapidly
restore competitiveness.
The
process by which southern Europe became uncompetitive in the first
place was driven by market price signals – by the incentives those
signals created for entrepreneurs, and by how entrepreneurs’
individually rational responses played out in macroeconomic terms.
Northern Europeans with money to invest were willing to lend on
extraordinarily easy terms to those in the south who wanted to spend,
and ample pre-2007 spending made employers there willing to raise wages
rapidly.
As
a result, southern Europe adopted an economic configuration in which
its wage, price, and productivity levels made sense only so long as it
spent €13 for every €12 that it earned, with northern Europe financing
the missing euro. Northern Europe, meanwhile, adopted wage and
productivity levels that made sense only as long as it spent less than
one euro for every euro that it earned.
Now,
if, as appears to be the case, Europe does not want its south to spend
more than it earns and its north to spend less, wages, prices, and
productivity must shift. If we are not to look back in a generation and
bemoan “lost” decades, southern European productivity levels need to
rise relative to the north, and wage and price levels need to fall by
roughly 30%, so that the south can pay its way with exports and northern
Europe can spend its earnings on those products.
If the euro is to be preserved, and if stagnation is to be avoided, five policy measures could be attempted:
·
Northern Europe could tolerate higher inflation – an extra two
percentage points for five years would take care of one-third of the
total north-south adjustment;
Northern Europe could expand social democracy by making its welfare states more lavish;
Southern Europe could shrink its taxes and social services substantially;
Southern Europe could reconfigure its enterprises to become engines of productivity;
· Southern Europe could enforce deflation.
The
fifth option is perhaps the least wise, for it implies the lost decades
and EU collapse that Europe is trying to avoid. The fourth option would
be wonderful; but, if anyone knew how to bring southern Europe's
enterprises up to the productivity levels of the north, it would have
happened already.
So
we are left with a combination of the first three options, also known
as “policies to restore European growth” – a phrase that appears in
every international communiqué. But the communiqués never get more
specific. Europe’s technocrats understand what adoption of “policies to
restore European growth” means. So do some of Europe’s politicians. But
European voters do not, because politicians fear that spelling it out
would be a career-limiting move.
But
if Europe does not adopt some combination of the first three options as
policy goals over the next five years, it will face a stark choice:
either lost decades for southern Europe (and perhaps northern Europe as
well), or continued north-south payment imbalances that will have to be
financed through fiscal transfers – that is, by taxing the north.
Northern
Europe’s politicians should become more explicit about what “policies
to restore European growth” actually mean. Otherwise, ten years from
now, they will be forced to confess that today’s dithering imposed
enormous additional tax liabilities on northern Europe. That might turn
out to be the ultimate career bummer.
