Category: Economic Growth

60 Years after the 2nd Five-Year Plan: On Economic Theory, Planning & Policy

Picking up Ajit Dasgupta’s A History of Indian Economic Thought (1993) motivated me to revisit India’s 2nd Five Year plan (1956-61) and the Mahalanobis model in light of the structural changes in India’s economy and developments in economic theory, particularly of demand-led growth theory. Although 60 years have passed since the inception of the 2nd Five Year plan, the ‘Approach to the Second Five Year Plan’ contains ideas which are particularly important today, especially after the closure of the Planning Commission. In its place, we now have the NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog which assumes that Indian manufacturing and service sectors are currently operating ‘on a global scale’ and what is now needed is ‘an administration paradigm in which the government is an “enabler” rather than a “provider of first and last resort”‘ (see Cabinet Secretariat resolution, 1 January 2015).

Why economics’

Economics is the study of commodities ‘ its production, distribution and consumption. Economics provides us with the determinants of aggregate production (GDP), employment, and income distribution. This allows us to understand our economic surroundings better and consequently enables us to improve existing economic conditions. This may be carried out through general economic policies (for example, progressive taxation to reduce income and wealth inequalities and monetary policy to combat inflation) or through targeted economic policies (for example, fertilizer subsidies to improve agricultural productivity and tax concessions to foreign investors). Ultimately, economic interventions are made based on an assumption and several aims. The assumption is that economic theory tells us how economies function. The interventions are carried out to satisfy certain normative aims (for example, equity and freedom). This distinction is made in textbooks by distinguishing between positive and normative economics. For instance, if a particular society is not uncomfortable with unemployment its economic policies would not be aimed at reducing unemployment.

Objectives of the 2nd Five Year Plan

In this section, the economic objectives of the 2nd Five Year Plan are presented. All excerpts from the 2nd Five Year Plan are taken from here.

‘The current levels of living in India are very low. Production is insufficient even for satisfying the minimum essential needs of the population’.’ Therefore, it was imperative to increase aggregate production. But, the economic architects of the plan did not visualize money as an end in itself.

‘A rising standard of life, or material welfare as it is sometimes called, is of course not an end in itself. Essentially, it is a means to a better intellectual and cultural life. A society which has to devote the bulk of its working force or its working hours to the production of the bare wherewithals of life is to that extent limited in its pursuit of higher ends.’

Moreover, economic policy was aimed at an increase in activity levels and ‘also in greater equality in incomes and wealth.’

The Plan Document clearly favours social gain over private gain. In other words, private enterprise was regulated such that the economic yields benefitted all. To put it differently, a recognition of negative externalities was present.

‘The private sector has to play its part within the framework of the comprehensive plan accepted by the community. ‘ Private enterprise, free pricing, private management are all devices to further what are truly social ends; they can only be justified in terms of social results.’

More clearly,

‘Economic objectives cannot be divorced from social objectives and means and objectives go together. It is only in the context of a plan which satisfies the legitimate urges of the people that a democratic society can put forward its best effort.’

The Plan Document also recognized the dual nature of urbanization ‘ that economies of scale have both positive economic externalities and negative environmental externalities.

The 2nd Five Year Plan on economic inequality

The 2nd Five Year Plan clearly recognized that the gains from economic development are skewed and trickle down is not automatic. For the gains from economic development to be inclusive, two institutions have to be strong: trade unions and the democratic state.

‘The gains of development accrue in the early stages to a small class of businessmen and manufacturers, whereas the immediate impact of the application of new techniques in agriculture and in traditional industry has often meant growing unemployment or under-employment among large numbers of people. In course of time this trend gets corrected partly through the development of countervailing power of trade unions and partly through state action undertaken in response to the growth of democratic ideas.’

There is a passage similar to Thomas Piketty’s view on wealth inequalities and the role of progressive taxation in reducing such inequalities in the document.

‘The most important single factor responsible for inequalities of income and wealth is the ownership of property. Incomes from work are by no means equal, but in part at any rate, they have some justification in terms of productivity or relative scarcity. Some types of work are, however, remunerated more liberally than others for reasons which are not directly connected with productivity. Differential monetary rewards are often a matter of tradition an existing psychological or social rigidities. It has also to be borne in mind that capacity to work effectively at higher levels depends on a person’s education and training, and these are a matter of the accident of birth or circumstances. A large expansion of general and technical education for all classes of people irrespective of their paying capacity is over a period a potent equaliser. The point is that while inequalities in incomes from work have to be corrected, the case for taxation based specifically on wealth or property needs to be carefully examined.’

India needs to seriously consider a tax on wealth given the wide disparities of income and wealth. The connection between ‘productivity’ and ‘social rigidities’ is noteworthy and requires to be addressed through labour laws, education policy, food policy, employment policy and so on.

The core of the 2nd Five Year Plan: the Mahalanobis model

From the previous paragraphs, we can state the following as the normative economic aims of the 2nd Five Year Plan: (1) expansion of output and employment opportunities, (2) reduction of income inequalities, and (3) inclusive economic growth and development. The economic core of the 2nd Five Year Plan is constituted by the Mahalanobis model. As Ajit Dasgupta writes in A History of Indian Economic Thought, ‘The purpose of the model was to determine the optimal allocation of investment between different productive sectors so as to maximise long-run economic growth in India’ (p. 164). In other words, the aim of this model is to increase the pace of aggregate economic activity in India.

The Mahalanobis model is a two-sector model with a capital goods and a consumption goods sector. The model tells us how the resources are to be distributed between these two sectors such that maximum economic growth is achieved. Note that the then production was insufficient to meet the basic needs of the Indian populace. There are inter-sectoral relations due to which one sector cannot exist (or grow) without the other. To produce consumption goods, capital goods are required. For the workers and capitalists in both sectors, consumption goods are needed. Employing the Mahalanobis model is to some extent vindicated because the model assumes ‘capital to be the effective constraint on output’ and India lacked good physical infrastructure.

Note also that this model assumes that there are no demand constraints. As Dasgupta writes, ‘The higher the proportion of investment (i.e. of the current output of capital goods) that is allocated to the further production of capital goods, the higher the long-run growth rate of output’ (p. 165). The dual character of investment is not clearly understood for investment creates productive capacity and is a component of aggregate demand. Logically, a solution can be found such that the addition to capacity is validated by the demand generated but it is a knife-edge equilibrium as in Harrod.

Dasgupta points out that the Mahalanobis model has been criticized ‘for being concerned exclusively with investment and for identifying investment with the production of capital goods’ (p. 165). Yes, demand constraints and human capital investment are ignored. Another criticism of the model has been its neglect of foreign trade (p. 166). However, the model could be modified easily to account for foreign investment and consumption whereas the incorporation of demand constrains and human capital would not be easy.

Conclusion: the relevance of economic planning

Since the 2nd Five Year Plan, much time has passed and the Indian economy has undergone several changes. Developments have taken place in economic theory too, particularly in the areas of economic growth and development. While the Mahalanobis model has its limitations, the normative aims of the 2nd Five Year Plan are still valuable today. The expansion of employment opportunities needs to be at the forefront of any macroeconomic or growth strategy. As written in the 2nd Five Year Plan, ‘From the economic as well as from the larger social view point, expansion of employment opportunities is an objective which claims high priority’. However, NITI Aayog, the successor to the Planning Commission works within ‘an administration paradigm in which the government is an “enabler” rather than a “provider of first and last resort”‘. The market cannot be expected to provide accessible and good quality education, health, housing and living environments to all. With existing economic and social inequalities, the need for economic planning is even more. Social costs require to be assessed and not ignored in the name of economic efficiency and economic growth.

An economic planner ought to know the implicit assumptions and scope of economic theories and be knowledgeable about legal and institutional constraints of policy implementation. The economic planner must therefore be an excellent economist and an experienced bureaucrat.

Summers, Secular Stagnation and Aggregate Demand Deficiency

The foundations of a coherent theory of activity levels were first put forth by Kalecki and Keynes in the 1930s. Their economic theory states that an economy’s output levels are determined by aggregate demand and that there are no economic forces which ensure full employment of labour or the full utilization of capacity. In other words, aggregate supply adapts to aggregate demand. This principle was then extended to the question of economic growth, most notably by Roy Harrod. Subsequent work in this line of enquiry suggests that growth is demand led, as opposed to the mainstream/neoclassical view of economic growth as supply driven.

The idea of secular stagnation, recently articulated and advocated by Larry Summers, will be critically appraised in this blog post amidst the above backdrop. Here, we almost exclusively focus on Summers’ 2014 paper in Business Economics titled ‘U.S. Economic Prospects: Secular Stagnation, Hysteresis, and the Zero Lower Bound’. The principle (also simultaneously a policy prescription) of secular stagnation can be stated as follows: since interest rates have reached their lower bounds and aggregate activity levels are depressed, the solution is expansionary fiscal policy. Why are aggregate activity levels depressed’ Secular stagnation suggests that negative fluctuations re-quilibrate the economy to a position characterised by lower output and employment levels. Moreover, ‘the amplitude of fluctuation appears large, not small’ (p. 65).

Macroeconomic equilibrium is characterised by equality between actual and potential output. According to Summers, ‘essentially all of the convergence between the economy’s level of output and its potential has been achieved not through the economy’s growth, but through downward revisions in its potential.’ (p. 66) This is because of aggregate demand insufficiency. ‘The largest part [of the downward trend in potential] is associated with reduced capital investment, followed closely by reduced labor input.’ (p. 66) To put it differently, aggregate demand deficiency leads to the unemployment (and underemployment) of labour and underutilization of capacity.

Despite Summers’ correct identification of the problem, his marginalist conceptualization forces him to connect this with the ‘equilibrium or normal real rate of interest’ which equilibrates saving and investment. As a consequence, he argues that a ‘significant shift in the natural balance between savings and investment’ (p. 69) has occurred. This post will only state that the idea of the rate of interest being sufficiently sensitive to changes in planned saving and investment is one that has been severely criticized and rightly so. [A follow-up post will examine this matter more closely.]

Towards the end of the paper, Summers makes a point which Keynes (and Kalecki) made in the 1930s: ‘We are seeing very powerfully a kind of inverse Say’s Law. Say’s Law was the proposition that supply creates its own demand. Here, we are observing that lack of demand creates its own lack of supply’ (p. 71). However, Summers states this as a contingent principle and not a general proposition as it is in Keynes (or Kalecki). This is not surprising given Summers’ economics being marginalist in nature.

Therefore, since demand creates its supply, Summers advocates public investments and vocally states the counterproductive nature of fiscal austerity. Furthermore, he hypothesises that ‘increases in demand actually reduce the long run debt-to-GDP ratio’ (p. 73). Lastly, he favours policy measures which place ‘substantial emphasis on increasing demand as a means of achieving adequate economic growth.’

On the Determinants of Investment

It is well known that an economy’s output levels and employment levels are determined by the level of investment. The popular story presented in mainstream textbooks and taught in conventional courses is that of planned saving adapting to planned investment, with the rate of interest as the equilibrating factor. This is the supply-side vision of the economy wherein demand can never be a constraint except temporarily due to frictions or imperfections. Additionally, this view reaches the conclusion that that there is a tendency to full-employment in capitalist economies. This blog post revisits the saving-investment relationship, the investment function and the link between the rate of interest and investment. Given the crucial role investment plays in an economy, it is important that we critically appraise its determinants.

By investment, economists mean the purchase of capital goods and not financial assets. Saving refers to the income that is not consumed. Saving is a leakage from the economy while investment is an injection. Marginalist (neoclassical) economics maintains that planned saving and planned investment are equilibrated through variations in the rate of interest which is assumed to be sufficiently sensitive to any saving-investment disequilibrium. Planned saving is a positive function of the rate of interest while planned investment is a negative function of the rate of interest. When planned saving is in excess of planned investment, there is excess savings which puts a downward pressure on the rate of interest and vice versa. However, is such an a priori functional link between the rate of interest and the rate of accumulation a correct one’ The 1960s capital theory debate demonstrates the implausibility of an interest-elastic investment function on logical grounds. Also, in a world where the rate of interest is set by monetary policy (and therefore exogenous to the saving-investment process) it is unclear how it can play the role of an equilibrating force as suggested by marginalist economics.

The non-orthodox approach to activity levels and growth draws inspiration from the principle of effective demand of Kalecki and Keynes. The investment function is not interest-elastic in this theoretical approach, also called the demand-led approach. Here, investment depends on ‘the future expected level of effective demand (D+1), which tells us how much capacity firms will need, and on the current technical conditions of production (represented in this simple model by the normal capital-output ratio)” (Serrano 1995: 78; available freely here). In this simple model, note that production is assumed to be carried out with circulating capital only. So, I = aD+1 where a is the capital-output ratio. A change in technology will affect the capital-output ratio, which indicates how much of capital is required to produce one unit of output. Further, we make the realistic assumption that firms do not systematically err in their expectations. The expectations of firms of course depend on policy certainty. Policy uncertainty affects consumption and investment decisions in an adverse manner.

As a matter of fact, a recent IMF working paper‘on the situation of India provides partial support to the demand-led approach. They note: ‘Real interest rates account for only one quarter of the explained investment slowdown.’ For them, the key factor is policy uncertainty, but, the demand-led growth theorists, I think, will advocate the examination of the exact mechanisms through which monetary and/or fiscal policies have deterred investment. Without explaining further in this blog post, the answer might be found in the manner in which autonomous elements of demand such as autonomous consumption, research & development expenditures, government expenditures and foreign expenditures are affected by policy uncertainty. To conclude, it is time that the interest-elastic investment function is seriously questioned both on theoretical and empirical grounds, and subsequently discarded.

Some Thoughts on Debt: The Indian Case

Any entity, private or public, needs to borrow if its expenditure exceeds its income. The difference between expenditure and income will then be the volume of debt. This post discusses the following: the meaning and role of debt, a brief overview of various kinds of debt, the fundamental difference between private and public debt, the structure of the Indian debt market, corporate debt and government debt in India. The post ends with some reflections and suggestions.

It is public or government debt which receives maximum attention in the media and rightly so.’ Some of the other kinds of debt are external debt (the proportion of a country’s debt borrowed from foreign lenders), household debt and corporate debt. Households borrow money in order to meet various needs such as the purchase of assets, for purposes of education, for medical expenses, etc. Corporate debt refers to the excess of expenditure over income which is financed through borrowing (via issuance of bonds and debentures) by the private non-bank sector. In India, besides these different kinds of debt, agricultural indebtedness has received significant attention from academics, policy makers and political agents. A market for credit is important not just for long-term asset purchases or constructing plants but it is also important for daily business transactions, and today, also for usual consumption needs. One needs only to look at the booming credit card industry for confirmation.

There is an overwhelming tendency to impose rules of finance employed by households on the government. This is fallacious. As individuals, we try to live within our means; we borrow reluctantly. Agricultural farmers, industrial firms and service providers need to borrow too. For, it is unlikely that every person who wants to start an enterprise will possess the required funds. If that were so, the meaning of entrepreneurship would have been different from what we know it to be. Similarly, for a government (central, state or local), which is expected to conduct policies which have social and environmental benefits, it becomes necessary to borrow. Taxation incomes are seldom sufficient to meet the recurring and capital expenditure of the government. Moreover, social programmes relating to education, employment, environment, food and health have very long gestation periods. The point is that government bodies (Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation to name a few) are not profit-maximizing bodies; but, this does not imply that they can be inefficient or irresponsible. By virtue of the fact that they are democratic bodies and because their incomes and borrowing are mainly from households (the voters), it is imperative that their functioning is transparent and organizationally efficient. Government borrowing or public debt is not, or rather, should not be, synonymous with organizational inefficiency.

The sovereign debt in India is issued by the Central and State government. The instruments include Treasury bills, Index bonds and zero coupon bonds. Government agencies, public sector undertakings (PSUs) and government owned banks issue debt instruments ‘ bonds, debentures, commercial paper (CP) and certificate of deposit (CD). The private sector comprising the non-bank corporate sector and private sector banks issue bonds, debentures, CPs and CDs. In advanced economies, the debt market is the preferred route for raising funds. However, in India, the equity market is more preferred than the debt market, and government securities dominate the Indian debt market. [For more details, see the 2004 SEBI working paper no. 9 titled ‘Corporate Debt Market in India: Key Issues and Some Policy Recommendations’. Conditions are changing and more corporate debt is being issued, as a more recent (2013) CRISIL document indicates.]

A 2013 Credit Suisse report on India’s financial sector pointed out the high growth in the debt levels of ten corporate groups ‘ Lanco, Reliance ADA, GVK, Jaypee, Adani Enterprise, Essar, GMR, KSW and Vedanta. Despite profitability pressures, their debt levels rose between 2012 and 2013. Also, 40-70% of the loans are foreign currency denominated. Delays in their planned projects can cause further strain on their cash flows and therefore on their debt servicing ability. Some of them have undertaken asset sales, but they have proved insufficient. Indian banks need to be concerned as well; although, majority of the non-performing assets (NPAs) are from agriculture and small & medium enterprises (SMEs). In 2014, the International Monetary Fund sounded a warning too.

The debt-to-GDP ratio is more important than debt levels themselves. Why is this so’ This is because an economy whose GDP is growing faster than its growth in debt will not face the problem of repayment. However, if the GDP grows at a smaller pace than debt growth, the economy will not have adequate surplus (aggregate output net of replacement) to repay the debt. This is what we mean by debt sustainability. In early 2014, the credit rating agency, Moody’s warned that India’s sovereign rating can be affected due to the slowdown in growth and high inflation. [In so far as public authorities, via the central bank, can create money ex nihilo, debt can always be repaid (referred to as monetising the debt). However, this is the case if and only if the public debt is denominated in the local currency. In India, most of the public debt accrues to Indians and is therefore denominated in Rupees.] The following chart compares debt-to-GDP ratio of India with three advanced economies ‘ Australia, UK and US.

 

Data from World Bank

Clearly, advanced economies have different debt-to-GDP ratios (also see this link for data on OECD countries). In short, there is no economic reason why a high debt-to-GDP ratio is bad for the economy; it is the growth in the debt-to-GDP ratio that must be closely monitored and appropriate measures undertaken to ensure that the economy grows at a faster pace than the growth in debt. As previously noted, government expenditure on education, environment and health have long-term positive benefits (significant positive externalities). Over time, these expenditures will boost economic growth and will therefore aid in debt repayments. Of course, the returns from any investment ‘ private or public, depend on the effectiveness of the project undertaken such that they generate the expected yields.

The financial liabilities of the household sector have also risen over time, due to the attractive home loans and increased ease of obtaining credit cards. All economic agents ‘ be it households, corporate bodies or the government, often (and have to) resort to borrowing. This post has shown that the borrowings undertaken by the Indian household sector, the Indian corporate sector and the Indian government have grown over the years. This, per se, is, and should not be a cause of immediate concern. However, this does warrant a more detailed analysis of the ability of the Indian government to make debt repayments, which hinge crucially on the rate at which the Indian economy grows and its rate of inflation. A serious macroeconomic analysis, perhaps based on the economics of Domar, Keynes and Lerner is in order.