James Pethokoukis

How will today’s terrible earthquake and tsunami affect Japan’s economy, not to mention those of other global economies? After spending all day reviewing a bunch of academic research, the verdict remains unclear. For instance,  simulations run by the Inter-American Development Bank find only the biggest disasters have an  impact. Take disasters in the 99th percentile:

The 99th percentile cutoff is equivalent to a natural disaster that kills more than 233 people per million inhabitants. Although the number is large, many recent large events have exceeded this rate. For example, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami killed 772 people per million inhabitants in Indonesia, and almost 2,000 per million inhabitants in Sri Lanka. Moreover, by the latest accounts, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti killed over 20,000 people per million inhabitants (see Cavallo, Powell and Becerra (2010))

For these types of disaster, the economic drag is persistent:

But smaller, though still devastating disaster show little economic impact:

The study’s conclusion:

Contrary to previous work, we find that natural disasters, even when we focus only on the effects of the largest events, do not have any significant effect on subsequent economic growth. Indeed, the only two cases where we found that truly large natural disasters were followed by an important decline in GDP per capita were cases where the natural disaster was followed, though in one case not immediately, by radical political revolution, which severely affected the institutional organization of society.

But a highly regarded 2002 study that tracked disasters in 89 countries for 30 years came to a different conclusion, as summarized by the IADB:

Skidmore and Toya (2002) explain their somewhat counterintuitive finding by suggesting that disasters may be speeding up the Schumpeterian “creative destruction” process that is at the heart of the development of market economies. Cuaresma et al. (2008) attempt to investigate this creative destruction hypothesis empirically by closely examining the evolution of R&D from foreign origin and how it is affected by catastrophic risk. They conclude that the creative destruction dynamic most likely only occurs in countries with high per capita income.

This make some sense to me.  This is not the Broken Windows Fallacy where the repair of damage is thought to boost growth. That sort of thing is just redistributing economic activity and is at best is a wash. But if a disaster is a catalyst for better infrastructure or less regulation to promote rebuilding, S&T could be correct.  (Of course, it is worth noting that Japan already has great infrastructure after spending like crazy to boost economic output the past two decades. Plus there is the issue of taking on more debt by a highly indebted country.)

The US has the second highest corporate tax rate among advanced economies. But maybe not for long. Tell the people the bad news, Reuters:

Japan’s ruling Democratic Party will seek a reduction in corporate tax to encourage economic growth as part of its platform in upcoming upper house elections, Japanese business daily Nikkei reported on Saturday. Without citing any sources, the daily said the Democrats want to cut corporate tax in order to increase the global competitiveness of Japanese companies. Rates charged to Japanese firms are high compared with other countries, Nikkei reported. Japan’s corporate tax is around 40 percent, about 10 to 15 percentage points higher than taxes in EU nations and countries like neighbouring South Korea, it said.

Scott Hodge of the Tax Foundation finds this peculiar:

On the same day that Japan’s Nikkei business daily is reporting that the Japanese “government is aiming to cut tax on company earnings by five percentage points next fiscal year,” the Wall Street Journal is reporting that “Democrats are trying to boost their political fortunes ahead of this year’s midterm elections by attacking corporate tax rules they say encourage U.S. multinationals to send jobs overseas.”

Me: What the US should be doing is putting a long-range deficit reduction plan into place and then boosting growth through cuts in corporate and capital tax rates.

Good sense from Michael Auslin in The American:

Just like today with China, pundits, investors, and the media largely proclaimed that the Japanese party would go on forever. Today, the sophisticated management of the Chinese government is offered as proof that China will always experience growth (or if contraction, a soft landing). Back in the 1980s, Japanese companies were assumed to have discovered the secret to hyper-efficient production and thus endless profits, while the country’s bureaucrats were lauded as perfect macro-planners. Inefficiencies, protected industries, poor management, and a sclerotic bureaucracy were all ignored by those who wanted to believe the hype. Yet such weaknesses were exacerbated by a culture of excess that destroyed consumer reality. Once it took root in Japan, expectations changed permanently and traditional restraint was abandoned. The savings rate dropped, and people paid exorbitant amounts for new houses and cars. I remember watching as whole parties in Tokyo restaurants walked away from tables full of food that was ordered and then left to be thrown away. The economics fed and then followed the social disease. Eventually, the asset bubble burst and the whole edifice came crashing down.

In the 1982 sci-fi film “Blade Runner,” it appears as if Japan is the world’s leading economy and culture. It is a cinematic portrayal of the future sketched by many economists in the 1980s who wanted America to adopt Japanese-style industrial policy. But America may yet have an economy that resembles Japan’s. This NY Times story looks at how Japan amassed such a huge national debt, twice the size of its economy:

How Japan got into such a deep hole, and kept digging, is a tale of reckless spending.

The country poured hundreds of billions of dollars into civil engineering projects in the postwar era, marbling Japan with highways, dams and ports.

The spending initially fueled Japan’s rapid postwar growth and kept the Liberal Democratic Party in power for most of the last half-century. But after a spectacular asset and stock market boom collapsed in 1990, the country fell into a long economic malaise.

The Democratic Party, which swept to victory in August, promises to rein in public works spending. But the party’s generous welfare agenda — like cash support to families with children and free high schools — could ultimately enlarge budget deficits.

“It’s dangerous for the Democrats to push on with all of their policies when tax revenues are so low,” said Chotaro Morita, head of fixed-income strategy at Barclays Capital Japan. “From a global perspective, Japan’s debt ratio is way off the charts,” he said.

David Rosenberg draws an uncomfortable parallel:

Speaking of Japan, and we say this because the U.S. is following a very similar post-credit collapse pattern, we note that the Nikkei posted six 20%+ rallies since its bubble burst in 1990 and no fewer than four 50%+ rallies.  … So actually there is nothing in this flashy move off the lows in the S&P 500 that is inconsistent with a pattern of a bear market rally — this is not the onset of a whole new sustainable bull market.  … They are not premised on improved fundamentals, despite data that are skewed to the upside by rampant government intervention. Just remember, nobody built more bridges or paved more river beds to skew the economic data than the LDP did in Japan for much of the 1990s. With U.S. T-bill yields close to zero, as they were in Japan, we have at least one market — the money market — that sees what we see, which is an economic outlook fraught with fragility, as is typically the case after a secular credit expansion moves shifts into reverse.