Ceturtdiena, 18. marts
Autors: Kristaps Kalns, Diena
Edmunds Krastiņš (TP) tiek minēts kā viens no konferences rīkotājiem. Viņš nav izslēdzis iespēju, ka Latvija var nonākt pie jautājuma par lata devalvāciju. Arī partijas dibinātājs Andris Šķēle ir mudinājis sabiedrību diskutēt par lata devalvācijas nepieciešamību.
Vienus no pēdējā laika lielākajiem politiskajiem satricinājumiem radījusī Tautas partija (TP) plāno rīkot konferenci par ekonomikas un tautsaimniecības jautājumiem, Dienai atzina vairāki partijas valdes locekļi. Viņi uzsver, ka pagaidām partijas valdē lēmums konferenci rīkot nav pieņemts, taču vienlaikus partijas vārdā jau izsūtīti aicinājumi piedalīties plānotajā konferencē. Viens no uzrunātajiem bijis lata devalvāciju atbalstošais britu ekonomists Edvards Hjū. Tieši no TP politiķu mutes līdz šim izskanējuši mudinājumi diskutēt par iespēju devalvēt nacionālo valūtu, lai arī virkne ekonomistu un Latvijas Banka norādījuši uz šī soļa postošajām sekām.
"Valde par konferenci neko nav lēmusi. Ja lems par konferences rīkošanu, es atbalstīšu," sacīja TP valdes vadītāja Kristiāna Lībane-Šķēle. Ekonomika esot šābrīža aktuālākais temats, tāpēc esot loģiski, ka par to diskutē konferencē. TP preses sekretārs Arno Pjatkins runāja izvairīgi par iespējamo konferences rīkošanu. Savukārt ekspremjers Aigars Kalvītis (TP) jau pārliecinoši sacīja: "Protams, ka piedalīšos šajā konferencē!" TP frakcijas vadītājs Māris Kučinskis atgādināja, ka agrāk tādas konferences rīkotas regulāri.
Dienai neizdevās sazināties ar vienu no TP vadošajiem ekonomistiem Edmundu Krastiņu, kas pēc avīzes rīcībā esošās informācijas ir sācis sākotnējo sagatavošanas darbu. "Par organizatoriskajiem jautājumiem izteikties šobrīd nav pamata," gan uzsvēra K.Lībane-Šķēle. Taču Dienas rīcībā nonākusī sarakste starp E.Krastiņu un E.Hjū liecina par pretējo. "Vēlos jūs uzaicināt piedalīties konferencē par Latvijas krīzes risinājumiem. Konference notiks 29.augustā Rīgā, un to organizē viena no valdošajām koalīcijas partijām," raksta E.Krastiņš, uzteikdams ekonomista ieinteresētību par Latvijā notiekošo. E.Hjū, kurš sevi dēvē par lata devalvācijas aizstāvi, tomēr atteicies piedalīties, uzsverot, ka vēlas saglabāt politisko neitralitāti. Tāpat, lai arī viņš uzskatot, ka Latvijai jau pērn bija jādevalvē lats, tagad tas radītu papildu sarežģījumus.
Partijas iekšienē par lata devalvāciju varētu būt atšķirīga nostāja. Tā partijas līderis Mareks Segliņš jūnijā pēc tikšanās ar Latvijas Bankas prezidentu Ilmāru Rimšēviču paziņoja, ka jautājums par lata devalvāciju ir "noņemts no dienas kārtības", lai arī iepriekš, tāpat kā partijas "tēvs" Andris Šķēle, bija mudinājis diskutēt par šo jautājumu.
Ekonomists Vjačeslavs Dombrovskis pieļauj, ka uz šādu rīcību TP mudina pašreizējais stāvoklis: "Tautas partija jūt, ka tai stratēģiski kaut kas jādara, jo visi to vaino pie krīzes.
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Tautas partijas krīzes un tuvojošamies gala konference - tas būtu precīzāk.
Man taču parādi latos... kā jūs to nesaprotat ka devalvācija IR VAJADZĪGA!!!
Ko Tu sloga melo! Kurš ekonomists devalvāciju neatbalsta? Pašmāju "speciālisti"? Politikāņi? Palasi jebkuru starptautisku izdevumu - The Economist,Wall street journal, Financial Times, The Times ( tie ir tikai angliski rakstošie) , visi uzskata , ka viss šis teātris ir tikai ar vineu nolūku paglābt skandināvu finašu sistēmu , paglābt austumeiropu no satricinājuma, tā sacīt lokalizēt sprādzienu Latvijā( diemžēl ķēdes vājākais posms). Uz mūsu visu rēķina! Idiotisms
" Tautas partija (TP) plāno rīkot konferenci par ekonomikas un tautsaimniecības jautājumiem" - tas skan forši , tikai nekādi nespēju izprast ,kapēc pēdējo sešu gadu laikā TP esot pie teikšanas nav īstenojusi savas idejas dzīvē. Cik atceros , tad tautsaimniecības izaugsme pārsvarā tika zīmēta uz kredītu līdzekļu notrallināšanu celtniecības projektos ,kas mūs iedzina inflācijas virpulī un lielā mērā šībrīža situācijā. Ko ģeniālu mums gatavi likt priekšā TP vadoņi - ideju par lata devalvāciju?
drīz viņi varēs lemt paši savā starpā, kas un ko.
rudenī visiem pendelis un pa Saeimas durvīm laukā___
vadošā partija
khe...
Tad lūdzu paskaidro ,ko devalvācija dos Latvijas gadījumā.
Apžēļiņ! Paši uztaisīja krahu, tagad taisīs visādus bazārus un PR, lai nu šos bandītus tauta patur "gaišā piemiņā"...labāk lai šitie mudaki atriež valstij un tautai nolaupīto, lai Šķēle izpurina savus ofšorus.
Polītiskie līķi grib sanākt kopā. Labi.
Vjačeslavs Dombrovskis ir partijas Jaunlatvija aktīvists, lai gan ofociāli partijā nav iestājies, bet piedalās tās programmātisko nostādņu izstrādē, apmeklē tās saietus. Bija jāmin, ka viņš ir saistīts ar Jaunlatviju. Nav viņš nekāds neitrāls eksperts vairs.
Tautas partijai ir jāpadzen Jaunais laiks lai nesavāra atkal ziepes,kā ar banku Baltija -vēl atceraties
Izskatās, ka šī pasākuma vienīgais mērķis ir taisīt troksni devalvācijas virzienā.
cik atceros šis brašais vīrelis-tobiš krastiņš vadīja rīgas attīstības komiteju, gadā saņēma par 25 amatu ieņemšanu pāri 100 000 latiņiem, faktiski nāss nāsī cīnījās ar otru amatu rekordisti gulbi par kompetentākā un neaizvietojamākā latvijas republikas valstsvīra statusu..
mūžīgi pārgudrs un neiecietīgs pret citiem viedokļiem, beidza kā korupcijā apsūdzēts un izmests no rd...
te pēdējās dienās ir aktuāla tēma par ģenitāliju spiešanu durvju stenderē..šeit faktiski būtu ko spiest un tā pastipri..
No malas skatoties TP ir zināmā panikā, apvainojušies uz visiem, kas apkārt, lielmanīgi utt. Cilvēki ir sevi izsmēluši, jo sakarīgas idejas vairs pasniegt nespēj. Gribēšana ir (vai pareizāk doma, ka mums taču jābūt ietekmīgiem), bet varēšana iztrūkst, tāpēc arī seko pilnīgi neadekvāti lēmumi.
Šis pasākums atgādina vecas prostitūtas mēģinājumus uzdoties par pieprasītu preci.
Vai uz to konferenci jāierodas ar vainagiem sēru noformējumā, vai krīzes dēļ var tāpat ar melnu lentīti ap kaklu???
Apsveicu! Gada komentārs!
Vairs neko, devalvācijai bija jābūt jau decembrī vēlākais marts aprīlis(protams neminot, ka pati piesaiste bija kļūda).. palasio where does all this leave us? Well basically that what we have on our hands is one hell of a mess, and that here there are no easy solutions. Did anyone tell you we lived in an imperfect world? Well what is going on in Latvia is surely as good an illustration that you are likely to find that this is the indeed the case. There are no easy, quickfix, policy solutions, and I fully understand Christoph's dilemma, and the difficulty associated with decision taking in this case.
But, while nothing is guaranteed to work, some approaches may turn out to be better placed than others, and it is my considered opinion that the best way of addressing the Latvian problem is by trying to kick-start the economy via devaluation, and to then tackle the wage increase problem by explicitly opening Latvia's frontiers to external migrant labour (as, for example, the Czech Republic have, to some extent, done). Such devaluation, backed by imaginative enough greenfield site support from the government, could attract the FDI, and alongside it the migrants to provide the manpower for unskilled positions, with better educated Latvians being able to get involved in some of the higher value work. If something is not done to break the population vicious circle, and the meltdown in internal demand and property prices as young Latvians seek work elsewhere then the outcome is all too clear, although not for that any less tragic, as Krugman suggests.
Of course, some may wish to object at this point that devaluation has the same effect on wages as wage cuts do, and they would be right, but the point is the overall level of economic activity is greater on the V shaped approach (this was Keynes', and is today Bernanke's, basic insight). Latvian GDP is about to be thrown, from a period of trying to operate above capacity, to one where for an extended period of time it will operate below capacity. This can never be a good solution. On the V shaped recovery scenario the time path of GDP is higher, and the possibility of finding remunerative employment for each and every individual Latvian is to that extent greater. More idle resources will be put to work at a time when there is huge slack in the global system, and energy and material costs are at very low levels. Investment (building factories etc, buying machinery and equipment) simply couldn't be cheaper . Putting the resources to work to make this possible quite simply can't be a bad thing, or so I contend, and certainly not if the alternative may be sitting back and waiting till you have a sovereign default coming crashing in on top of you.
I see plenty of work for Latvian parliamentarians (passing much needed laws etc) in the current proposals but I see comparatively few initiatives which will keep the idle hands of Latvia's valuable human resource base from freezing over.
Let us be clear, of course there is no single clear "cure all" remedy here, but I think we need to say strongly that the earlier attempt to stem the migrant out-flow by being lax on the wage inflation front was to invite disaster (and the disaster of course came), whereas now, excessively compressing wages as the solution will have the impact which was previously feared.
Export Defeatism?
One of the biggest obstacles facing countries like Latvia at the present time (of course Latvia is far from being unique, Latvia is simply the "canary in the coalmine") is a kind of passive defeatism about exports. Of course, Christoph is completely right, the global environment coundn't be more unfavourable, but there really is plenty to be done, so why not keep warm during those long dark winters doing some of it. The EU Commission points out the problem in its latest forecast:
Exports are still dominated by commodity products and re exports, with only limited evidence of moving up the technology ladder. Hence, export revenues are exposed to volatile global commodity price developments (mainly prices of wood and metals). Furthermore, unfavourable real exchange rate developments (based e.g. on unit wage costs in manufacturing) had a negative effect on the external competitiveness of the economy. However, a recovery of exports in the first part of 2007 was driven by manufactured goods which stood at odds not only with the above described problems of the supply side, but also with the reportedly very low increase in manufacturing output in the same period. The overall conclusion on progress in strengthening the supply side is therefore mixed, but it can be concluded that the current domestic cost developments pose serious challenges to producers of tradeable goods and services. EU Commission, January 2009 Latvia Forecast
Finally Christoph has one additional point which really serves as a conclusion and a monument to all this, and that is the idea that Latvia has a clear exit strategy from its currency predicament: euro adoption.
As Christoph says, the Latvian authorities are determined to work to meet the Maastricht criteria in 2012. Certainly entering the euro zone will not do away - at a click of the finger - with the hard lifting necessary to address the competitiveness and high external debt problems (as he suggests in his avoiding the Portuguese trap article, and I go through in my Portugal Sustains post here). But it would offer support to a struggling Latvia and help bring back investor confidence. The point is, at which exchange rate should Latvia enter ERM2? Indeed, it is now apparent - if you read the IMF staff report on the standby arrangement, on their website, that they favoured an expansion of the band to 15% (which basically means 15% devaluation) and it was the EU itself who objected and pushed to retain the peg (see appendix below). It is not difficult to see the problems a Latvian devaluation might face in the light of the Parex related issues without direct euroisation (or EU fiscal support), but the thrust of my argument here has been that these difficulties (credit rating downgrades, sovereign default vulnerability) are going to come anyway. Indeed Latvia had its foreign-credit rating cut to Baa1 by Moodys on January 7 2009, the second such downgrade in three months, with the agency citing increased risks of a prolonged economic decline (read L shaped recession).
“The downgrade reflects the further intensification of the economic adjustment in Latvia since October 2008,” said Kenneth Orchard, an analyst with Moody’s, in the statement. “The economic downturn is now expected to be deeper and more prolonged than previously assumed.” The risk of a “disorderly correction” to economic imbalances remains even after securing the 7.5 billion-euro ($10.2 billion) international aid package. “Government borrowing will rise significantly over the next few years to smooth the adjustment and prevent a major economic crisis,”
Basically, the EU objected to the IMF proposal for emergency eurozone membership on the grounds that this would sat a precedent in other cases. But I really do feel that the Commission (and the ECB presumeably) are being ridiculously pig-headed here. We have an emergency on our hands, and exceptional measures are called for.
It is impossible for me to go here into all the issues involved in collective membership of the eurozone for the EU12 states that are not already in, but let me just say we need a substantial rethink allround, involving:
a) Issuing EU bonds to collectively fund bank bailouts across the Union (East and West)
b) Collective membership of the eurozone for those EU member states who want it
c) A new Lisbon Strategy and Stability and Growth Pact code involving much stricter conditions and stronger Commission powers and sanctions.
c) is the necessary and prior condition for giving consideration to (a) and (b) and not the other way round.
Finally, thank you, one and all, who have struggled forward and reached this point. In particular thank you for being so patient with my verbal largesse. I am trying to contain it, I really am.
Appendix: Extracts From IMF Staff Report On Latvian Request for Stand-By Arrangement
The authorities and staff examined the merits of alternative exchange rate regimes. A widening of the exchange rate band to ±15 percent (as permitted under ERM2; currently Latvia has unilaterally adopted a ±1 percent band) would result in a larger initial output decline, since adverse balance sheet effects would reduce domestic demand. However, competitiveness would improve more quickly, reducing the current account deficit and fostering a more rapid economic recovery. The case for changing the parity would be stronger if it could be accompanied by immediate euro adoption. Technically, this would address many of the risks described above, and give Latvia deeper access to capital markets. With its negligible public sector debt, the government would also find it easier to borrow in euros on international capital markets. However, the EU authorities have firmly ruled out this option, given its inconsistency with the Maastricht Treaty and the precedents it would set for other potential euro area entrants.
The main advantage of widening the bands is that it should eventually deliver a faster economic recovery. Although growth would be depressed in the short run by balance-sheet effects (see below), the economy might then bounce back more sharply, and a Vshaped recovery would likely start in 2010. This reflects a faster improvement in competitiveness since high pass-through (reflecting Latvia’s openness to trade and liberalized movement of labor within the European Union) would be dampened by the negative output gap. Enhanced competitiveness would also reduce the current account deficit more quickly. This would come mainly from import compression, with a relatively slow response of Latvia’s underdeveloped export sector, especially as the external environment is not as supportive as in previous devaluation-induced recoveries as Argentina, Russia or East Asia.
However, balance-sheet effects would cause a sharp drop in domestic demand. The net foreign currency exposure of Latvia’s private sector is around 70 percent of GDP, with the corporate sector’s foreign currency open position roughly double that of the household sector’s. A 15 percent devaluation against the euro would increase private sector net foreign currency exposure by 11 percent of GDP, two thirds in the corporate sector and one third in the household sector. Mismatches between owners of foreign currency assets and liabilities suggest that devaluation may cause substantial redistribution effects. Private consumption would fall by around 6 percentage points due to negative wealth effect as net foreign debt increases, house prices decline, debt service costs increase, and consumer confidence deteriorates. Experience of other countries suggests that a devaluation of this magnitude would lead to a 5 percentage point decline in private sector investment.
Euroization with EU and ECB concurrence would also help address liquidity strains in the banking system. If Latvian banks could access ECB facilities, then those that are both solvent and hold adequate collateral could access sufficient liquidity. The increase in confidence should dampen concerns of resident depositors and also help stem non resident deposit outflows.
However, this policy option would not address solvency concerns and has been ruled out by the European authorities. If combined with a large upfront devaluation, there would be an immediate deterioration in private-sector solvency, which could slow recovery. Privatesector debt restructuring would likely be necessary. Finally, the European Union strongly objects to accelerated euro adoption, as this would be inconsistent with treaty obligations of member governments, so this option is infeasible.
89.pants. Kaitniecība
Par darbību vai bezdarbību, kas vērsta uz finanšu sistēmas, rūpniecības, transporta, lauksaimniecības, tirdzniecības vai citu tautsaimniecības nozaru, kā arī iestāžu vai organizāciju darbības graušanu nolūkā kaitēt Latvijas Republikai, —
soda ar brīvības atņemšanu uz laiku no pieciem līdz divpadsmit gadiem, konfiscējot mantu.
Lūdzu vēl
ell, it seems I’m not the only one who thinks that the IMF have made a bad decision over Latvia, since this year’s economics Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman seems to agree. From his New York Times blog:
I’ve been saying this for a couple of weeks, but Edward Hugh has the goods.
Hugh puts his finger, in particular, on one gaping hole in the logic of the opponents of devaluation. We can’t devalue, they say, because the Latvian private sector has a lot of debts in euros, and a devaluation would make it very hard for borrowers to service those debts. As Hugh points out, the proposed alternative — sharp wage cuts, and basically a major domestic deflation — will also make it hard to service those debts. In fact, I’d be a bit more specific than Hugh: other things equal, a nominal devaluation and a real depreciation achieved through deflation should have exactly the same effect on debt service (unless some of the debt is in lats rather than euros, in which case devaluation would do less damage.)
This looks like events repeating themselves, the first time as tragedy, the second time as another tragedy.
Actually I don’t know if HMV himself will get round to reading this, but I would like to take the opportunity provided by this post to say three things.
1/ A very Happy Christmas to all our readers - and especially those of you in Central and Eastern Europe who are having such a hard time of it at the moment.
2/ Devaluation is not a cure all, as we can see from the very serious situation which is developing in Ukraine even as I write. But it is a necessary first step in order to try to find a way through the mess which has been created. The big question is going to be who will soak up all the loan defaults that are now inevitable whichever road you go down, and looking at this from an EU point of view I have no doubt that the Union itself has to shoulder the primary reposibility, since it was the decision to impose eventual eurozone membership on the EU12 as a condition of EU membership (and not simply an option as in the case of the UK or Sweden) which made all that Eastern forex lending seem just as “safe as houses” to the funding banks over in Western Europe.
3/ There is no easy “ban-aid” solution to the problems now faced in the East of Europe, since unfortunately the extreme fragility we are seeing in their collective balance sheets is almost certainly associated - in some way, shape or form - with their almost unique demographic dynamics, and this is hardly going to be changed overnight. So, and this is the wonkish bit, in the first place, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Paul Krugman for writing - in 1998 - a paper on the Japan problem (see this whole post here) entitled It’s Baaack! Japan’s Slump And The Return Of The Liquidity Trap, since it was reading the extracts from this paper reproduced below which actually started me thinking about the debt deflation problem and about just how demography might influence the impact of deflation, especially given the problems Japan was experiencing, and indeed how, if this was the case, we might expect the kind of problems Japan was having to reappear in other countries with long term very low fertility.
But just what is the special problem which deflation presents? This is important, since the IMF, the EU, and the Latvian government have all just agreed, not only not to avoid price deflation in Latvia, but rather to actively provoke it. Ben Bernanke makes this point in a paper written around the same time as the Krugman one I mention.
To take an admittedly extreme case, suppose that …. (a borrower took out loan in 1992 which)…. was still outstanding in 1999 , and that at loan initiation he or she had expected a 2.5% annual rate of increase in the GDP deflator and a 5% annual rate of increase in land prices. Then by 1999 the real value of his principal obligation would be 22% higher, and the real value of his collateral some 42% lower, then he anticipated when he took out the loan. These adverse balance-sheet effects would certainly impede the borrower’s access to new credit and hence his ability to consume or make new investments. The lender, faced with a non-performing loan and the associated loss in financial capital, might also find her ability to make new loans to be adversely affected. This example illustrates why one might want to consider indicators other than the current real interest rate—-for example, the cumulative gap between the actual and the expected price level—-in assessing the effects of monetary policy. It also illustrates why zero inflation or mild deflation is potentially more dangerous in the modern environment than it was, say, in the classical gold standard era. The modern economy makes much heavier use of credit, especially longer term, than the economies of the nineteenth century. Further, unlike the earlier period, rising prices are the norm and are reflected in nominal-interest-rate setting to a much greater degree. Although deflation was often associated with weak business conditions in the nineteenth century, the evidence favors the view that deflation or even zero inflation is far more dangerous today than it was a hundred years ago.
Ben Bernanke - Japanese Monetary Policy: A Case of Self-Induced Paralysis?
So, deflation can be a real pain to handle, but what about deflation in the context of population decline (the Latvian case), well fot this I’ll hand you over to Krugman, and his arguments in the above mentioned paper - definitely only for wonks this one.
One way of stating the liquidity trap problem is to say that it occurs when the equilibrium real interest rate, the rate at which savings and investment would be equal at potential output, is negative. An immediate question is therefore how this can happen in an economy which is not the simple endowment economy described above, but one in which productive investment can take place - and in which the marginal product of capital, while it can be low, can hardly be negative. An answer that may be extremely important in practice is the existence of an equity premium. If the equity premium is as high as the historic U.S. average, the economy could find itself in a liquidity trap even if the rate of return on physical capital is as high as 5 or 6 percent. A further answer is that the rate of return on investment depends not only on the ratio of capital’s marginal product to its price, but also on the expected rate of change of that price. An economy in which Tobin’s q is expected to decline could offer investors a negative real rate of return despite having a positive marginal product of capital. This point is actually easiest to make if we consider an economy, not with capital, but with land (which can serve as a sort of metaphor for durable capital) - and also if we temporarily depart from the basic setup to consider an overlapping-generations setup, in which each generation works only in its first period of life but consumes only in its second. Let A be the stock of land, and Lt be the labor force in period t - that is, the number of individuals born in that period. Given the special assumption that the young do not consume during their working years, but use all their income to buy land from the old, we have a very simple determination of qt, the price of land in terms of output: it must simply be true that
qt.At = wt.Lt
where wt is the marginal product of labor. So in this special setup q itself is not a forward-looking variable; it depends only on the size of the current labor force. However, the expected rate of return on purchases of land is forward-looking. Let Rt be the marginal product of land, and rt the rate of return for the current younger generation. Then we have that:
1 + rt = Rt+1 + qt+1 /qt
Now suppose that demographers project that the next generation will be smaller than the current one, so that the labor force and hence (given elastic demand for labor) the real price of land will decline. Then even though land has a positive marginal product, the expected return from investing in it can in principle be negative. This is a highly stylized example, which begs many questions. However, it at least establishes the principle that a liquidity trap can occur despite the existence of productive investment projects.
In fact, this exercise suggests that the real puzzle is not why Japan is now in a liquidity trap, but why this trap did not materialize sooner. How was Japan able to invest so much, at relatively high real interest rates, before the 1990s? The most obvious answer is some version of the accelerator: investment demand was high because of Japan’s sustained high growth rate, and therefore ultimately because of that high rate of potential output growth. In that case the slump in investment demand in the 1990s may be explained in part by a slowdown in the underlying sources of Japanese potential growth, and especially in prospective potential growth.
As noted above, there is considerable uncertainty about the actual rate of Japanese potential growth in the 1990s. Nonetheless, it is likely that there has been a slowdown in the rate of increase in total factor productivity, even cyclically adjusted. What is certain, however, is that Japan’s long-run growth, even at full employment, must slow because of demographics. Through the 1980s Japanese employment expanded at x.x percent annually. However, the working-age population has now peaked: it will decline at x.x percent annually over the next xx years (OECD 1997), and - if demographers’ projections about fertility are correct - at a remarkable x.x percent for the xx years thereafter. As suggested by the discussion of investment and q in the first half of this paper, such prospective demographic decline should, other things equal, depress expectations of future q and hence also depress current investment.
Of course, the looming shortage of working-age Japanese has been visible for a long time; indeed, the budgetary consequences of an aging population have been a preoccupation of the Ministry of Finance, and an important factor inhibiting expansionary fiscal policy. Why, then, didn’t this prospect start to affect long-term investment projects in the 1980s? One answer is that businesses may have believed that total factor productivity would grow rapidly enough to make up for a declining work force. However, the “bubble economy” of the late 1980s may also have masked the underlying decline in investment opportunities, and hence delayed the day of reckoning.
In fact, even though economic demography does seem to be such an “non-mainstream” line of investigation, there are now at least four “major” economics Nobels who have been interested in the problems posed by demography at some stage or another in their work. Apart from Krugman, there was Franco Modigliani (Nobel 1985) who was primarily concerned with how our saving and borrowing behaviour changes over the life cycle, and whose last published paper was concerned with just why there is so much saving in China, Gunnar Myrdal (Nobel 1974) whose pioneering work in the 1930s laid the basis for our modern understanding of the impact of declining populations on economic performance (see his Godkin Lecture on the topic) and which resulted (via the work of his wife Alva) in the estabishment of the modern Swedish family support system as some sort of “preventive measure”, and finally there is the grand old master of population economics Simon Kuznets (Nobel 1971).
Well, I did warn you that this was going to be ultra wonkish. Now you have all the clues and bits and pieces, all you have to do is go assemble the jigsaw. Maybe on boxing day. Anyway, as I say, have a nice xmas everyone. Good luck, and good hunting
Ekonomikas policijai vajadzētu saieta ēku aplenkt un ārā laist pa vienam - rokudzelžos. Par kūdīšanu graut Latvijas latu.