Expectativas: ¿Sabías que son un poderoso determinante del desempeño económico?

Fuente: http://claseejecutiva.emol.com

Las expectativas son lo que uno cree o espera que suceda en el futuro. Y ellas son muy poderosas para determinar el comportamiento y guiar las decisiones de los diferentes actores económicos y sociales.

Demasiado depende de lo que la gente piensa. Y el éxito de las políticas depende de las expectativas que el público tiene sobre sus efectos.

¿Pueden meros anuncios de política afectar la inversión, el crecimiento y la generación de empleos? ¡Sí! Y ello va a depender de cuan probable crean los actores que esos anuncios se puedan transformar en una realidad que afecte positiva o negativamente el entorno de negocios.

Lograr que la economía se desarrolle, crezca, es vital para que esta cree más y mejores empleos productivos. En Chile, desde 2014 más del 60% de los empleos generados son por cuenta propia, por lo general empleo informal sin ningún tipo de seguridad social. Y de los empleos asalariados que se han creado, más del 75% corresponden al sector público.

¿Qué pasó con el crecimiento?

¿Por qué desde 2014 se han creado muy pocos trabajos formales en el sector productivo? Esto se explica por las expectativas y cambios en el desempeño de la economía chilena durante los últimos ciclos presidenciales.

En el período 2010-2013, la economía global creció a una tasa promedio de 4%. Y en el período 2014-2017 se espera que lo haga en un 3,3% promedio, y 3,5% en 2017.

Por su parte, en el período 2010-2013, Chile creció a una tasa promedio de 5,3%. Y se espera que en el período 2013- 2017 lo haga en 1,9% promedio, y 1,6% máximo en 2017.

¿Qué pasó, si desde el año 2000 hasta el año 2013 Chile consistentemente había crecido más que la economía global, y desde el año 2014 el país ha crecido menos que esta última?

Son múltiples los elementos que determinan el crecimiento económico. Hay factores externos e internos, unos causados por la naturaleza y otros son el resultado de decisiones y políticas.

Y, en una economía de mercado, estos elementos inciden profundamente sobre las decisiones de consumo, ahorro e inversión. Y con ello, en crear o no más y mejores empleos.

Pesimismo por los cambios

La disminución del crecimiento de la actividad económica desde el 2014 se explica de manera importante por el deterioro de las expectativas y confianza empresarial.

Desde marzo de 2013, el mercado ya anticipó un profundo cambio en la conducción económica del país desde el 2014. Ello se vio reflejado en que el indicador mensual de confianza empresarial (IMCE) cae de manera sostenida, a pesar de las mejores proyecciones de crecimiento de la economía global que mostraba signos de mayor estabilidad después de la gran recesión del año 2007- 2009.

Ya en 2013 las expectativas capturaban un mayor pesimismo del desempeño futuro de la economía chilena. Ello estaba alimentado por anuncios de un alza significativa de los impuestos corporativos, de una nueva constitución, de una reforma laboral, y de un fuerte aumento de gasto público, financiado con mayores impuestos y deuda. Y posteriormente, avalados en acciones concretas.

Así, dando cabida a las expectativas y cambio en la conducción económica, política y social del país, la inversión experimentó una caída estrepitosa y se desplomó desde un 27,2% del PIB a inicios del 2013, a 21,7% el segundo trimestre de 2017.

El deterioro del ambiente de negocios también ha sido corroborado por el deterioro del país en rankings internacionales como el informe Doing Business del Banco Mundial. O la baja en la nota crediticia que por primera vez en 25 años han hecho sobre Chile las agencias de clasificación de riesgo como Standar & Poor´s (S&P) y Moody’s, entre otros.

Para quienes quieran profundizar sobre el tema de las expectativas, les recomiendo leer “Las contribuciones de Finn Kydland y Edward Prescott a la macroeconomía dinámica: la consistencia temporal de la política económica y las fuerzas motrices detrás de los ciclos económicos”. En este link pueden leerlo en inglés, y aquí en español.

Fuente: http://claseejecutiva.emol.com

Energy Forum Special Issue 40th IAEE Int. Conference Singapore "Meeting the Energy Demands of Emerging Economies: Implications for Energy and Environmental Markets"

IAEE Energy Forum President`s Message on IAEE Activities and Innovation and Disruption in the Energy Sector

https://lnkd.in/eWiCMvZ

Has IMF missed the white noise in world GDP growth projections?

I like to be optimistic! But, after 2009 crisis, I wonder if the IMF carry a happy bias in world GDP growth projections?

On Thursday, April 18, IMF launched chapter 1 of World Economic Outlook (WEO), one of its key anchor publications, with world GDP growth projections, where IMF forecast global growth of 3.5 percent for this year, and 3.6% for 2018. As we look at this and past IMF WEO publications, taking WEOs after the 2009 economic crisis, there appears to exist a happy bias, where world GDP growth projections carry an upward bias.

The theory of rational expectations was originally proposed by John F. Muth (1961) [1], which later became an anchor idea in economic modeling when it was used by neoclassical economists such as Robert Lucas, Jr. [2], Edward C. Prescott, Thomas J. Sargent, Michael R. Darby, Finn E. Kydland, Lawrence H. Summers, and Neil Wallace. [3] This is a hypothesis of economic science which states that predictions about the future value of economically relevant variables made by rational agents should not be systematically erroneous and that the errors are random, uncorrelated and with zero mean (white noise).

This idea on how to model expectations, known as the rational expectation hypothesis, accepts that the expectations of economic agents may be individually erroneous, but correct on average. Thus, although the future is not entirely predictable, it is assumed that agents' expectations are not systematically skewed and that they use all relevant information to form their expectations about economic variables, including information about past mistakes.

IMF world GDP growth projections serve many important purposes for policy makers in member countries, for the private sector and the public in general. To the extent that these projections may affect policies, economic and investment decisions, they may affect the eventual economic outcome. Predicting the economy is complex, it is an art more than a science, and the only certainty is uncertainty. And, in this respect, models should be frequently revised and adjusted so projections only carry a white noise and not a bias.

We know that predicting the economy’s next few years is one of the areas in which economists fail considerable. But, the value of better predictions is enormous. For example, if decision makers have better forecasts that a recession is on the corner, they might prepare in a better way to weather the storm, and eventually take measures in advance to counteract or minimize the recession, and ease others and save millions from adversity and unemployment. The aim of having white noises in economic forecasting should be an objective in top notch economic modeling.

The good news is that if we believe in rational expectations, the market already discounts any happy bias, and make its own assessments of the accuracy of the different world GDP projections.

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[1] John F. Muth. (1961). "Rational Expectations and the Theory of Price Movements", Econometrica 29, pp. 315–335.

[2] Lucas, Robert (1972). "Expectations and the Neutrality of Money". Journal of Economic Theory. 4 (2): 103–24.

[3] Edited by Preston J. Miller (1994). The Rational Expectations Revolution: Readings from the Front Line. The MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262132978 and ISBN: 9780262631556.

Ricardo Raineri, Part II: 40 Years of IAEE Energy Policy and Geopolitic...

40 Years of IAEE: Energy Policy and Geopolitical Reflections

No+ Taxes: why the pension system reform should not be set aside from the private individual capitalization system

(Related publication: No+ administración estatal de 

los fondos: por qué no en las pensiones, 

Emol, ClaseEjecutiva)

As I stated in two previous columns, "NO+ PAYGO: why is the pay-as-you-go system unviable today" and "Yes+ AFP (Private Pension Fund Managers): why the individual capitalization system is the right path", the year '80 Chile made the right decision to replace the pension system based on a pay-as-you-go mechanism for an individual capitalization mechanism administered by specialized private companies.

The current government has announced changes to the current pension system, where it proposes to raise the individual contribution by an additional 5% and that to be administered by a new autonomous state entity. From the additional 5%, 2 percentage point would go to a collective savings insurance and the other 3 percentage points to the individual workers' accounts.

Creating a new state entity to manage the additional contribution increases the system's operating costs and decreases the expected returns on the fund to which the contributors can aspire.

The state has shown not to have competencies to efficiently manage the resources and less to obtain a greater profitability of them. For example, in the last three years the average annual real return obtained by the funds managed by the AFPs is 4.93% on a simple average of funds A to E (A 5.95%, B 5.47%, C 5.15%, D 4.35%, E 3.75%), which compares favorably with the estimated real profitability of 0.16% per annum achieved by the Economic and Social Stabilization Fund (FEES), or the estimated real profitability of 1.44% of the Pension Reserve Fund (FRP), which started in 2007. Even more, during the last three years, the small contributions that the authority has made to the FRP have been financed with withdrawals from the FEES. Beyond the conservative investment strategies of the FEES and the FRP, their expected return is significantly lower than the ones achieved by the more conservative funds administered by the AFPs, Fund D or E.

The value of workers' funds administered by the AFPs in March reached CL $ 123,414,480 million, increasing by CL $ 13,159,135 million in one year, due to the contributions and profitability obtained. For its part, the FEES, which started in 2007, since its creation has received contributions of US $ 21,765.71 million, and has suffered withdrawals of US $ 10,852.81 million. And, today, its value reaches US $ 14.048 million. Of the total withdrawals that have been made from FEES, US $ 9,277.71 million were withdrawn in 2009, the year of presidential elections. In the case of the Pension Reserve Fund, it now accumulates US $ 9 billion, and by law as of this year, it allows the Treasury to withdraw about US $ 600 million to finance the Solidary Pension Pillar (basic solidarity pension -PBS- and social security contributions -APS-). And, where, until the year 2016, the resources to finance the payment of these benefits were contemplated in the fiscal budget. It remains to be seen how the Ministry of Finance will manage this additional source of funding to mobilize additional resources in a year of presidential elections.

The quote of an additional 2% that would go to collective savings insurance is a new labor tax, a regressive tax. And if it materializes, it will affect the workers, the middle class, and all those who depend on a living wage. The announcement made by the authority, emphasizes the 5% increase in workers contribution. But, says nothing about increasing the state's contributions to the Solidarity Pillar, and on to the chances to finance that contribution by reducing public spending, or on making a more efficient use of government revenues.

The additional contribution of 5% must go entirely to the individual capitalization accounts of the workers, these resources must be heritable, and individually are the workers who must decide which pension fund administrator must manage their resources. The creation of a new autonomous state entity would only increase the costs of the system, and will not generate higher returns than those managed by Pension Fund Administrators, specialized in portfolio management.

Achieving higher levels of efficiency, competition, and delivering greater pensions to workers are not resolved with the creation of a new autonomous state entity. If not rather, these objectives are achieved by increasing the competitive spaces between the AFPs, and leading the economy to a path of sustained economic growth, generating more and better jobs in the formal sector; and not with policies that slow growth and lead to greater informality and precariousness of the labor market, which will eventually have an impact on a greater demand for social assistance over the state.

The history of Chile has shown that it is easy and tempting for those who are leading the state apparatus to use the contributed resources from citizens and taxpayers, and history has also shown that on uncountable occasions they have not been good at administering those resources on the benefit of the governed.

I leave a question to comment: does the proposal of the authority imply a tax increase?