In Europe, the word "reform" is as misleading as it is ubiquitous, writes Münchau in his FT column.
Austerity and reform are the opposite of each other. If you are serious about structural reform, it will cost you upfront money. If you want to open your labour market to a hire-and-fire rule, you will need policies to deal with those who are laid off. These costs may outweigh the financial benefits of reforms in the short term but the reforms may still pay off in the long run. Structural reforms, properly done, are not suited to the task of delivering austerity.
By contrast, austerity – higher taxes and cuts in public sector investments – weakens the economy’s capacity in the short run, and possibly also in the long run. If you have youth unemployment of more than 50 per cent for a sustained period, as is now the case in Greece, Italy and Spain, many of those people will never find good jobs in their lives. Economists speak of a so-called “hysteresis” effect – permanent economic damage that will not be repaired even if there is a full recovery. Austerity could well leave an economic and social scar across the eurozone.
Italy and Spain would have been a lot better off to come up with a list of front-loaded targeted structural reforms and backloaded fiscal consolidation. When you do it the other way round, cutting investment and raising taxes in a recession, you never get out of the hole, and you waste your political capital on austerity, leaving none for reforms.
By putting fiscal consolidation first, the political establishment also took a big gamble against what we know from history. A senior Italian official told me a while back that they had the situation under control. There would be a slight bump but the economy would take off afterwards. He was wrong. As last week’s European Commission forecasts confirm, the southern European economies are behaving as was predicted by those who thought austerity would sap growth and using monetary policy to offset it would be ineffective.
I am not surprised that European electorates are rejecting these policies, and the politicians who delivered them. On Monday we will know how Italy has voted. My hunch is that it is not going to be a good evening for the “Austerians”.
© Financial Times
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