Benoît Coeuré: Lamfalussy was right - independence and
interdependence in a monetary union
Speech by Mr Benoît Coeuré, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank,
at the Lamfalussy Lecture Conference, organised by Magyar Nemzeti Bank (the central bank
of Hungary), Budapest, 2 February 2015.
* * *
Summary
Decision-makers in different policy areas act independently and are at the same time
interdependent. Managing interdependence requires strong framework: "monetary
dominance" is the framework in the euro area in which the central bank acts in independence
and fiscal policies are constrained in the SGP.
The crisis in Europe has shown that policy interactions can be more subtle and involve also
financial and structural policies. Monetary policy becomes more effective in impacting the
real economy if other policies act in support. If not, it has less impact and expansionary
policy has to last longer.
An example for interdependence between monetary and financial policies (micro level) is if
supervisors show too much forbearance to undercapitalized banks, central bank funding may
end up being used to fill the gap. Fiscal policies can also become overburdened if they need
to smoothen the economic cycle and at the same time stabilize the banking sector. Banking
union has been there one answer to the crisis. European supervision helps align the
governance of the financial sector with the aims of monetary policy. And the resolution leg
creates rules that limit the link between fiscal policies and the banking sector; bail-in replaces
bail-out by governments and taxpayers.
The interaction between structural reforms and fiscal policies is clear: if product and labour
markets are resilient and flexible, there is less need for fiscal intervention. Constantly refining
fiscal rules while leaving structural policies at the national level makes little sense. If fiscal
policies are to be freed from structural dominance, strong framework for both is needed.
Today structural reforms are their own reward. Tomorrow sovereignty over structural reforms
should be shared between countries, allowing for symmetric risk sharing.
***
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me begin by reiterating my appreciation for receiving the award in honour of Alexandre
Lamfalussy, and my pleasure to be here in Budapest today.
What I want to talk about this morning is a theme in which Lamfalussy himself took great
interest, which is the interaction between policies in the euro area. In fact, in the Delors
Committee, where he was an independent expert, Lamfalussy was one of the foremost
proponents of the view that policy interactions in a monetary union had to be governed by a
proper framework, and not just left up to ad hoc coordination and market discipline.1
My main argument today is that Lamfalussy was right - and in more ways than even
recognised. A monetary union creates complex interactions which have to be governed by a
strong and comprehensive framework. Many of these interactions we have only really
understood thanks to the crisis. And in crucial areas, such as structural policies, we have still
not adequately responded.
Independence and interdependence between policies
In any polity there is always a tension between economic policies. On the one hand,
decision-makers in different policy areas act independently. But on the other, they inevitably
have to take into account what the others are doing - they are interdependent. This is an
inherent struggle which, if left to itself, can produce outcomes that no party really wants.
For example, central bank independence is a necessary condition for monetary policy to
focus on its core price stability mandate. It is an essential feature of Europe's constitutional
order and puts the onus on governments not to intervene in the policy-making, management
and budget of central banks, including in those countries which have not yet adopted the
euro, such as here, in Hungary.
But independence is not a sufficient condition to ensure that monetary policy calls the shots,
as we know from literature on monetary and fiscal dominance.2 Essentially what this
literature finds is that if fiscal policy is not constrained by a rule which ensures the
sustainability of debt, the central bank is ultimately forced into inflationary policies. At the
same time, inflation can make output stabilisation through fiscal policy less effective, as
workers' expectations adapt and prices rise faster than incomes. So all parties lose out.
The conclusion is that managing interdependence requires a strong framework.
Policymakers must decide which aims they want to prioritise and construct a set of rules
which promotes that and sets incentives right.
In the euro area, we consciously built our framework around "monetary dominance" -
ensuring that the central bank could pursue price stability unconstrained by fiscal
considerations. We did this by giving full independence to the central bank, while
constraining fiscal policies through the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact, and now of the
Fiscal Compact.
One can debate the details of this framework, but on its own terms it succeeded: in no cases
have fiscal policies caused the central bank to lose its price stability focus.
Take the example of the ECB's recent decision to extend its asset purchase programme.
This has been taken in full independence to achieve our medium-term price stability
mandate. And in our decision, we have taken into account the specificities of the euro area,
meaning that we operate in an environment of decentralised national fiscal authorities, and
the ECB has no mandate to engage in large scale pooling of fiscal risks.
But we have also learned from the crisis that policy interdependence has different
dimensions. There are more subtle interactions between policies than our framework initially
acknowledged. And these involve not just monetary and fiscal policies but financial and
structural policies as well.
What is at issue is not the classic idea about one policy causing another to lose focus on its
mandate. It is ex post coordination failure, where some policies miss their mandate, causing
others to do more precisely to be faithful to their own - what one might call "weak
dominance".
For example, if financial supervisors do not encourage a fast and efficient clean-up of bank
balance sheets, central banks' interest rate cuts are less likely to be passed on to
entrepreneurs. And this is exactly what we saw in the euro area until the Single Supervisory
Mechanism was decided. And if at the same time governments do not make it easier to open
a new business, those entrepreneurs are less likely to ask for a loan and take advantage of
those low financing costs. And this is also what we have seen.
In short, monetary policy becomes more effective in impacting the real economy if other
policies act in a supportive way; and if they do not, it has less impact and expansionary
policy has to last longer to fulfill the mandate.
So, "weak dominance" is essentially about whether policies complement or compensate for
each other. And what determines this is the framework - whether it is strong enough to
ensure the right policies dominate, and whether comprehensive enough to achieve that along
all the relevant dimensions of policy interaction.
While such a framework is important in any country, it is even more important in a
multicountry union. In a single country coordination and policy adjustments involve a single
treasury and economics ministry. But in a monetary union there are multiple different
policymakers and policies to align. A strong framework that constrains discretion is therefore
indispensable.
Fiscal dominance
Though there is much that can be said about how fiscal dominance in this context, I have
discussed this elsewhere.3 The risk of "weak" fiscal dominance was actually recognised by
Lamfalussy. He noted that the lack of an appropriate aggregate fiscal stance for the euro
area could lead to monetary policy having to bear too much of the adjustment burden:
"The combination of a small Community budget with large .... national budgets leads to the
conclusion that, in the absence of fiscal coordination, the global fiscal policy of the EMU
would be the accidental outcome of decisions taken by Member States. ... As a result, the
only global macroeconomic tool available within the EMU would be the common monetary
policy implemented by the European central banking system."4
There is much to learn from this comment. But in the remainder of my remarks I would like to
focus on two other areas where we learned important lessons from the crisis for our future
framework: financial policies and structural policies.
Financial dominance
For financial policies - that is, the governance of the banking sector - we saw clearly during
the crisis how a weak framework can allow weak forms of dominance to take hold. Both
monetary and fiscal policies can have their choices constrained by so-called "financial
dominance".5
For monetary policy, the problem stems mostly from inadequate supervision.
At the micro level, if supervisors show too much forbearance to undercapitalised banks, they
can end up effectively shifting the burden onto monetary policy - as when those banks lose
access to market funding, or have to pay higher risk premia, they turn to central bank funding
to fill the gap. Monetary policy has limited discretion here as it cannot independently judge
the solvency of its counterparties - and remember, we have 2194.
At the macro level, if supervisory policies allow banks to grow too rapidly, and then
deleverage too slowly, it can also push the central bank into doing more.6 Since monetary
transmission becomes impaired, the monetary "impulse" has to be strengthened compensate
for the diminished "outpulse" coming out of banks. Many of our non-standard measures
during the crisis, such as our Long-Term Refinancing Operations (LTROs), have essentially
performed this function.
Moreover, weak micro-supervision and the resulting high level of non-performing loans can
also trigger conflicts with other policy areas. For example, when bad banks or asset
management companies are set up to deal with legacy asset problems, as happened for
example in Slovenia and Spain, it is essential that the line between the duties of fiscal and
monetary authorities is not blurred.
Central banking is about providing liquidity for solvent institutions, not about providing capital
for insolvent ones. Thus, the capitalisation of asset management companies in any country
should preferably be shouldered by the private sector, and if this is not possible, by the fiscal
authority.
We have also seen in the euro area, however, that fiscal policies can face their own
dominance problem related to financial policies. This stems less from supervision than from
inadequate resolution frameworks.
The key issue is that if national fiscal policies are expected both to stabilise the business
cycle and to bail-out the banking sector, incurred and contingent liabilities become
unsustainable in a banking crisis. In the euro area the total commitment to bank rescue
packages amounted to 26% of 2008 GDP. Thus, fiscal policy can quickly become
overburdened as well.
And here again, a too weak financial framework can trigger conflicts in other areas. If fiscal
policy is forced to contract when it is needed to smooth the cycle, then obviously this will
reduce aggregate demand. And insofar as this affects price stability, it has to be
compensated for by the central bank. Monetary policy has the duty to respond to fulfil its
mandate - as the ECB is doing today.
The lesson is that dominance is always a multidimensional problem. There is a triangle of
monetary, fiscal and financial policies that requires a strong coordination framework. And the
Banking Union has gone a long way to providing this.
To begin with, the move to European supervision helps align the governance of the financial
sector with the aims of monetary policy - or put differently, it reasserts monetary dominance.7
The European supervisor has stronger incentives to uncover weak banks, which helps
reduce the risk of financing so-called "zombie banks". And it is also able to use
macroprudential policies to temper swings in the leverage cycle - for example through the
release of countercyclical capital buffers. This means that monetary policy transmission
should be more immune from disruption, and interest policy should not be overburdened over
the cycle with the objective to avoid and then eliminate asset price bubbles.
At the same time, the resolution leg of Banking Union - the Bank Recovery and Resolution
Directive and the Single Resolution Mechanism - creates a set of rules that will in principle
provide separation between fiscal policies and the banking sector.
Bail-in of private creditors will replace bail-out by governments and taxpayers. And this will in
turn mean that the public sector has lower contingent liabilities towards banks, creating more
space for fiscal policies to act counter-cyclically alongside monetary policy in a downturn.
Structural dominance
Nevertheless, the loss of fiscal space that many countries have experienced during the crisis
- and the knock-on effects for monetary policy - cannot solely be explained by bank bailouts.
As has long been recognised, going back to the literature on optimal currency areas8, there is
also an important interaction in a monetary union between fiscal and structural policies at the
national level.
If an economy has resilient product and labour markets and adjusts more quickly to shocks,
there is less need for expansionary fiscal policies. But if inefficiencies are high and the
economy adjusts more slowly, fiscal policies need to be more expansionary, and for longer,
and this can in turn generate spillovers on other participating economies and on the single
monetary policy.
To give an example of this interaction, Ireland and Spain were two countries that
experienced relatively similar shocks emanating from the financial and construction sectors.
Both saw their primary deficits deteriorate by around 13pp of GDP between 2007 and 2009.
However, by 2012 Ireland had reduced that deficit by more than 7pp of GDP, whereas in
Spain the primary deficit was less than 2pp lower.
This certainly reflected stronger consolidation efforts in Ireland as part of its adjustment
programme. But it also reflected the faster adjustment in prices and wages in the Irish
economy, which helped unemployment to begin stabilising in late 2010, while in Spain it rose
until early 2013.
Of course many other factors were at play as well, but the point is that economic flexibility
matters for the size and duration of deficits. And what this implies is that, if structural reforms
do not happen, there can be a form of "structural dominance" over fiscal policies. When a
shock hits fiscal policies are forced to do all the heavy lifting to stabilise the economy and,
over time, fiscal space becomes progressively exhausted.
Indeed, this is one explanation for why the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) rules have not
been as effective as we hoped. There is a correlation between the ease with which countries
comply with the rules and their progress on structural reforms. Effectively, through lack of
reforms some countries have put themselves in a position of excessive deficit dependence,
which then makes the difficulty and costs of meeting their obligations higher.
The conclusion, therefore, is that constantly tinkering with our common fiscal rules while
leaving governance of structural policies entirely at the national level makes little sense. If
fiscal policies are to be freed from structural dominance, then we need an equally strong
framework in both domains. And it is fair to say in the EU context that the Macroeconomic
Imbalance Procedure (MIP) has less teeth and has not benefited from the same level of
ownership and political attention than the Stability and Growth Pact.
We could also envisage some complementarities between the two. For example, it does
make sense to take into account structural reforms when assessing compliance with the
SGP, as the Commission now intends to do.9 This is because structural reforms not only
reduce the amount of fiscal space needed for effective stabilisation, but they also increase
future fiscal space via higher potential output and hence higher government revenues.
However, not all structural reforms are associated with fiscal costs, such as notably product
market reforms. And some, like some social security reforms, may actually imply short-term
fiscal gains. But most importantly, because we do not yet have a credible framework, we
should only take into account reforms once they are implemented, not when they are simply
announced - and seek an independent assessment of their cost and GDP impact.
These are all reasons for countries to press ahead with building a stronger framework. But
above all, in the current situation, structural reforms are their own reward.
You may recall the not-so-old debate about introducing reform contracts with financial
incentives. Well, those incentives are already there! I have discussed elsewhere how
structural reforms make monetary policy more effective in a given country and how they help
regain fiscal space.10 Countries that reform now thus effectively receive, in return, a more
expansionary monetary policy and a less contractionary fiscal policy.
Indeed, our recent decision to expand our asset purchases, together with energy prices and
an exchange rate more favourable to growth, have opened a unique window of opportunity
for euro area governments to act together, remove structural obstacles to growth, and pull
our economy out of the low growth, low confidence trap.
In saying this, I am of course aware that structural reforms can have mixed effects on growth
and inflation, and in certain situations can impact negatively on both in the short-term.11 But
empirical evidence is mixed12 and the balance of effects depends crucially on designing
reform packages well.13 And indeed, many of the reforms that are on the table today - such
as improving the business environment - have little disinflationary effects but can provide a
strong boost to investment demand.14
Looking further ahead, stronger governance of structural reforms is also in the enlightened
self-interest of all countries that want to see a deepening of our monetary union.
It is now fairly clear that, in the long-term, a Union based on no risk-sharing will be vulnerable
economically. Yet we also know that permanent transfers between countries cannot work
politically.
The only way to resolve this paradox is if, behind the "veil of ignorance", risk-sharing is
symmetric between countries. This is only possible if all countries share sovereignty over
structural reforms so that they have equivalent growth prospects and shock absorption
capacity. And this will in turn be made even easier if deeper cross-border market integration,
starting with an effective Capital Markets Union, reduces in the first place the need to share
risk through public balance sheets.
10
For more on how supply-side policies can empower demand-side policies see speech by Coeuré, B. on
"Structural reforms: learning the right lessons from the crisis", Riga, 17 October 2014.
11
For an illustration see Eggertsson, G., A. Ferrero, and A. Raffo (2014), "Can Structural Reforms Help
Europe?" Journal of Monetary Economics, 61.
12
Bouis, R., et al. (2012) find only weak evidence that reforms entail short-term losses in aggregate output or
employment: see Bouis, R., et al. (2012), "The Short-Term Effects of Structural Reforms: An Empirical
Analysis", OECD Economics Department Working Papers, No. 949.
13
For more on this point, in particular the importance of getting the pace and composition of reforms right, see
speech by Coeuré, B., Riga (Op. cit.).
14
A similar argument is made in Fernández-Villaverde, J. (2013), "Discussion of "Can Structural Reforms Help
Europe?" by Gauti Eggertsson, Andrea Ferrero, and Andrea Raffo", Journal of Monetary Economics. Lane
(2013) also emphasises the importance of calibration and timing in the reform package: see Lane, P. (2013),
"Growth and Adjustment Challenges for the Euro Area", The Economic and Social Review, Vol. 44, No. 2,
Summer.
Conclusion
This brings me to my conclusion.
Alexandre Lamfalussy had great faith in the power of the EU institutional framework to
enforce policy coordination and deliver a socially optimal outcome for the monetary union.15
This, the crisis has shown, was overly optimistic. It is clear that the euro area needs stronger
rules to regulate the many different forms of policy dominance that emerge due to
interdependence.
That said, if over time those rules lead to more convergence, and more convergence leads to
more common institutions with more common powers, then it may be that we need less rules
down the road. This is not because complexity is less, but because a single central bank, a
single treasury and a single economy ministry can manage it more effectively.
In other words, rules are a means to an end, which is a monetary union that creates jobs and
growth in an environment of price stability. And until we decisively deepen our monetary
union, they are the only way to achieve it.