Indeed, the agreement reached in January between the Greek government and the “troika” (the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, and the European Commission) includes a 48-page list of detailed reforms. Not all countries are given such a long to-do list, but, since new EU legislation was adopted in 2010, specific recommendations are addressed to all. For example, the brief addressed to Italy includes recommendations on the efficiency of public administration, the fight against corruption, corporate governance in the banking sector, the labor market, schools, taxation, market opening in the services sector, and infrastructure.
To be sure, European countries urgently need to implement deep reforms. Poor productivity growth and stubborn unemployment are evidence that their economies require comprehensive transformation. But if this observation provides the rationale for reform, it does not provide a sound enough basis for drawing up effective economic-revival plans.
The design of a reform strategy requires solving two problems. The first is one of purpose. Successful societies are a diverse lot. Some are unequal, and others are egalitarian. Some cherish large welfare states, and others starve them. Some rely on extensive collective agreements, and others exclude them altogether. Some are based on arm’s-length transactions, and others rely on recurring relationships. Scholars refer to “varieties of capitalism” to highlight the absence of a single template of success.
But if there are different models, what should the priorities for reform be? International organizations generally point out – rightly – that in most cases a country can improve economic efficiency without changing its economic model. For example, there is often ample room for achieving the same income redistribution at lower budgetary cost, or to ensure that collective wage agreements take into account the interests of those without a job. So national models can be reformed while retaining arrangements that meet social preferences.
This answer, however, is somewhat facile. Countries are not only inefficient; often, they are also inconsistent. For example, they pretend to become global hubs but do not welcome foreigners, which is what prevented Japan’s emergence as a global financial center in the 1990’s; or they hope to develop as knowledge-based economies but dislike academic freedom; or they aim at nurturing innovation but do not want innovators to become rich.
Such inconsistency is often a major impediment to development. By contrast, the success of the United States as an innovation powerhouse relies on a high degree of consistency across fields ranging from education and immigration to taxation and the labor market.
So pro-growth reform does not only require substituting efficient arrangements for inefficient ones. It also demands confronting hard choices, which is at bottom a political endeavor. For this reason, it is not something that any international organization can even suggest in lieu of domestic citizens.
The second problem in designing structural reforms is one of strategy. As the economist Dani Rodrik has pointed out, standard analysis generally results in a laundry list of desirable reforms that does not tell governments where to begin. Apprehensive leaders start with the most politically expedient items, while bold leaders start with the most challenging prescriptions; but there is no guarantee that either of these approaches will deliver the expected result. Even a seemingly rational strategy that consists in correcting the largest inefficiencies first is not necessarily the appropriate one.
One reason is that the effectiveness of reform may depend on conditions prevailing in other sectors: good universities, for example, cannot remedy the consequences of poor secondary education. Moreover, eliminating one distortion may be ineffective or even counterproductive: in an economy plagued with rents, partial reform may simply result in shifting them across sectors and agents, rather than reducing them to the benefit of consumers.
As a result, considerable political energy may be consumed in pushing through measures that deliver very little. Instead, reform should start with the most binding constraint to performance (which one that is depends on the whole set of hindrances that confront the economy).
In addition, outcomes may depend on cyclical conditions. Advocates of structural reform generally claim that their aim is to increase output and welfare in the medium term and that the short term does not matter. But, while some reforms – for example, those improving access to credit or eliminating rents that harm consumers – can indeed help to boost growth during a demand shortfall like the one that Europe is now experiencing, others can have the opposite effect. For example, labor-market reforms that make it easier for companies to reduce staff may weaken demand further, underscoring the importance of considering reforms’ short-term effects.
What all of this suggests is that an economic-reform agenda cannot result from a mechanical exercise. At some point, hard choices about priorities and sequencing must be made. This is not to say that international organizations and the EU are of no help. On the contrary, these bodies can be very helpful in carrying out international comparisons and pointing out deficiencies. But there is a line in the sand beyond which only governments can set priorities and act. That, after all, is what voters elect them to do.
Jean Pisani-Ferry
Retrouvez la version française de ce texte sur le site Project syndicate via ce lien.
Auteurs
