If Corporations Are Being Run to Maximize Returns to Shareholders, Why are Returns So Low?

November 07, 2019

07 Noviembre 2019

(This post originally appeared on my Patreon page.) This summer, the Business Roundtable, a group that includes most of the country’s largest corporations, made big news. It issued a statement that its members would no longer be concerned exclusively with maximizing returns to shareholders. Instead, Roundtable members would take into account the well-being of their workers, the communities in which they do business, and the environment. This statement was given a mixed reception. While some applauded the idea of moving away from a single-minded focus on shareholder value others questioned the sincerity of the commitment. After all, drug companies pushing opioids, oil companies lying about fossil fuels, and hotel and retail chains cheating workers out of their pay, always had the option to do the right thing, but chose not to. Did anyone believe this resolution from the Business Roundtable would change the way they operate? However, there is a more basic point that got almost no attention. There is little reason to believe that corporations are being run to maximize returns to shareholders. The reason for questioning this claim is that returns to shareholders have actually been low by historical standards in the last two decades, as shown in the figure below. Source: Shiller 2019 and author's calculations. The average real return over the last two decades has been just 2.8 percent annually. This compares to average returns of more than 7.0 percent, and sometimes in the double-digits, in the 1950s and 1960s, when corporations were supposedly less single-mindedly pursuing shareholder value. And, this weak return required considerable help from the government in the form of sharply lower corporate tax rates. The data are very clear. If corporations are being operated to maximize returns to shareholders, they are failing badly in their efforts.

Steven Rattner's Rant Against Warren

By CEPRCEPR

November 05, 2019

05 Noviembre 2019

The New York Times gives Steven Rattner the opportunity to push stale economic bromides in columns on a regular basis. His column today goes after Senator Elizabeth Warren.

He begins by telling us that Warren’s plan for financing a Medicare for All program is “yet more evidence that a Warren presidency a terrifying prospect.” He goes on to warn us:

“She would turn America’s uniquely successful public-private relationship into a dirigiste, European-style system. If you want to live in France (economically), Elizabeth Warren should be your candidate.”

It’s not worth going into every complaint in Rattner’s piece, and to be clear, there are very reasonable grounds for questioning many of Warren’s proposals. However, he deserves some serious ridicule for raising the bogeyman of France and later Germany.

In spite of its “dirigiste” system France actually has a higher employment rate for prime age workers (ages 25 to 54) than the United States. (Germany has a much higher employment rate.) France has a lower overall employment rate because young people generally don’t work and people in their sixties are less likely to work.

In both cases, this is the result of deliberate policy choices. In the case of young people, the French are less likely to work because college is free and students get small living stipends. For older workers, France has a system that is more generous to early retirees. One can disagree with both of these policies, but they are not obvious failures. Large segments of the French population benefit from them.

France and Germany both have lower per capita GDP than the United States, but the biggest reason for the gap is that workers in both countries put in many fewer hours annually than in the United States. According to the OECD, an average worker in France puts in 1520 hours a year, in Germany just 1360. That compares to 1780 hours a year in the United States. In both countries, five or six weeks a year of vacation are standard, as are paid family leave and paid sick days. Again, one can argue that it is better to have more money, but it is not obviously a bad choice to have more leisure time as do workers in these countries.

Anyhow, the point is that Rattner’s bogeymen here are not the horror stories that he wants us to imagine for ordinary workers, even if they may not be as appealing to rich people like himself. Perhaps the biggest tell in this piece is when Rattner warns us that under Warren’s proposals “private equity, which plays a useful role in driving business efficiency, would be effectively eliminated.”

Okay, the prospect of eliminating private equity, now we’re all really scared!

The New York Times gives Steven Rattner the opportunity to push stale economic bromides in columns on a regular basis. His column today goes after Senator Elizabeth Warren.

He begins by telling us that Warren’s plan for financing a Medicare for All program is “yet more evidence that a Warren presidency a terrifying prospect.” He goes on to warn us:

“She would turn America’s uniquely successful public-private relationship into a dirigiste, European-style system. If you want to live in France (economically), Elizabeth Warren should be your candidate.”

It’s not worth going into every complaint in Rattner’s piece, and to be clear, there are very reasonable grounds for questioning many of Warren’s proposals. However, he deserves some serious ridicule for raising the bogeyman of France and later Germany.

In spite of its “dirigiste” system France actually has a higher employment rate for prime age workers (ages 25 to 54) than the United States. (Germany has a much higher employment rate.) France has a lower overall employment rate because young people generally don’t work and people in their sixties are less likely to work.

In both cases, this is the result of deliberate policy choices. In the case of young people, the French are less likely to work because college is free and students get small living stipends. For older workers, France has a system that is more generous to early retirees. One can disagree with both of these policies, but they are not obvious failures. Large segments of the French population benefit from them.

France and Germany both have lower per capita GDP than the United States, but the biggest reason for the gap is that workers in both countries put in many fewer hours annually than in the United States. According to the OECD, an average worker in France puts in 1520 hours a year, in Germany just 1360. That compares to 1780 hours a year in the United States. In both countries, five or six weeks a year of vacation are standard, as are paid family leave and paid sick days. Again, one can argue that it is better to have more money, but it is not obviously a bad choice to have more leisure time as do workers in these countries.

Anyhow, the point is that Rattner’s bogeymen here are not the horror stories that he wants us to imagine for ordinary workers, even if they may not be as appealing to rich people like himself. Perhaps the biggest tell in this piece is when Rattner warns us that under Warren’s proposals “private equity, which plays a useful role in driving business efficiency, would be effectively eliminated.”

Okay, the prospect of eliminating private equity, now we’re all really scared!

Ruchir Sharma's Swiss Model

By CEPRCEPR

November 04, 2019

04 Noviembre 2019

The New York Times had a column by “global investor” Ruchir Sharma this weekend in which he touted the Swiss model as being preferable to the Scandinavian model promoted by Bernie Sanders and other progressives. He notes that Switzerland is considerably richer, has a smaller government role in its economy, and still manages to provide health insurance to everyone.

There are a few points worth making about Sharma’s piece. First, one of the big factors that contributed to Switzerland’s wealth is that it shielded the wealth of rich criminals from around the world. Not only did it hide this wealth from tax authorities, it is also allowed drug dealers, gun runners, and corrupt dictators to park their money in a safe haven for themselves and their families. Not every country would want to follow this path to prosperity and in any case there is a limit to the amount of illicit funds to be deposited in such havens.

One of the reasons Sharma is impressed with Switzerland is that, rather than having the government provide health care for its population, it requires its citizens to purchase private insurance. This does lead to universal coverage, although it seems to come at a substantial price. According to the OECD, Switzerland’s health care costs of $7,300 per person are considerably less than the U.S per person cost of $10,600, but 17 percent more than #3 Norway’s costs and almost 40 percent higher than Denmark’s. It’s not clear that our model for reform should be the second most costly system in the world.

The next point is that this treatment of health care is a big factor in the difference between the 50 percent government share of GDP in the Scandinavian countries compared to the one third in Switzerland. Perhaps it makes a big difference to people whether they are mandated to pay premiums to an insurance company as opposed to taxes to the government, but it is not obvious why that would be the case.

This treatment of health care is also relevant to Sharma’s point on relative wealth:

“The typical Swiss family has a net worth around $540,000, twice its Scandinavian peer.”

Middle income families have greater need for wealth in Switzerland, where they have to pay for their health insurance, than in the Scandinavian countries where it is paid for by the government. How much additional wealth is needed would depend on the timing of health care payments over people’s lifetimes.

There is an area where progressives Democrats are looking to Switzerland as a model. The country has a wealth tax on its richest people. Both Senators Warren and Sanders have proposed a comparable tax for the United States.