sábado, março 18, 2023

Zombies, produtividade e subsídios

Em "How not to grow the economy" li uma espécie de resumo do que tenho escrito por aqui ao longo dos anos:

"But there is a deeper problem with Labour's and the Tories' approach to the productivity slump. While both parties have bought into the new economic consensus - that is, the belief that low business investment is at the root of lacklustre growth - they also share the belief that businesses need more state financial support. In today's circumstances, though, this would act to entrench the low-growth quagmire.

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But there is a big problem here: state financial aid to business is self-defeating. [Moi ici: A lição de Spender] It hinders the innovation it is meant to promote. State handouts encourage corporate dependency and reduce the pressure on businesses to become more productive and commercially competitive. They often blunt the incentive for producers to experiment with and develop even better technologies. Businesses often end up concentrating on meeting various government criteria and conditions, rather than focussing on what might be best commercially.  [Moi ici: Recordo A economia das carpetes e biombos e O nefasto poder aditivo dos subsídios

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Not all state-investment measures come with such onerous conditions. But state subsidies are never a free lunch. They are usually prescriptive and they often intrude on normal commercial practices. Whatever their intentions, state incentives often distort business-investment activities.

The contemporary problem for growth has not been too little but too much state support. Sustaining the business status quo with an abundance of subsidies doesn't just distort corporate focus and decision-making. It also helps sustain a zombie economy, by keeping inefficient and even unprofitable businesses afloat. [Moi ici: Recordar Para que servem os apoios e subsídios? e A morte lenta]

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Zombie firms are those that, without extra support, such as cheap and easy debt facilities or state financial relief, would normally close down due to poor performance. Since the 1980s, this zombification trend has congested the wider economy. It blocks the creative-destructive process by which economies have moved ahead in the past, with lower-productivity, less-efficient businesses giving way to expanding, higher-productivity businesses.

Today, business investment is being held back by a surfeit of the old. Peter Drucker, one of the most influential 20th-century business thinkers, argued that the first step in innovation is to get rid of yesterday. 'If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday', he said, 'they simply will not be able to create tomorrow. [Moi ici: Recordar deixem as empresas evoluir ou morrer, ponto!!!] Drucker argued that dying products, services or processes - even if still profitable today shackle people and resources. This applies not just for individual businesses, but also for the economy in general. An excess of low-productivity firms gums up the whole economy, disincentivising even the healthiest businesses from investing in new advancements.

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Instead of letting the old go, a profusion of state policies now sustains what already exists. These policies - monetary, fiscal and regulatory - tend to favour larger, incumbent companies at the expense of smaller, younger firms. And it is those smaller, younger firms that would usually be the ones innovating and driving productivity higher. [Moi ici: Recordar Maliranta em Deixar a produtividade aumentar]

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But perhaps the biggest obstacle is the state's mummification of an already moribund economy. Fortunately, this is probably the easiest one for a government to overcome. It can turn off the corporate-welfare mechanisms that preserve and stultify. And it can start doing so right now."

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