Economics A-Z terms beginning with L

A flexible LABOUR market is one in which it is easy and inexpensive for FIRMS to vary the amount of labour they use, including by changing the hours worked by each employee and by changing the number of employees. This often means minimal REGULATION of the terms of employment (no MINIMUM WAGE, say) and weak (or no) trade UNIONS. Such flexibility is characterised by its opponents as giving firms all the power, allowing them to fire employees at a moment's notice and leaving workers feeling insecure.

Opponents of labour market flexibility claim that labour laws that make workers feel more secure encourage employees to invest in acquiring skills that enable them to do their current job better but that could not be taken with them to another firm if they were let go. Supporters claim that it improves economic EFFICIENCY by leaving it to MARKET FORCES to decide the terms of employment. Broadly speaking, the evidence is that greater flexibility is associated with lower rates of UNEMPLOYMENT and higher GDP per head.

Legend has it that in November 1974 Arthur Laffer, a young economist, drew a curve on a napkin in a Washington bar, linking AVERAGE tax rates to total tax revenue. Initially, higher tax rates would increase revenue, but at some point further increases in tax rates would cause revenue to fall, for instance by discouraging people from working. The curve became an icon of supply-side ECONOMICS. Some economists said that it proved that most governments could raise more revenue by cutting tax rates, an argument that was often cited in the 1980s by the tax-cutting governments of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Other economists reckoned that most countries were still at a point on the curve at which raising tax rates would increase revenue. The lack of empirical evidence meant that nobody could really be sure where the United States and other countries were on the Laffer curve. However, after the Reagan administration cut tax rates revenue fell at first. American tax rates were already low compared with some countries, especially in continental Europe, and it remains possible that these countries are at a point on the Laffer curve where cutting tax rates would pay.

Let-it-be ECONOMICS: the belief that an economy functions best when there is no interference by GOVERNMENT. It can be traced to the 18th-century French physiocrats, who believed in government according to the natural order and opposed MERCANTILISM. ADAM SMITH and others turned it into a central tenet of CLASSICAL ECONOMICS, as it allowed the INVISIBLE HAND to operate efficiently. (But even they saw a need for some limited government role in the economy.) In the 19th century, it inspired the British political movement that secured the repeal of the Corn Laws and promoted FREE TRADE, and gave birth to The Economist in 1843. In the 20th century, laissez-faire was often seen as synonymous with supporting MONOPOLY and allowing the BUSINESS CYCLE to boom and bust, and it came off second best against KEYNESIAN policies of interventionist government. However, mounting evidence of the inefficiency of state intervention inspired the free market policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, both of whom stressed the importance of laissez-faire.

Henry George, a 19th-century American eco­nomist, believed that taxes should be levied only on the value of LAND, not on LABOUR or CAPITAL. This 'single tax', he asserted in his book, PROGRESS AND POVERTY, would end UNEMPLOYMENT, POVERTY, INFLATION and INEQUALITY. Many countries levy some tax on land or property values, although George's single tax has never been fully implemented. This is mainly because of fears that it would drive down land PRICES too much or discourage efforts to improve the quality (that is, the economic value) of land. George addressed this concern by arguing that the tax should be levied only against the value of 'unimproved' land. Certainly, a land tax has obvious advantages: it is simple and cheap to levy; evasion is all but impossible; and it penalises owners who do not put their land to work.

See LEVERAGED BUY-OUT.

One of the main functions of a CENTRAL BANK. When financially troubled BANKS need cash and nobody else will lend to them, a central bank may do so, perhaps with strings attached, or even by taking control of the troubled bank, closing it or finding it a new owner. This role of the central bank makes CREDIT CREATION easier by increasing confidence in the banking system and minimising the RISK of a bank run by reassuring depositors that their MONEY is safe. However, it also creates a potential MORAL HAZARD: that banks will lend more recklessly because they know they will be bailed out if things go wrong.

Buying a company using borrowed MONEY to pay most of the purchase PRICE. The DEBT is secured against the ASSETS of the company being acquired. The INTEREST will be paid out of the company’s future cashflow. Leveraged buy-outs (LBOs) became popular in the United States during the 1980s, as public DEBT markets grew rapidly and opened up to borrowers that would not previously have been able to raise loans worth millions of dollars to pursue what was often an unwilling target. Although some LBOs ended up with the borrower going bust, in most cases the need to meet demanding interest bills drove the new managers to run the firm more efficiently than their predecessors. For this reason, some economists see LBOs as a way of tackling AGENCY COSTS associated with corporate governance.

A policy of promoting LIBERAL ECONOMICS by limiting the role of GOVERNMENT to the things it can do to help the market economy work efficiently. This can include PRIVATISATION and DEREGULATION.

Human life is priceless. But this has not stopped economists trying to put a financial value on it. One reason is to help FIRMS and policymakers to make better decisions on how much to spend on costly safety measures designed to reduce the loss of life. Another is to help insurers and courts judge how much compensation to pay in the event of, say, a fatal accident.

One way to value a life is to calculate a person's HUMAN CAPITAL by working out how much he or she would earn were they to survive to a ripe old age. This could result in very different sums being paid to victims of the same accident. After an air crash, probably more MONEY would go to the family of a first-class passenger than to that of someone flying economy. This may not seem fair. Nor would using this method to decide what to spend on safety measures, as it would mean much higher expenditure on avoiding the death of, say, an investment banker than on saving the life of a teacher or coal miner. It would also imply spending more on safety measures for young people and being positively reckless with the lives of retired people.

Another approach is to analyse the risks that people are voluntarily willing to take, and how much they require to be paid for taking them. Taking into account differences in WAGES for high death-risk and low death-risk jobs, and allowing for differences in education, experience, and so on, it is possible to calculate roughly what value people put on their own lives. In industrialised countries, most studies using this method come up with a value of $5m-10m.

How easily an ASSET can be spent, if so desired. Cash is wholly liquid. The liquidity of other assets is usually less; how much less may be measured by the ease with which they can be exchanged for cash (that is, liquidated). Public FINANCIAL MARKETS try to maximise the liquidity of assets such as BONDS and EQUITIES by providing a central meeting place (the exchange) in which would-be buyers and sellers can easily find each other. Financial market makers (middlemen such as investment BANKS) can also increase liquidity by using some of their CAPITAL to buy SECURITIES from those who want to sell, when there is no other buyer offering a decent PRICE. They do this in the expectation that if they hold the asset for a while they will be able to find somebody to buy it. Typically, the higher the volume of trades happening in a marketplace, the greater is its liquidity. Moreover, highly liquid markets attract more liquidity-seeking traders, further increasing liquidity. In a similar way, there can be vicious cycles in which liquidity dries up. The amount of liquidity in financial markets can vary enormously from one moment to the next, and can sometimes evaporate entirely, especially if market makers become too RISK AVERSE to put their capital at risk in this way.

When MONETARY POLICY becomes impotent. Cutting the rate of INTEREST is supposed to be the escape route from economic RECESSION: boosting the MONEY SUPPLY, increasing DEMAND and thus reducing UNEMPLOYMENT. But KEYNES argued that sometimes cutting the rate of interest, even to zero, would not help. People, BANKS and FIRMS could become so RISK AVERSE that they preferred the LIQUIDITY of cash to offering CREDIT or using the credit that is on offer. In such circumstances, the economy would be trapped in recession, despite the best efforts of monetary policymakers.

KEYNESIANs reckon that in the 1930s the economies of both the United States and the UK were caught in a liquidity trap. In the late 1990s, the Japanese economy suffered a similar fate. But MONETARISM has no place for liquidity traps. Monetarists pin the blame for the Great DEPRESSION and Japan's more recent troubles on other factors and reckon that ways could have been found to make monetary policy work.

When we are all dead, according to KEYNES. Un­impressed by the thrust of CLASSICAL ECONOMICS, which said that economies have a long-run tendency to settle in EQUILIBRIUM at FULL EMPLOYMENT, he wanted economists to try to explain why in the short run economies are so often in DISEQUILIBRIUM, or in equilibrium at high levels of UNEMPLOYMENT.

A tax that is the same amount for everybody, regardless of INCOME or wealth. Some economists argue that this is the most efficient form of TAXATION, as it does not distort incentives and thus it has no DEADWEIGHT COST. This is because each person knows that whatever they do they will have to pay the same amount. It is also cheap to administer, as there is no complex process of measuring each person's INCOME and ASSETS in order to calculate their tax bill. However, because rich and poor people pay the same, the tax may be perceived as unfair - as Margaret Thatcher found out when she introduced a lump-sum 'poll tax', a decision that was later to play a large part in her ousting as British prime minister.