REPEAT:MNI:RBA Ellis: Labor Mkt Good Indicator On Growth Pulse

Repeats Story Initially Transmitted at 22:30 GMT Oct 10/18:30 EST Oct 10

By Sophia Rodrigues

     SYDNEY (MNI) - It is important for monetary policy to support above-trend

growth when there's spare capacity in the economy, and a good guide to spare

capacity is the labor market, Reserve Bank of Australia's Assistant Governor

(Economic) Luci Ellis said Thursday.

     Ellis was speaking in Melbourne at the Melbourne Institute 2018 Economic

and Social Outlook Conference on the topic, "Supporting Growth in the Short Run

and the Long Run."

     Below are the key observations we made from the speech.

     --Ellis' comments on how macroeconomic policy, which includes monetary

policy, could support growth in the short run was the highlight of the speech.

The main message was that monetary policy needs to be expansionary to support

above-trend growth when there is spare capacity in the economy. And the best

guide to spare capacity is the labor market.

     --From current monetary policy perspective, Ellis' comments on labor market

was particularly interesting. Ellis said that "If employment is growing faster

than the working-age population, and the unemployment rate is coming down, those

are pretty good signs that the economy is running faster than 'trend'." 

     --Ellis said one of the reasons why monetary policy has been set to support

growth in recent years is to cushion the drag since the peak of the mining boom

when terms of trade and mining investment declined. But mining investment is

expected to bottom out in coming quarter and will probably increase a little as

resource firms invest to maintain their production capacity at current levels.

This means mining investment will no longer be dragging on growth, Ellis

stressed.

     --Ellis referred to research on distributional effect of expansionary

policy that has raised concerns in some quarters but appeared less concerned

herself. First-order effect of expansionary monetary policy is to put more

people in jobs who wouldn't have had one otherwise, she said, adding, this

benefits households at lower end of income distribution that others. For wealth,

there are a number of effects, that offset one other, so the net effect on

summary measures of the wealth distribution tend to be small, Ellis said.

     --"While lower interest rates and asset purchases do tend to support asset

prices, and higher equity prices tend to benefit higher-wealth households,

higher housing prices tend to have the largest effect on households in the

middle of the wealth distribution. The effect of asset price increases are also

greatest for people with a bit of leverage against their asset holdings; they

tend not to be those with the highest wealth," Ellis said.

--MNI Sydney Bureau; tel: +61 2-9716-5467; email: sophia.rodrigues@marketnews.com