There are many lessons for New Zealand in last week’s British election result, which saw the 14-year reign of the Conservative Party ending in a crushing defeat. While the number of seats won by Labour appeared to indicate a huge swing to the left in support of Sir Keir Starmer’s Party, that isn’t the case […]
Lessons from the UK
Lessons from the UK
21 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in income redistribution, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: British politics
BBB in the NYT
15 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, zoning
I pitch Build, Baby, Build in today’s New York Times. No illustrations, but a bunch of cool graphs cooked up by Sara Chodosh of the NYT data analytics team. The original title was “The Panacea Policy,” but now it’s “Yes in My Backyard: The Case For Housing Deregulation.” And for you, dear readers, it’s ungated!…
BBB in the NYT
Biden’s Desperate Vote-Buying Proposal for Nationwide Rent Control
15 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of regulation, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: rent control
I’m not a political pundit, but I’m guessing that yesterday’s despicable assassination attempt on Donald Trump increases the likelihood that he reclaims the White House. That’s probably not good news for trade policy (though Biden has been just as bad), but it will be very good news for housing policy. Not because of what Trump […]
Biden’s Desperate Vote-Buying Proposal for Nationwide Rent Control
Market Preserving Federalism in the USA
14 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economics of bureaucracy, income redistribution, Public Choice, rentseeking
One of my favorite economic journal articles is by Barry Weingast and has the short title “Market Preserving Federalism” (MPF). In this paper, Weingast lays out the conditions necessary for two tenuous equilibria: A) Federalism & B) Federalism that preserves a market economy. Given that we just celebrated Independence Day in the USA, it seems […]
Market Preserving Federalism in the USA
DON BRASH: ANOTHER OUTSTANDING SPEECH FROM CHRIS BISHOP
13 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, zoning
Four months ago, I described a speech by Chris Bishop in his capacity as Minister of Housing as perhaps the most important speech given by any Government minister since the election last year. He’s just given another, arguably even more important, laying out in words of one syllable what the Government plans to do…
DON BRASH: ANOTHER OUTSTANDING SPEECH FROM CHRIS BISHOP
Bryan Caplan on YIMBY in the NYT
12 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of regulation, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, regulation, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, zoning
Here is one excerpt: What few appreciate is that the overregulation of housing has blocked a classic American path: moving to a higher-wage part of the country to secure a better life. A paper by the economists Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag shows that housing costs now routinely outweigh wage gains: While janitors and waiters do indeed […]
Bryan Caplan on YIMBY in the NYT
Zoning Matters for Rising Housing Costs, Especially After 1980
11 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history, economics of regulation, environmental economics, income redistribution, Public Choice, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, zoning
From a new working paper “The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890-2006” by Ronan C. Lyons, Allison Shertzer, Rowena Gray & David N. Agorastos (emphasis added): “Zoning was adopted by almost every city in our sample during the 1920s. We see a slightly steeper gradient over the next two periods (coefficients of .48 […]
Zoning Matters for Rising Housing Costs, Especially After 1980
Finally a great housing package
05 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, transport economics, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, zoning
Chris Bishop has announced changes to housing laws which will make a huge difference to housing affordability. Almost every expert has said that to reduce pressure on house prices you need to both build up and build out. The NIMBYs oppose building up and the Greenies opposes building out. Phil Rayford in 2017 had some […]
Finally a great housing package
Do not stifle supply and then subsidize demand
25 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: offsetting behavior, unintended consequences
That phrasing comes from Arnold Kling, right? It is also the topic of my latest Bloomberg column. Here is one bit: Unfortunately, the US already was setting a bad example for the British. Recent plans from the Biden administration called for a broadly similar approach to housing policy, namely subsidizing demand. Earlier this year, Biden called for […]
Do not stifle supply and then subsidize demand
On electing gangsters
10 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of crime, growth disasters, growth miracles, income redistribution, law and economics, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: economics of corruption, India
In India it’s common for politicians to have criminal cases against them. Why do voters vote for criminals? One compelling explanation provided by political scientist Milan Vaishnav is that voters often care less about their represntative’s ability to deliver broad-based development or draft good laws, and more about the effectiveness at helping them access limited […]
Haan, goonda hai, magar hamara goonda hai
Did the British Empire REALLY Drive the Industrial Revolution? IEA Debates
06 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, growth disasters, growth miracles, income redistribution, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: Age of Discovery, age of empires, economics of colonialism
India, Dependency, and the 17th Theorem of Government
28 May 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, economic history, financial economics, growth disasters, growth miracles, income redistribution, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking Tags: India
I released my First Theorem of Government in 2015 and today I’m going to unveil the 17th iteration in the series. But I’ll confess upfront that I’m doing a bit of recycling. My latest Theorem is very similar to something I shared back in 2014. I decided to upgrade my 2014 column to a Theorem […]
India, Dependency, and the 17th Theorem of Government
The cost of colonialism
26 May 2024 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles, income redistribution, law and economics, Public Choice, rentseeking, transport economics Tags: China
The Rise and Decline and Rise Again of Mancur Olson
09 May 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles, history of economic thought, income redistribution, industrial organisation, law and economics, property rights, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking
Mancur Olson’s The Rise and Decline of Nations is one of my favorite books and a classic of public choice. Olson may well have won the Nobel prize had he not died young. He summarized his book in nine implications of which I will present four: 2. Stable societies with unchanged boundaries tend to accumulate […]
The Rise and Decline and Rise Again of Mancur Olson
Why have the media ignored this outrageous speech?
07 May 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, income redistribution, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: free speech, political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left
Read the whole tweet. A Member of Parliament got up in the House and said the Government (which has a Cabinet which is 35% Māori) wants to exterminate Māori. Has the media reported this, with the editorials decrying such nonsensical and abusive language? Imagine if an ACT MP said in the House that a Labour-led […]
Why have the media ignored this outrageous speech?
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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