The world's population, concentrated http://t.co/Eq5jq1xn3x—
Amazing Maps (@Amazing_Maps) April 06, 2015
If the world’s population had to live in one city
06 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in population economics, urban economics Tags: economic geography, maps, population bomb
This Eco-Friendly Capsule Home Would Let You Live Off The Grid Anywhere In The World?
03 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, urban economics Tags: land use planning, NIMBYs, RMA, zoning
I doubt that it would get planning permission in either Auckland and Christchurch?
It is hard to get local government land use permission to build new granny flats and other small and temporary accommodation units in Auckland and Christchurch.
Auckland has rapidly increasing housing prices. Christchurch is still rebuilding after an earthquake so both housing prices and rents in particular are skyrocketing. The local councils in both cities are strict regulations restricting or prohibiting high-density housing.
via This Eco-Friendly Capsule Home Would Let You Live Off The Grid Anywhere In The World | IFLScience.
Civil War-era Washington DC
30 May 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, politics - USA, urban economics Tags: American Civil War, DC, Washington
Civil War-era Washington DC—Smithsonian Institution and US Capitol: #SI http://t.co/bKKnfYM7WF—
Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) April 20, 2015
Rent controls never work – they force up rents and destroy investment in housing
24 May 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, urban economics Tags: British general election, expressive voting, offsetting behaviour, rational irrationality, rent controls, The fatal conceit, UK politics, unintended consequences
The robots are coming, the robots are coming to property values
16 May 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of media and culture, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, survivor principle, technological progress, transport economics, urban economics Tags: agglomeration, compensating differentials, creative destruction, driverless cars, drones, entrepreneurial alertness, land prices, land supply
A few years ago, Casey Mulligan wrote a fascinating little op-ed about the impact of drones on land prices and urban living.
As drones and driverless cars make it cheaper to move people around cities, the value of inner-city land will fall simply because their proximity to the action has diminished.
With drones and driverless cars, it will be easier to bring something in on the just-in-time basis rather than have it on hand as inventory or within walking distance because traffic congestion makes it too slow to call it up from the suburbs through the conventional commercial transport.
But we live in a world of trade-offs. More people may want to move into the city because it’s so much easier to move around and call things up by drone, driverless car and the share economy, so this may intensify agglomeration effects and increased land prices. Another big day out for the two handed economist.
The principle of competitive land supply – Anthony Downs
16 May 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, urban economics Tags: Anthony Downs, green rent seeking, housing affordability, land supply, land use regulation, NIMBYs, offsetting behaviour, RMA, unintended consequences
Urban planners are confident souls
15 May 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, economics of regulation, environmental economics, growth miracles, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, urban economics Tags: green rent seeking, housing affordability The fatal conceit, land use regulation, offsetting behaviour, RMA, The pretence to knowledge, unintended consequences, urban planning, zoning
Housing affordability trends in New Zealand and the case for a capital gains tax
14 May 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: Auckland, capital gains tax, housing affordability, RMA
If the affordability crisis in New Zealand is demand side driven requiring capital gains tax to temper that demand, why is the affordability crisis so marked in one city? Does that make a case for a capital gains tax only on Auckland or suggest the capital gains tax is trying to solve the wrong problem.
via demographia.com
The economic forces underpinning the housing affordability crisis
12 May 2015 2 Comments
in applied price theory, economics of regulation, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, land use regulation, RMA, zoning
The key point is that increases (declines) in demand can bring sharply rising (falling) house prices when supply is constrained. However, when land supply is not regulated, it adjusts to demand and house price volatility is reduced.
As long as commentators focus primarily on the demand side of the housing market, whilst ignoring supply-side constraints, they will never fully understand the drivers of housing bubbles and busts. The resulting incorrect diagnosis will inevitably lead to poor policy prescriptions and outcomes.
Housing affordability and land regulation around the globe
11 May 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, urban economics Tags: land supply, land use regulation, NIMBYs, RMA, zoning
Auckland is up with London and New York in terms of housing unaffordability relative to median incomes. US cities with responsive land regulation don’t experience housing bubbles.
Glaeser and Gyourko summarised the findings of a number of studies on land supply and housing prices:
Recent research also indicates that house prices are more volatile, not just higher, in tightly regulated markets …. price bubbles are more likely to form in tightly regulated places, because the inelastic supply conditions that are created in part from strict local land-use regulation are an important factor in supporting ever larger price increases whenever demand is increasing.
…. It is more difficult for house prices to become too disconnected from their fundamental production costs in lightly regulated markets because significant new supply quickly dampens prices, thereby busting any illusions market participants might have about the potential for ever larger price increases.
Via The Truth About the U.S. Housing Market | Seeking Alpha.
Land use regulation knocks 10 points of US GDP!
10 May 2015 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economics of regulation, income redistribution, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: Enrico Moretti, Green Left, housing affordability, Inner-city Left, labour mobility, land supply, land use planning, land use regulation, NIMBYs, regional mobility, RMA, zoning
Bloomberg Business highlighted a great new study by Enrico Moretti on power of the regulatory restrictions on land supply to destroy wealth.
Moretti focused on the impact that restrictions on land supply have on the ability of workers to move to higher productivity cities. Moretti is the second best urban economist working at the moment. The best is Ed Glaeser. Moretti concluded that
A limited number of American workers can have access to these very high-productivity cities
He concluded that a more efficient distribution would be “a general benefit for the entire economy.”
The secret of his analysis was to look at how different US cities, the high productivity cities, contributed to national economic growth. He then explore the implications of fewer and fewer workers been able to move to these cities to take advantage of the great productive potential. The barrier to them moving was high housing prices and high rents.
For example, labour productivity grew quickly in San Francisco, New York and San Jose overt 45-years. All of these cities are famous for their human capital-intensive industries including technology and finance. These cities weren’t America’s growth engine:
The reason is that the main effect of the fast productivity growth in New York, San Francisco, and San Jose was an increase in local housing prices and local wages, not in employment.
Despite the large difference in local GDP growth between New York, San Jose, and San Francisco and the Rust Belt cities, both groups of cities had roughly the same contribution to aggregate output growth.
The drivers of US growth between 1964 and 2009 were southern U.S. cities and 19 other large cities. These cities attracted many residents because of good weather and abundant supply of cheap housing.
The lesson both the US and for New Zealand, and Auckland in particular, is this reallocation of population away from the expensive cities with restricted land supply reduced national output because these population movements bring workers to cities "where the marginal product of labour is low."
In a technology boom town such as San Francisco, it is now what like New Zealand will be as Generation Rent runs its course – 65% of residents are renters:
Over the past year, the City and County of San Francisco boasted the second strongest labour market in the nation, adding 25,000 new jobs. Yet only 2,548 new housing units were permitted and even fewer were built.
Just think: 25,000 new workers and their families have been knocking on San Francisco doors, but there are new units for less than 10 percent of them. It is not surprising that apartment prices get bid up.
Down and out in NZ = social housing with fast broadband
02 May 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, urban economics
The Dominion Post had a front page story yesterday about an 80-year-old pensioner required to pay for fast broadband in her new social housing. Her new apartment happens to be in my same suburb. I can see the new apartments from my window as I type.
She didn’t have much use for this fast broadband, which cost an extra $20 a month, because she is legally blind. She cannot have a landline-only option because of the way her apartment is wired and the way in which fast broadband works.
The 27 flats have been fitted with fibre-optic cabling, and residents, many of whom are pensioners or have disabilities, cannot opt for a landline-only service.
National building standards require new apartments to be wired with fast broadband. A classic example of the inability of central planning to deal with the diversity of preferences and incomes.
In this case, the victim of central planning it is an old age pensioners obviously in poor circumstances as well as legally blind who is out of pocket. She is one of a number of old age pensioners who are similarly out-of-pocket when they living on a strictly limited budget.
New Zealand and US real housing prices, 1975 – 2014
01 May 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, politics - New Zealand, urban economics
The RMA is the Resource Management Act and was passed just before New Zealand housing prices started to rise rapidly. Was this introduction of much stronger restrictions on the supply of land, followed by a 20 year long rise in the price of land housing more than a coincidence?
Source: Dallas Fed; Housing prices deflated by personal consumption expenditure (PCE) deflator.
Housing unaffordability in New Zealand, 1988–2013
29 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, RMA, zoning
There has been a steady decline in housing affordability in New Zealand. The position is critical of the bottom 20% of the income ladder with now four in 10 of them spending more than 30% of their disposable income on housing costs in relatively good economic times.
via Statistics New Zealand, New Zealand Social Indicators, Housing affordability.
% spent on housing as a share of disposable income, OECD members, 2014
28 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, RMA, supply of land, zoning
New Zealand is pretty much on top of the world as to the amount of income that households must spend keep a roof. That success is a product of local council restrictions on the supply of land and national and local regulations such as under the Resource Management Act (RMA) that increase the costs of bringing lands in the market.
Source: OECD Better Life Index.
Note: Household net adjusted disposable income is the maximum amount that a household can afford to consume without having to reduce its assets or to increase its liabilities. It’s obtained, as defined by the System of National Accounts – SNA, adding to people’s gross income (earnings, self-employment and capital income, as well as current monetary transfers received from other sectors) the social transfers in-kind that households receive from governments (such as education and health care services), and then subtracting the taxes on income and wealth, the social security contributions paid by households as well as the depreciation of capital goods consumed by households.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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