via NIMBY: Where, When, And to Which Developers It Happens — Rooflines.
NIMBY: Where, When, And to Which Developers It Happens in the USA
15 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, environmental economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, urban economics Tags: green rent seeking, Inner-city Left, land supply, land use planning, NIMBYs, zoning
Mises on why economics analysis is so unpopular
14 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of bureaucracy, income redistribution, Ludwig von Mises, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: antiforeign bias, antimarket bias, expressive voting, green rent seeking, makework bias, NIMBYs, rational ignorance, rational irrationality
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.
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
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.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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