The Unassuming Economist

From a new IMF Working Paper:

“The U.S. labor share of income has been on a secular downward trajectory since the beginning of the new millennium. Using data that are disaggregated across both state and industry, we show the decline in the labor share is broad-based but the extent of the fall varies greatly. Exploiting a new data set on the task characteristics of occupations, the U.S. input-output tables, and the Current Population Survey, we find that in addition to changes in labor institutions, technological change and different forms of trade integration lowered the labor share. In particular, the fall was largest, on average, in industries that saw: a high initial intensity of “routinizable” occupations; steep declines in unionization; a high level of competition from imports; and a high intensity of foreign input usage. Quantitatively, we find that the bulk of the effect comes from changes in technology that are linked to the automation of routine tasks, followed by trade globalization.”

Continue reading here.

Me on BBC Radio, talking about forecasting (I come on at 4.25 for a couple of minutes and then at the end at 23.00).

On cross-country:

• Robert Shiller on Why Do Cities Become Unaffordable? – Project Syndicate
• House prices up by 4.0% in the euro area – Eurostat

On the US:

• Making the House a Home: The Stimulative Effect of Home Purchases on Consumption and Investment – NBER
• The Effect of Debt on Default and Consumption: Evidence from Housing Policy During the Great Recession – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, Housing Perspectives
• • Not my problem: Growth spillovers from uncoordinated land use policy – Land Use Policy
• • A better way to solve the housing crisis — tax land, not development – Los Angeles Times

On other countries:

• [Australia] How Did the Housing Market Perform Over the Financial Year? – CoreLogic
• [Canada] Mortgage and Consumer Credit Trends – CMHC 
• [Spain] Situación Inmobiliaria España – BBVA

From a new IMF Working Paper:

“How important are female workers for economic growth? This paper presents empirical evidence that an increase in female labor force participation is positively associated with labor productivity growth. Using panel data for 10 Canadian provinces over 1990–2015, we found that a 1 percentage point increase in the labor force participation among women with high educational attainment would raise Canada’s overall labor productivity growth by 0.2 to 0.3 percentage point a year. This suggests that if the current gap of 7 percentage points between male and female labor force participation with high educational attainment were eliminated, the level of real GDP could be about 4 percent higher today. The government has appropriately stepped up its efforts to improve gender equality, as part of its growth strategy. In particular, the government’s plan to expand access to affordable child care is a positive step. However, we argue that to maximize the policy outcome given a budget constraint, provision of subsidized child care—including publicly funded child care spaces—should be better targeted to working parents.”

Continue reading here.

The IMF latest report on St. Kitts and Nevis points out that: “The government, through the National Housing Corporation (NHC), is devoting significant resources to foster home ownership through several programs, although not particularly targeting lowest income households. One program provides grants up to $10,000 to make critical repairs and basic improvements to homes (by 2016, assistance was granted to 150 households). And under the Habitat Independence 30 Programme, by 2016 the NHC sourced EC$15 million to facilitate the completion of 115 homes. By 2016, the NHC and the National Bank assisted 43 individuals to construct homes on their lots. The NHC has also introduced a mortgage payment assistance system (named ‘Pay As You Earn’), which progressively sets interest rates on mortgages according to income levels of the applicant. This system was created to address the high incidence of NPLs listed with the NHC. The government is now introducing another housing scheme, “Unity Housing Solutions,” which will provide housing for more than 300 families. “