The Unassuming Economist

On cross-country:

• Demographic Patterns of Reurbanisation and Housing in Metropolitan Regions in the US and Germany – Comparative Population Studies

On the US:

• A Shared Future: Data Democratization and Spatial Heterogeneity in the Housing Market – The Joint Center for Housing Studies
• LTV vs. LTI Constraints: When Did They Bind, and How Do They Interact? – University of Copenhagen
• Asymmetric effects of monetary policy in regional housing markets – Norges Bank
• Fannie and Freddie Continue in Limbo while Congress Looks for a Permanent Fix for the Housing Finance Market – Cato Institute
• Housing Disease and Public School Finances – NBER
• Investors Pile Into Suburban Rental Housing – Wall Street Journal

On other countries:

• [Singapore] Singapore authorities’ housing market warning may fall on deaf ears – Reuters

Photo by Aliis Sinisalu

Here are the top 17 posts of 2017:

1. Understanding Housing Supply: Views from Joseph Gyourko
2. Inequality of Opportunity, Inequality of Income, and Long-term Growth
3. Steve Malpezzi on Housing Markets
4. Housing: From Immobile and Illiquid to Mobile and Liquid
5. Decoupling of Emissions and GDP: Now you see it, now you don’t
6. Workshop on Forecasting Issues in Developing Economies
7. Housing Market in Africa: What We Do and Don’t Know
8. Housing Construction: The Current State, Policy Implication, and the Future
9. Stabilizing the System of Mortgage Finance in the United States
10. The State of Housing Market in Africa
11. Okun’s Law in Black and White
12. Property Tax in Africa
13. Cross-Country Spillovers of Fiscal Consolidations in the Euro Area
14. Construction Sector: The World’s Next Productivity Story?
15. Meeting EU Climate Pledges: Assessing Some Potential Policy Refinements
16. IMF Executive Board Discusses Macroeconomic Prospects and Challenges in LIDCs
17. Going for (Inclusive) Growth

The IMF’s latest report on Bolivia says that:

“The FSL [Financial Services Law] has resulted in rapid credit growth directed to specific sectors and social housing (…) Housing lending should be closely monitored and the authorities should finalize and publish a housing price index. (…) More market-oriented mechanisms to improve financial access should be considered and the housing loan portfolio monitored closely.”

My work with Davide Furceri, and Jonathan D. Ostry on The aggregate and disttributional effects of financial globalization: evidence from macro and sectoral data makes into the list of the research that shaped our world in 2017–put together by Dan Kopf of Quartz.

The aggregate and disttributional effects of financial globalization: evidence from macro and sectoral data (pdf) by Davide Furceri, Prakash Loungani and Jonathan D. Ostry

Main finding: Foreign finance has led to more inequality.

Nominating economist: Dani Rodrik, Harvard University

Specialization: Globalization and economic development

Why? “In brief, opening up to foreign finance (“financial globalization”) produces limited gains to aggregate output while generating significant increases in income inequality (a higher share of top incomes, a lower labor share, etc.). This paper’s conclusions are significant as the authors are researchers at the International Monetary Fund, which aggressively pushed for financial globalization until recently.”

From Dani Rodrik’s weblog:

Ten commandments for economists

1. Economics is a collection of models; cherish their diversity.

2. It’s a model, not the model.

3. Make your model simple enough to isolate specific causes and how they work, but not so simple that it leaves out key interactions among causes.

4. Unrealistic assumptions are OK; unrealistic critical assumptions are not OK.

5. The world is (almost) always second-best.

6. To map a model to the real world you need explicit empirical diagnostics, which is more craft than science.

7. Do not confuse agreement among economists for certainty about how the world works.

8. It’s OK to say “I don’t know” when asked about the economy or policy.

9. Efficiency is not everything.

10. Substituting your values for the public’s is an abuse of your expertise.

Ten commandments for non-economists

1. Economics is a collection of models with no predetermined conclusions; reject any arguments otherwise.

2. Do not criticize an economist’s model because of its assumptions; ask how the results would change if certain problematic assumptions were more realistic.

3. Analysis requires simplicity; beware of incoherence that passes itself off as complexity.

4. Do not let math scare you; economists use math not because they are smart, but because they are not smart enough.

5. When an economist makes a recommendation, ask what makes him/her sure the underlying model applies to the case at hand.

6. When an economist uses the term “economic welfare,” ask what s/he means by it.

7. Beware that an economist may speak differently in public than in the seminar room.

8. Economists don’t (all) worship markets, but they know better how they work than you do.

9. If you think all economists think alike, attend one of their seminars.

10. If you think economists are especially rude to non-economists, attend one of their seminars.