The Unassuming Economist

This study, by Michiels, Nordman, and Seetahul, combines behaviorist and structuralist views to understand the extent to which individual skills and personality traits facilitate labor market mobility of disadvantaged groups in the presence of constraining social structures.

Based on a rural India case study, results from this paper show that personality traits are important determinants of labor market mobility but also emphasize a strong rigidity of the socioeconomic structure of the Indian labor market in terms of gender and caste, and its relative stillness over time. While for women, literacy, emotional stability, and openness to new experiences appear to allow income gains, these benefits are limited by the labor market structure, maintaining them in low-skilled and casual occupations. For Dalits, emotional stability and agreeableness seem to play an important role in relative income mobility. These interesting findings highlight the segmented nature of the Indian labor market, which is still strongly organized by diverse forms of domination.

Source: Michiels et al. (2021). Many Rivers to Cross: Social Identity, Cognition, and Labour Mobility in Rural India. Institute of Labor Economics.

Click here to read the full paper.

On the US:   

• 2022 home prices will keep rising at or near double digits, predicts the analyst who called the current housing boom – American Enterprise Institute
• Flattening the curve: Pandemic-Induced revaluation of urban real estate – Journal of Financial Economics
• Supporting Philadelphia’s Black Homeowners in the Aftermath of the COVID-19 Crisis – Philadelphia Fed
• Introducing the Brookings and Ashoka Collaborative Innovation Challenge: Valuing Homes in Black Communities – Brookings
• Affordable Housing as a Pathway to Economic Opportunity – Harvard University
• Desperate for Housing Options, Communities Turn to Ballot Initiatives. Cities and counties will vote on measures, like tax increases and curbs on Airbnb, aimed at creating more affordable housing. – New York Times
• In a Supertall Tower, How Much Affordable Housing Is Enough? The only residential building at the World Trade Center will be 25 percent affordable — a real accomplishment, supporters say. Others insist it should be 100 percent. – New York Times
• ‘Palm Beach is sold out’ after frenzied pandemic property sales. Prices are rising as millionaires are priced out by billionaires, pushing them to nearby West Palm Beach – FT
• As Boomers Downsize, Competition Grows for Simpler—but Not Always Smaller—Homes. Smaller houses, desired by aging seniors and young couples, are among the toughest to find – Wall Street Journal
• ‘Gimme Shelter’: Meet California’s housing chiefs – Los Angeles Times
• States under time crunch to provide housing assistance: How to fix it – Brookings
• ‘Don’t Buy Zillow Homes’: A Tale of Failure, Mistrust and Hot Housing Markets. Twitter and TikTok users are raging against the real estate firm as it looks to sell 7,000 homes for $2.8 billion following the failure of a much-vaunted business. – Bloomberg
• Could Zillow buy the neighborhood? iBuyers want to be the Amazon of real estate. What does that mean for the rest of us? – Vox
• Zillow May Have Stumbled, But iBuying Is Here to Stay – Barron’s
• Strip Malls to Homes: An Analysis of Commercial to Residential Conversions in – Terner Center for Housing Innovation
• AEI housing market indicators, October 2021 – American Enterprise Institute
• Institutional Investors Have a Comparative Advantage in Purchasing Homes That Need Repair – Urban Institute
• Eviction and Voter Turnout: The Political Consequences of Housing Instability – Princeton University

On China

• China’s long wait for a tax everyone loves to hate. The government will at last roll out a property tax – The Economist
• The strongest weapon in Xi Jinping’s common prosperity armoury is a property tax – Quartz
• How China’s property crackdown is being felt in a remote city steeped in Communist Party lore. Beijing’s push to reduce excessive borrowing in the property sector and tame house prices is hurting regional finances. The policy tightening could be related to the current political cycle ahead of the 20th Party Congress, some analysts say – South China Morning Post
• Why China May Not Bail Out Evergrande. A complicated political calculus goes into which businesses Beijing cares about most. – Foreign Policy
• Why Beijing will endure property tax’s drag on housing market – South China Morning Post

On other countries:  

• [Australia] Australia’s Hot Housing Market Shows Signs of Cooling Momentum – Bloomberg
• [Australia] Borrowers rush to lock in low interest rates amid expectations of RBA rise. Rising house prices and a resurgent economy could nudge the Reserve Bank to raise rates for first time in 11 years – The Guardian
• [Brazil] Estimating the Economic Value of Zoning Reform – NBER
• [Brazil] How to improve access to housing for the low-income population? – IADB
• [Canada] Bank of Canada’s early lift-off warning may dampen housing boom fanned by speculators – Reuters
• [Hong Kong] What Hong Kong must do to solve the city’s perennial housing and land shortage problems – South China Morning Post
• [Israel] Israel Plans AirBnB Restrictions, Taxes to Curb Housing Prices – Bloomberg
• [Italy] Living on my own: The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on housing demand – Bank of Italy
• [New Zealand] Growing supply will bring down New Zealand house prices, says RBNZ’s Orr – Reuters
• [United Kingdom] Homeowners face biggest hike in mortgage costs since 2008. Data from government’s independent forecasting unit suggests interest payments could increase by 13% in 2023 – The Guardian
• [United Kingdom] Surge in mortgage lending prompted by stamp duty deadline. The end of the tax break in September fuelled lending but the outlook for approvals remains ‘resilient’ – FT
• [United Kingdom] Rising Interest Rates Expected to Cool U.K. Housing Market – Bloomberg

“In this paper, the relation between structural public balance adjustment and absolute poverty in 19 Eurozone countries during the time span 2005–2017 has been investigated. Absolute poverty is becoming more and more relevant in advanced economies, and due to its non-country-specific nature, it allows for a more accurate comparison among countries with very different GDP levels, which also belong to the same economic area. Structural public balance adjustments represent the tool that individual countries must use to contain their deficit and debt within the threshold.

The empirical estimates presented in this paper allow us to support the conclusion that structural public balance adjustments have a direct relation with absolute poverty and that restrictive fiscal measures increase material deprivation, while expansive measures decrease it. In line with the recent debate on the efficacy of fiscal policy, this is the result of the effects of government expenditure on growth that the eventual presence of redistributive measures has not been able to counteract. The introduction in the estimates of other variables affecting poverty consolidates the results and indicates, as additional causes, the rate of inflation and trade openness. Further estimates were conducted on a reduced sample of 12 EMU countries for a longer period (1995–2017) and for the two subsamples of pre (1995–2008) and post (2009– 2017) crisis period using a dependent variable indicator of monetary poverty confirm the
existence of a direct relation between structural adjustments and the share of population living in awkward social conditions.
However, inside the European policy framework, national policies are constrained in their ability to implement autonomously fiscal policies. In the absence of a sustained rate of growth, the interaction among fiscal policy stance, government bonds yields and capital flows limits any kind of single states intervention in the fear of interest rates increase (Canale et al. 2018). Therefore, whatever their aims, national governments are very limitedly able to reconcile the objective of poverty alleviation with that of sound public finance. The increase in poverty is perceived as a kind of unavoidable consequence of fiscal profligacy.”

Source: Canale, R and Liotti, G. (2021). Absolute Poverty and Sound Public Finance in the Eurozone. Journal of Economic Inequality.

Click here to read the full paper.

This week of the year 2021 is of prime significance for the world as leaders from across countries have gathered in Glasgow, Scotland for the CoP26 summit which is touted to be the biggest environment-based conference after the Paris Summit in 2015.

Besides the heads of states, more than a fifth of the major corporations in the world have pledged to reach the net-zero carbon emissions target by 2030. However, what is striking is how the role of women as climate leaders, investors, and influencers is largely missing from the mainstream discussion on emissions reduction. 

This report draws out interesting parallels between seemingly disparate objectives like climate change and diversity, that corporations must address as part of their journey towards a greener planet. It highlights the influence of greater gender equality on an enterprise’s climate outcomes, by having women in leadership positions to act as changemakers, as low-carbon product influencers, and climate-focused business investors.

Click here to read the full report.

From a new paper by Arpit Gupta, Vrinda Mittal, Jonas Peeters, and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh:

“We show that the COVID-19 pandemic brought house price and rent declines in city centers, and price and rent increases away from the center, thereby flattening the bid-rent curve in most U.S. metropolitan areas. Across MSAs, the flattening of the bid-rent curve is larger when working from home is more prevalent, housing markets are more regulated, and supply is less elastic. Housing markets predict an urban revival with urban rent growth exceeding suburban rent growth for the foreseeable future, as working from home recedes.”