The Unassuming Economist

From Eurofund paper by Tadas Leončikas and Sevinç Rende:

• “In Europe, people living in the capital city generally have a better quality of life than people living in other parts of a country. On this basis, it seems that capital cities are indeed the best places to live.
• For most countries, residents of the capital city score higher on life satisfaction on average than people living outside the capital.
• Life satisfaction in a capital city for the most part is closer to the national average than to the averages of other capital cities. This finding suggests that, despite concerns that capitals increasingly operate independently of their nations, national-level factors are still important in shaping differences in well-being both between countries and between capital cities.
• Capital cities have, by and large, larger proportions of people who report feeling resilient – able to cope during times of hardship – compared to other urban centres and rural regions in the same country. Some characteristics of city populations – such as a younger age profile and higher educational attainment – contribute to resilience, while others, such as housing insecurity, erode it. The findings suggest that some other latent factor, possibly related to opportunities for economic advancement and improving one’s living standards, could underlie the extra resilience that capital cities provide.
• Capital city residents tend to be more satisfied with how democracy works in their country compared to the population outside the capital. This difference is largely associated with socioeconomic background, which on average is more advantageous in capital cities. Capital city residents also tend to have greater trust in national institutions and be more critical of local or municipal authorities than people in the rest of the country.”

On cross-country:

• ECB’s house price headache too big to solve – Reuters
• Guidelines for the Implementation of the Right to Adequate Housing – UN
• Are current measures of housing affordability fit for purpose? – Housing Europe
• Smashed avocado on toast and the housing market – ING
• What are macroprudential tools? – Brookings

On the US:

• S. Homeowners Four Times As Likely To Be Equity-Rich Than Seriously Underwater – ATTOM
• How to Make Housing Markets Fairer for All – E21
• The Fed Faces a Housing Conundrum – Bloomberg
• San Jose’s Severe Housing Shortage Is Easy to Fathom – Wall Street Journal
• Are you waiting for house prices to drop during the next recession to buy a home? Why you could have a very a long wait – MarketWatch
• History of Housing Policy in the United States – Portland State University
• Housing Sentiment Nears Survey High as More Consumers Expect Mortgage Rates to Remain Favorable – Fannie Mae
• The Geography of Housing Market Liquidity During the Great Recession – Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
• The GSEs and the Economic Cycle: Realistic Expectations – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

On other countries:

• [Rwanda] Housing policies in Rwanda – International Growth Centre
• [United Kingdom] Where are we in the property cycle? – Financial Times
• [United Kingdom] Britons Priced Out of Housing Market Face Renting Into Old Age – Bloomberg
• [United Kingdom] K. Housing Market Sees Renewed Optimism in January, RICS Says – Bloomberg

From a new IMF research paper by Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, Ehsan Ebrahimy, Deniz O Igan, and Damien Puy:

“In Spain, private sector credit as a share of GDP almost doubled between 2000 and 2007. This increase was accompanied by a boom in housing prices—which doubled in real terms over the same period. The economy as a whole also grew at a record pace.

But then in 2008, Spain’s credit bubble burst, and with it came loan defaults, bank failures, and a prolonged economic slowdown.

A less-noticed development in Spain was in the construction sector, where employment grew by an astounding 47 percent, compared to the economy-wide increase of 27 percent.

New IMF staff research, based on a large sample of advanced and emerging market economies since the 1970s, shows that long-lasting credit booms that featured rapid construction growth never ended well.

New evidence on credit booms

Rapid credit growth—known as “credit booms”—presents a trade-off between immediate, buoyant economic performance and the danger of a future crisis. The risk of a “bad boom”—where a rapid credit growth episode is followed by a financial crisis or subpar economic growth—increases when there is also a boom in house prices.

Our research shows that the experience with the dangerous combination of credit booms and rapid expansion in the construction sector goes beyond the Spanish borders and extends to time periods not related to the global financial crisis.

We find that signals from construction activity may help to tell apart the dangerous booms, which need to be controlled, from the episodes of buoyant but healthy credit growth (“good booms”).

Credit booms do not lift all boats alike

During booms, output and employment expand faster. But not all sectors behave the same. Most of the extra growth is concentrated in a few industries—specifically, construction and, at a distant second, finance.

However, the same industries that benefit the most during booms experience the most severe downturns during busts. This implies that credit booms tend to leave few long-term footprints on a country’s industrial composition.”

 

Continue reading here.

From a paper by William Miles (Wichita State University):

“Although the Scottish electorate voted down independence in 2014, Brexit has led to renewed calls from Scottish political leaders for a second referendum. Scottish independence would likely lead to joining the European Union, and this would obligate Scotland to eventually join the euro common currency. If Scottish home prices were not highly cohesive with those in euro zone countries, the ECB’s monetary policy could cause major disruptions for Scottish housing, and, by extension, the Scottish economy. As an example, if most euro-country home values were rising, but those in Scotland were falling, the ECB would likely run a tight monetary policy, which would be devastating to housing conditions in Scotland. We accordingly investigate the co-movement of house prices in Scotland with those in eight major euro zone countries, as well as co-movement between Scottish and UK home prices, using a variety of metrics. The use of methods that are primarily linear indicates that joining the euro may not result in a large loss of co-movement with other regional housing markets, compared to Scotland’s current correlation with UK national home prices. However, the use of a measure that takes into account differences in the magnitude, and not just the phase of cycles yields results indicating Scotland exhibits very little co-movement with other euro housing markets. Indeed Scotland has co-movement metrics within the euro countries at levels similar to those of Spain and Ireland, which both suffered devastating booms and busts. Thus leaving sterling for the euro could be highly problematic.”

From Social Europe post by Monique Goyens:

“In the latest contribution to our series on ‘just transition’, Monique Goyens argues that it must address the people finding it hard to pay their energy bills.

The task of moving to a carbon-neutral society is herculean, but the benefits won’t just include saving the planet. There are also long-term economic gains, even for the most hard-up.

An estimated 50 million around the European Union struggle to keep their homes warm and pay their energy bills. Many suffer from the same problems: poorly insulated homes, ill-suited tariffs, insufficient advice on how to save energy or a combination of all three.

The lowest income earners in the EU spend an increasingly large share of their budget on energy—rising from 6 per cent in 2000 to 9 per cent in 2014. In the short term, for this group, it makes more sense to use energy more efficiently than to invest in solar panels, heat pumps or pellet stoves. It will also deliver faster savings.

The choice should not however be between having a warm home and having food on the table. In making their homes more efficient, people consume less energy to heat their living space and can more easily pay their bills.

But getting people to take action can be complex. Those at risk of energy poverty might feel overwhelmed and prioritise solving other problems, such as warmer clothing or food. Often, they might not know what solutions are out there.

For governments and energy advisers to upload advice about insulation to a website isn’t enough. That advice needs to get out to people. Human contact also helps.”

Continue reading here.