The Unassuming Economist

From a paper by Bing Lu, Xu Yang, Xinding Yu:

“Using data from Chinese industrial firms between 2000 and 2013, we explore the varied impact of minimum wage increases on the exit behavior and export performance of foreign-owned firms, focusing on three primary motivations: labor costs, market size, and industrial linkages. The results show that foreign-owned firms driven by labor costs are more likely to exit following a minimum wage hike, while those motivated by market size and industrial linkages are less likely to be affected. We also observe similar patterns in firm exports: rising minimum wages generally reduce foreign-owned firms’ exports, with the impact being more pronounced for firms with lower domestic market shares and weaker industrial linkages. This paper highlights that deep integration of foreign-owned firms into the domestic market and industrial chain can help mitigate the exit risks associated with rising labor costs.”

On prices, rent, and mortgage:    

• US home prices to rise 3.5% this year but tariffs will hinder new construction: Reuters poll – Reuters
• Home Prices Rebound After Brief Pullback—but There’s Good News for Homebuyers – Realtor.com
• Freddie Mac House Price Index Declined in April; Up 2.6% Year-over-year. 4 of the 5 cities with largest price declines are in Florida! – Calculated Risk
• Asking Rents Mostly Unchanged Year-over-year – Calculated Risk
• High Mortgage Rates Are Not Killing the Dream of Homeownership for One Generation – Realtor.com
• June ICE Mortgage Monitor: Home Prices Continue to Cool – Calculated Risk
• The Mortgage-Market Questions Key to a Public Offering for Fannie and Freddie. Trump administration wants to sell shares in these key financial companies. How it does so will have big impact on home buyers and owners. – Wall Street Journal
• Donald Trump’s plans for Fannie and Freddie would mean payday for hedge funds. Critics warn privatisation of the mortgage giants would enrich Wall St but endanger the housing market – FT 
• Q1 Update: Delinquencies, Foreclosures and REO. REO: lender Real Estate Owned – Calculated Risk
• Mortgage Applications Dip in May amid Refinance Slowdown – NAHB

On sales, permits, starts, and supply:    

• Pending Home Sales Slump as Mortgage Prices Weigh. The pending home sales index sank 6.3% in April, more than offsetting the 5.5% rise in March – Wall Street Journal
• The U.S. Housing Market Has Nearly 500,000 More Sellers Than Buyers—the Most on Record. That Will Likely Cause Home Prices to Fall – Redfin
• Pending Home Sales Declined 6.3% in April – NAR
• U.S. Home Vacancy Rate Steady for 13th Straight Quarter – ATTOM
• Multifamily Absorption Moves Lower for New Apartments – NAHB
• Weekly Housing Trends View—Data for Week Ending May 24, 2025 – Realtor.com
• The Housing Inventory Is Here—Where Are the Buyers? – NAR
• April Private Residential Construction Spending Dips – NAHB
• Redfin: These 31 major housing markets have shifted to buyer’s markets. The shifted U.S. housing market now has 500,000 more home sellers than homebuyers, Redfin calculates. – Fast Company
• U.S. Home Sellers Are Sitting on Nearly $700 Billion Worth of Listings, an All-Time High – Redfin
• States with Highest and Fastest Rising Construction Wages, 2025 – NAHB

On other developments:    

• Sun Belt buyers hold the most power this spring – Zillow
• Real Estate Mapped: U.S. Housing Affordability by State – Visual Capitalist
• We’re all addicted to Zillow now. Forget house hunting. Real estate listings are all about gossip, escapism and scoping out your neighbor’s bathroom renovation. – Washington Post
• A Soft Housing Market Isn’t Just a Florida and Texas Story Now. Sellers may be cutting prices, but buyers can wait. – Bloomberg
• Sellers outnumber prospective homebuyers as high prices and mortgage rates skew the housing market – AP
• The housing market cracks. It’s not just about affordability. – Quartz
• America’s housing market is cracking. After more than two years of relentless price increases, the fundamentals are shifting. What’s emerging is a dramatic reversal from what came before – Quartz  
• The Housing Market Was Supposed to Recover This Year. What Happened? Economists predicted that the United States would break free of its long-running housing slump in 2025. But the opposite happened. – New York Times
• How Trump’s Tariffs and Immigration Policies Could Make Housing Even More Expensive. Out-of-control housing costs helped Trump win the 2024 election. Is he about to make the problem worse? – Reason
• How the N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Plan to Solve the Housing Crisis. The candidates’ ambitious plans could bring hundreds of thousands of new homes to a city desperate for them, though many are light on details about how they’d pay for them. – New York Times
• The United States Residential Property Market Analysis 2025 – Global Property Guide
• Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Serious Delinquency Rates Decreased in April. Fannie Multi-Family Delinquency Rate Highest Since Jan 2011 (ex-Pandemic) – Calculated Risk
• 2025 Top Rental Markets for Recent College Graduates – Realtor.com
• New Housing Doesn’t Have to Create New Traffic. Americans want to reduce sprawl, but how we actually build depends on the city. – Slate
• First-Time Home Buyers Making Up a Smaller and Smaller Share of the Market – Apollo

From a paper by Aariya Sen, and Rudra Sensarma:

“Recent studies have examined the impact of monetary policy on economic inequality, but have focused on advanced economies and wealth inequality. We analyse the impact of monetary policy on income and consumption inequality estimated from a household level dataset in India. We apply Sign-Restricted VAR and Local Projection models to monthly data for 2014–2023. We show that contractionary monetary policy worsens consumption inequality while reducing income inequality. We also find that while restrictive monetary policy reduces capital income inequality and wage income inequality it widens the gap between capital and wage income earners. Moreover, monetary policy exhibits asymmetric effects, suggesting trade-offs for the central bank.”

From Humanity on Trial:

“As discussed on the environmental integration page, cognitive environmental integration has two dimensions: the internal dimension refers to the existence or creation of an overarching cognitive framework that can provide guidance on what environmental processes, limits, principles or imperatives need to be respected to preserve the environmental systems on which life, including human life, depends; the external dimension refers to the integration of those ‘parameters’ as core elements into the cognitive frameworks (ideologies; theories, management frameworks and other) that guide human behaviour, actions and practices in what are usually regarded non-environmental areas, such as economic thinking, ideas, theories or models guiding the development of energy systems, technology, agriculture, transport, the production and consumption of goods and services, the design and construction of buildings and the built-up environment, and any other areas that have (potentially) a significant impact on the environment.

It may surprise those who think that the creation and adoption of such an overarching cognitive environmental framework at the global level is a utopian idea that, in practice, this is an area of environmental integration in which global efforts have been relatively successful. I am referring here, in particular, to the rise of the notion of sustainable development and the extent to which it has been adopted by governments worldwide and international organisations.”

Continue reading here.

In 2012, the magazine Global Finance gave Stanley Fischer, then central bank governor of Israel, an A for his handling of the economy during the financial crisis. It was the fourth year in a row that Fischer had received an A. It’s a grade the former professor—who taught both Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi—cherishes: “Those were some tough tests we faced in Israel.”

Fischer stepped down as central bank governor in June this year after eight years in the job, bringing the curtain down on an extraordinary third act of his career. The second act was as the IMF’s second-in-command during the tumultuous period of financial crises in emerging markets from 1994 to 2001. This role as policymaker came after a rousing opening act in the 1970s and 1980s, during which Fischer established himself as a preeminent macroeconomist, one who defined the contours of the field through his scholarly work and textbooks. It speaks to Fischer’s success that stints as the World Bank’s chief economist in the 1980s and as vice chairman at Citigroup in the 2000s—which would be crowning achievements of many a career—come across as interludes between the main acts.­ For the full profile, continue reading here. 

Also, see an introduction to my profiles of economists.