The Unassuming Economist

From a new post by Julia A. Seymour :

“New York Times economist Paul Krugman immediately reacted to the 2016 election of Donald Trump by warning of a possible “global recession.” Perhaps Yahoo! was taking pointers for its latest series. Even though the economy has been doing well, Yahoo! Finance just launched “Your Next-Recession Survival Guide” warning it is “time to prepare for the economic downturn, which could occur as early as 2020.” The new series began June 20.

[…]

In general, forecasting is unreliable. Financial Times wrote in 2014 that an analysis of all 1990s economic forecasts concluded there was great similarity between them and “the predictive record of economists was terrible.” Prakash Loungani, the author of the study, said “The record of failure to predict recessions is virtually unblemished.” ”

My paper is available here.

From a new IMF working paper:

“In this paper, we quantitatively investigate the macroeconomic and distributional impacts of fiscal consolidations in low-income countries through VAT, PIT, and CIT. We find that VAT has the least efficiency costs but is highly regressive, while PIT and CIT lead to higher output and consumption drop, but have better distributional implications. Further, we find that cash transfers targeting rural households are able to mitigate the negative distributional impacts of VAT, while public investment shows almost no distributional impacts.”

“Our results suggest that low-income countries indeed face very different equity-efficiency tradeoffs comparing to advanced economies due to their unique economic structure. It therefore is important to investigate quantitatively the impacts of other tax instruments that have been extensively studied under the environment of advanced economies. For instance, we believe that the optimal progressivity of income tax is also a critically important feature in low-income countries. It is also interesting to study whether and how will classical optimal taxation results under complete markets change when migrated to an economy resembling low-income countries. Another limitation of our study is the omission of transitional dynamics in our model, which is important to the evaluation of short-run welfare effects. We leave these extensions to future work.”

From LSE Business Review:

“Q: What’s your personal interest in the Future of Work?

From my late teens – well before ‘good work’ became the fashionable concept that it is today – I knew the route to happiness was a good job. Work is where most of us spend most of our waking time and it is at the heart of family life. It’s also the driving force behind our local and national economies. Work connects the experiences and living standards of individuals to the economic and social health of the country. Knowing this has driven my own working life. I’ve researched employment, unemployment and job creation for over 40 years now, concentrating on the social and economic conditions needed to create good and long-lasting work.’

Continue reading here. Also see my profile of Christopher Pissarides here.

 

From a new IMF working paper:

“Global temperatures have increased at an unprecedented pace in the past 40 years. This paper finds that increases in temperature have uneven macroeconomic effects, with adverse consequences concentrated in countries with hot climates, such as most low-income countries. In these countries, a rise in temperature lowers per capita output, in both the short and medium term, through a wide array of channels: reduced agricultural output, suppressed productivity of workers exposed to heat, slower investment, and poorer health. In an unmitigated climate change scenario, and under very conservative assumptions, model simulations suggest the projected rise in temperature would imply a loss of around 9 percent of output for a representative low-income country by 2100.”

 

Journal of Housing Economics (June 2018 Volume)

• Race and the City by Ingrid Gould Ellen, Stephen L. Ross
• Are inclusionary housing programs color-blind? The case of Montgomery County MPDU program by Adji Fatou Diagne, Haydar Kurban, Benoit Schmutz
• The Visible Host: Does race guide Airbnb rental rates in San Francisco? by Venoo Kakar, Joel Voelz, Julia Wu, Julisa Franco
• Racial climate and homeownership by Timothy F. Harris, Aaron Yelowitz
• The non-financial costs of violent public disturbances: Emotional responses to the 2011 riots in England by Panka Bencsik
• Are central cities poor and non-white? by Jenny Schuetz, Jeff Larrimore, Ellen A. Merry, Barbara J. Robles, Arturo Gonzalez
• Racial segregation in the United States since the Great Depression: A dynamic segregation approach by Trevor Kollmann, Simone Marsiglio, Sandy Suardi
• The paradox of expanding ghettos and declining racial segregation in large U.S. metropolitan areas, 1970–2010 by Janice Fanning Madden, Matt Ruther
• Does segregation matter for Latinos? by Jorge De la Roca, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Justin Steil
• There’s no place like home: Racial disparities in household formation in the 2000s by Sandra Newman, Scott Holupka, Stephen L. Ross

On cross-country:

• The unaffordable city: Housing and transit in North American cities – Cities
• Rethinking Urban Sprawl: Moving Towards Sustainable Cities – OECD
• Innovando la política de vivienda a través del alquiler: de la ‘casa propia’ a una vivienda que sirva – Inter-American Development Bank
• How cities can lead the way in bridging the global housing gap – World Economic Forum
• Real Estate & Aging – UBS

On the US:

• Housing Wealth Effects: The Long View – NBER
• Don’t Blame Expensive Housing for Falling Fertility – Citylab
• The 0.25% Fed Rate Increase Doesn’t Mean Mortgage Rates Will Increase 0.25% – Forbes
• Climate Change May Already Be Hitting the Housing Market – Bloomberg
• Zillow Data Used To Project Impact Of Sea Level Rise On Real Estate – NPR
• The High Cost of Low Credit – Zillow
• Negative Equity Dips Below 10 Percent for First Time Since the Bottom of the Market – Zillow
• Birth Rates are Falling Most where Homes are Appreciating Fastest – Zillow
• Californians Are Leaving, Where Are They Looking to Go? – Trulia
• Housing: The Case for YIMBY (Yes, In My Back Yard!) – Foundation for Economic Education
• Threading the Needle of Fair Housing Law in a Gentrifying City with a Legacy of Discrimination – University of San Francisco
• S. Home Prices at Least Affordable Level Since Q3 2008 – ATTOM

On other countries:

• [China] China’s Home Prices Rise at Faster Pace Despite Curbs – Bloomberg
• [Ireland] Surging Irish Home Prices to Cool Off, Central Bank Chief Says – Bloomberg
• [Netherlands] Sizzling Amsterdam Housing Market Pushes People to Other Cities – Bloomberg
• [Spain] New Build Residential Snapshot – Q1 2018 – Knight Frank
• [United Arab Emirates] Dubai / Abu Dhabi Residential Property Price Indices: May 2018 Results – REIDIN

Photo by Aliis Sinisalu