From Social Europe:

“There are fears the revised directive on energy performance due from the European Commission will not be adequate to the task.

The revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), expected from the European Commission today, as part of the Fit for 55 package, is a legislative milestone which cannot go under the radar.

In the bloc’s effort to achieve climate neutrality and fulfil its international climate commitments, the building sector has a systemic role to play. The EPBD is the main policy instrument regulating buildings across the European Union.

Since its first adoption in 2002, the legislation has been key to improving the energy performance of the European building stock, by fostering energy efficiency and aiming at long-term decarbonisation. But given the need to take decisive action in this decade to tackle the climate emergency, the time has come for a comprehensive revision, to fill gaps and raise ambition.  

Profound transformations are urgently needed to decarbonise buildings, ensuring that the sector contributes to the efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5C. Indeed, the homes and offices which surround us today are among the main culprits of the climate crisis, accounting for around 40 per cent of all energy consumed and 36 per cent of energy-related greenhouse-gas emissions in the EU.”

Continue reading here.

In a column for VoxDev ( December 2021), economists Eeshani Kandpal and Elina Pradhan of the World Bank Development Research Group, Madhulika Khanna from Yale University, and Benjamin Loevinsohn of The Global Fund explain results from an experiment in Nigeria. “Providing operating funds to public health facilities can be as effective as alternative pay-for-performance models, at half the cost”, they write.

The authors discuss some factors besides poor effort put in by healthcare workers, such as lack of control on operational budget by PHCs which causes delays and other inefficiencies to build a case in favor of decentralized financing. The study compares outcomes from two interventions- pay for performance and decentralized facility financing. It presents conclusions about the performance of both interventions in areas like quality of service delivered, immunization of children, use of contraceptives, antenatal care-seeking. The article also discusses several policy insights.

Click here to read the full column.

Please note that Housing View will be on hiatus for the last two week of December and will resume back in January 2022.

On cross-country:

• The laws of attraction: Economic drivers of inter-regional migration, the role of housing, and public policies – VoxEU
• Affordability the casualty amid ever-climbing global property prices – Reuters

On the US:   

• A New Year Brings a New Surge in Housing Prices. People are ricocheting between skyrocketing rents and a red-hot home market, upending old seasonal patterns as job and wage growth drive a new economic cycle. – Bloomberg
• Millennials Are Supercharging the Housing Market. The generation that supposedly didn’t want to buy things now accounts for over half of all home-purchase loan applications; economists expect them to bolster demand for years – Wall Street Journal
• You Won’t be My Neighbor: Opposition to High Density Development – Urban Affairs Review
• Boom in Housing Prices Helps Hawaii More Than Any Other State – Bloomberg
• A Black couple had a White friend show their home and its appraisal rose by nearly half a million dollars – CNN
• What’s Behind the Racial Homeownership Gap in Philadelphia? – Philadelphia Fed
• Black homeownership is declining in Philly – NPR
• Biden taps Thompson for full term as top housing regulator. The move comes after Thompson allies on the Hill urged Biden to keep her at the helm amid reports he planned to replace Thompson this fall. – Politico
• A Refugee Crisis Runs Into a Housing Crisis. Thousands of Afghan refugees are being released from military bases to U.S. cities to rebuild their lives. Settling them into homes amid a rental shortage is proving to be a challenge. – New York Times
• How landlords thwart America’s attempts to house poor people. It is one thing to receive a housing voucher and quite another to successfully use it – The Economist
• As Home Prices Soar Elsewhere, California Starts to Seem Almost Reasonable – UCLA

On China

• The user cost of housing and the price-rent ratio in Shanghai – Regional Science and Urban Economics
• China struggles to shrug off weak consumer spending and property woes. New home prices decline at steepest rate since 2015 while retail sales come in below forecasts – FT
• Kaisa offshore investors in talks to buy group’s distressed loans. Creditors seek inroads into Chinese developers’ opaque restructurings after Evergrande collapse – FT 
• China’s central bank urges backing for affordable housing in Shanghai – Reuters
• Private equity cuts back on China property as Evergrande hits stocks. A third of firms plan to reduce exposure to sector as developer’s default reverberates through market – FT
• China’s Coming Property Correction: A Managed Soft Landing – MacroPolo
• Abandoned Projects Shatter Confidence in China’s Home Market – Bloomberg
• U.S. Home-Price Surge Looks Much Tamer in Government CPI Report – Bloomberg   
• China’s property slowdown sheds light on another worrying debt problem. Local-government financing vehicles, not just developers, are saddled with lashings of debt – The Economist
• China housing market slumps again as another developer runs into trouble. House prices, sales and construction all fell in November as Shimao Group shares plunge and Beijing assesses what to do with Evergrande – The Guardian

On other countries:  

• [Australia] New Zealand has adopted a radical rezoning plan to cut house prices – could it work in Australia? Councils won’t be able to block townhouses or apartments under a sweeping reform aimed at improving affordability – but will it work? And could the idea cross the Tasman? – The Guardian
• [Canada] Canadian Home Prices Surge a Record 25% Amid Persistent Shortage – Bloomberg
• [Germany] Temporal dynamics of rent regulations – The case of the German rent control – Regional Science and Urban Economics
• [Germany] As COVID-19 continues, other issues are coming to the fore – Savills
• [Ireland] Sharon Donnery: The role of central banks in housing markets – Central Bank of Ireland
• [Singapore] Singapore tightens curbs to cool buoyant property market – Reuters
• [United Kingdom] House price push by Bank of England is oddly timed. The central bank has suggested removing one of the post-financial crisis guardrails against runaway mortgage debt – FT
• [United Kingdom] ‘Piecemeal’ rental housing policy fails tenants, warns UK watchdog. The National Audit Office calls for overarching strategy to help renters in difficulties – FT
• [United Kingdom] U.K.’s Fixed Mortgages Mean Faster BOE Rate Rises May Be Needed – Bloomberg
• [United Kingdom] U.K. Housing Loses Momentum With Second Drop in Asking Prices – Bloomberg
• [United Kingdom] U.K.’s House Price Boom Driven by ‘Race for Space’, BOE Says – Bloomberg
• [Uruguay] Spillover effects from new housing supply – Regional Science and Urban Economics

The latest report by World Health Organization, Global expenditure on health: Public spending on the rise? (2021), highlights interesting statistics about expenditure in high income, low income, and low middle-income countries on primary healthcare, the correlation between government spending and out-of-pocket expenditure, trends in public investment patterns, etc. It analyzes data over a 20 year period, from 2000 until 2019, and provides crucial policy insights alongside recent developments.

“Overall, global spending on health has doubled in real terms over the past two decades, reaching US$ 8.5 trillion in 2019 and 9.8% of GDP (up from 8.5% in 2000). Spending on health remained highly unequal—and more unequal than the distribution of global GDP. High income countries accounted for nearly 80% of global spending on health (with the United States of America alone accounting for more than 40%), and their average spending per capita was more than four times the average GDP per capita of low income countries. In countries for which data were available, about half of health spending went towards primary health care (PHC), representing about 3% of GDP on average. Nearly half of PHC spending was funded by private sources, the same as for non-PHC services. Among the low income countries for which data were available, about one-third of PHC spending came from external aid and one-fifth came from government sources, whereas the composition was reversed for non-PHC spending. Further analysis from a set of low and middle income countries indicates that the share of PHC spending that went to infectious diseases was significantly higher than the share that went to noncommunicable diseases and injuries.”

Click here to access the full report.

“Economic forecasting is rarely easy. This is especially true in the current environment, as the relationship between economic activity and public health metrics such as the percentage of people vaccinated, or the number of COVID cases, remains far from predictable. 

Key macroeconomic questions remain. Is higher inflation likely to persist, or will it prove transitory? Will businesses be able to boost productivity despite the tight labor market, and supply chain disruptions? And what are some of the most useful metrics to assess economic recovery in the current environment? 

This week on EconoFact Chats, Julia Coronado discusses these questions, and offers her perspective on which metrics best indicate the health of the economy.”

To know more click here.