Economic (and financial crisis) links
About per capita income and its geographical distribution in the Roman Empire.
About militarising foreign aid (pdf).
Saudi supertanker has been seized by Somali pirates, the largest ship ever hijacked. Paper on the economics of piracy (pdf).
Singapore will allow payments to providers of human kidneys and eggs.
Rupert Murdoch is positive about the future of newspapers.
Critiquing “sustainability”: Limiting development to what ‘nature’ provides therefore makes people vulnerable to her whims. Drought is ‘natural’. Famine is ‘natural’. Disease is ‘natural’. They are all mechanisms which, in the ecologist’s lexicon are nature’s own way of ensuring ‘sustainability’. They are checks and balances on the dominance of one species.
Private investment in the US in the 1930s. More. Returns on investment did not recover until much later.
The development that led to the Kelo case has completely fallen through.
There are problems in the way the US spends money on infrastructure.
An online carpool service in Ontario is fined for being an unregulated transportation service and has lots of strict limits put on its use. Clearly, the folk of Ontario have to be protected from “too much” initiative and transport choices.
About the tendency for US public school teachers to send their kids to (pdf) private schools: in Chicago it is particularly strong. (The phenomenon is hardly unknown elsewhere.)
G20 leaders agree on financial and accountancy regulation reforms.
An article from 2000 about the Community Reinvestment Act and what was going on in the US mortgage market: Looking into the future gives further cause for concern: "The bulk of these loans," notes a Federal Reserve economist, "have been made during a period in which we have not experienced an economic downturn." The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America's own success stories make you wonder how much CRA-related carnage will result when the economy cools. The structure disconnected loans from income and effort at the lower end of the market creating risk problems which fed through into other lending: derivatives disconnected income from oversight at the big end of the market: inadequate prudential regulation allowed the latter to grow way past good practice. A perfect storm of too much and too little regulation mediated by perverse financial ingenuity.
About the US housing market and the crisis: This year's Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, pointed at this distinction when he differentiated between what he called "Flatland" and the "Zoned Zone". In "Flatland America", Krugman explained, new housing demand directly led to new housing supply. The cities in Flatland simply grew outwards and built new houses at the fringes. This extra supply kept a check on house prices, which increased only modestly, keeping houses affordable.
But in the "Zoned Zone", things were more difficult.
In these parts of the country, extra demand could not lead to more supply, since stricter land-use regulations prevented the building of more houses. The only way the markets could react to an increase in demand was with higher prices.
Krugman's simple but straightforward economic logic has been confirmed by Demographia, an urban research group. In a study of 107 local housing markets in the US, it found that housing was least affordable in the ones most heavily regulated by town planners. Where fewer planning controls were in place, houses were more affordable and house prices were more stable over time.
About capital destruction by US auto-makers and being time to cut them, not subsidise them. Arguing managed bankruptcy is the way to go. GM is offering buyouts to its UAW workers: The current veteran UAW member at GM today has an average base wage of $28.12 an hour, but the cost of benefits, including pension and future retiree health care costs, nearly triples the cost to GM to $78.21, according to the Center for Automotive Research.
By comparison, new hires will be paid between $14 and $16.23 an hour. And even as they start to accumulate raises tied to seniority, the far less lucrative benefit package will limit GM's cost for those employees to $25.65 an hour. About comparative labour costs. Arguing for the bailout. A response. More links.
About militarising foreign aid (pdf).
Saudi supertanker has been seized by Somali pirates, the largest ship ever hijacked. Paper on the economics of piracy (pdf).
Singapore will allow payments to providers of human kidneys and eggs.
Rupert Murdoch is positive about the future of newspapers.
Critiquing “sustainability”: Limiting development to what ‘nature’ provides therefore makes people vulnerable to her whims. Drought is ‘natural’. Famine is ‘natural’. Disease is ‘natural’. They are all mechanisms which, in the ecologist’s lexicon are nature’s own way of ensuring ‘sustainability’. They are checks and balances on the dominance of one species.
Private investment in the US in the 1930s. More. Returns on investment did not recover until much later.
The development that led to the Kelo case has completely fallen through.
There are problems in the way the US spends money on infrastructure.
An online carpool service in Ontario is fined for being an unregulated transportation service and has lots of strict limits put on its use. Clearly, the folk of Ontario have to be protected from “too much” initiative and transport choices.
About the tendency for US public school teachers to send their kids to (pdf) private schools: in Chicago it is particularly strong. (The phenomenon is hardly unknown elsewhere.)
G20 leaders agree on financial and accountancy regulation reforms.
An article from 2000 about the Community Reinvestment Act and what was going on in the US mortgage market: Looking into the future gives further cause for concern: "The bulk of these loans," notes a Federal Reserve economist, "have been made during a period in which we have not experienced an economic downturn." The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America's own success stories make you wonder how much CRA-related carnage will result when the economy cools. The structure disconnected loans from income and effort at the lower end of the market creating risk problems which fed through into other lending: derivatives disconnected income from oversight at the big end of the market: inadequate prudential regulation allowed the latter to grow way past good practice. A perfect storm of too much and too little regulation mediated by perverse financial ingenuity.
About the US housing market and the crisis: This year's Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, pointed at this distinction when he differentiated between what he called "Flatland" and the "Zoned Zone". In "Flatland America", Krugman explained, new housing demand directly led to new housing supply. The cities in Flatland simply grew outwards and built new houses at the fringes. This extra supply kept a check on house prices, which increased only modestly, keeping houses affordable.
But in the "Zoned Zone", things were more difficult.
In these parts of the country, extra demand could not lead to more supply, since stricter land-use regulations prevented the building of more houses. The only way the markets could react to an increase in demand was with higher prices.
Krugman's simple but straightforward economic logic has been confirmed by Demographia, an urban research group. In a study of 107 local housing markets in the US, it found that housing was least affordable in the ones most heavily regulated by town planners. Where fewer planning controls were in place, houses were more affordable and house prices were more stable over time.
About capital destruction by US auto-makers and being time to cut them, not subsidise them. Arguing managed bankruptcy is the way to go. GM is offering buyouts to its UAW workers: The current veteran UAW member at GM today has an average base wage of $28.12 an hour, but the cost of benefits, including pension and future retiree health care costs, nearly triples the cost to GM to $78.21, according to the Center for Automotive Research.
By comparison, new hires will be paid between $14 and $16.23 an hour. And even as they start to accumulate raises tied to seniority, the far less lucrative benefit package will limit GM's cost for those employees to $25.65 an hour. About comparative labour costs. Arguing for the bailout. A response. More links.