Richard's Real Estate and Urban Economics Blog

A healthy debate  is happening about whether the standard measure of national economic well-being--per capita GDP--is sufficient for that purpose.  One problem is that per capita GDP does noth...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/10/thinking-about-metrics-comparing.html

I check out mortgage rates at least once a week, because, well, it is my job to know what they are.  Recently, I have been expecting to see mortgage rates fall a lot, because 10-year Treasury...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/09/mortgage-spreads-are-rising-although.html

This took me back (with pleasure) to my graduate school days.  I have been privileged to learn from many amazing people, but I think I learned more from Professor Brock than anyone else (and I ...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/08/robustness-in-economics-and.html

After reading Biyamen Applebaum's thought-provoking piece in the NYT today, I thought about how economists measure well-being, and how measures other than GDP per capita better reflect social w...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/08/by-world-standards-middle-class-in-us.html

Has the median man made progress economically since 1980?  Not really.  While male median income rose (in 2017 $) from $35,589 to $40,396, or 13.5 percent,  this modest increase masks the fac...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-median-male-earner-top-line.html

Using one of the world's most useful websites, FRED , I drew a graph of rent CPI and all CPI going back to the beginning of the series. Until 1984, rent growth and CPI growth pretty much ma...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/08/1984-something-happened-to-rent-cpi.html

I think the answer is yes.  Suppose you are a young person, early in your earnings years.    Your employer offers you a one to one 401(k) match on, say, 5 percent of your income.  The employ...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/08/should-young-people-borrow-to-get-their.html

It's a chat about Robert Galbraith's Career of Evil .  Panelists Lisa Schweitzer and Aubrey Hicks made is work.

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/i-host-podcast.html

Geoffrey Heal computes the cost of going entirely to renewables by the year 2050.   The paper is short and to the point.  His computations are: US GDP is currently a shade under $20 trillio...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/eight-double-spaced-pages-that-might.html

I just had a major home repair that illustrated (1) that law of one price doesn't always hold and (2) people should shop for expensive things. The expensive thing was a new roof on my vintage ...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/shopping.html

Construction productivity has long lagged productivity in other sectors.  For example, a McKinsey report has manufacturing productivity in several OECD countries increasing by 70 percent, whil...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/is-increasing-cost-of-housing-just.html

Cities will make the following deal with developers: we'll give you more density, if you provide units that are deed restricted to be "permanently affordable," meaning will have rents below some...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/what-is-it-about-la.html

I have enjoyed reading Michael Kinsley's stuff for as long as I can remember.  The problem is that he inspired a group of young people to value cleverness and contrariness, and so we get stuff ...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/housing-really-is-harder-to-afford.html

Joel Kotkin notes quite correctly that housing is expensive relative to incomes in California--he is certainly not alone in this view.  His cure for this particular illness--make it easier to ...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/joel-kotkin-housing-affordability-and.html

One of the many useful things the people at the St. Louis Fed do is maintain the FRED page, which has a cornucopia of economic data that is easy to download and graph.   Tonight I just happen...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/where-are-half-million-units.html

E.B. White in the New Yorker in 1943: We received a letter from the Writers’ War Board the other day asking for a statement on “The Meaning of Democracy.” It presumably is our duty to c...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/eb-white-on-definition-of-democracy-ht.html

The Census has a nice tool that allows one to map American Community Survey data by counties (at least counties with sufficient population to develop estimates based on samples).  I drew two t...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/07/lots-of-folks-over-65-are-spending-lot.html

I have lived in LA for 11 years now, and I think it is safe to say that among the top topics of conversation is traffic and the misery of commuting.  And in a sense, people are right about the...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/06/is-it-reasonable-for-angelinos-to.html

Jung Choi, Eul Noh and I have a paper  that shows that when high skill people move to high skill cities, rents for low skill people rise more rapidly than their incomes (high skill people gener...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/06/california-is-getting-richerbecause-it.html

I was browsing the web, and an add popped up up for a beautiful Porsche, with the tag-line, "a slice of the Autobahn on the 405." I am sure the car is lovely to sit in, but that is about all o...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/06/ads-that-amuse.html

....here is a scatterplot of the Census 2017 homeless count per capita against mean January temperature by state: See a correlation?  No?  That's because there isn't one. (Note: y-axis...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/06/for-those-that-think-homeless-people.html

People say so.  But what people say is sometimes not true. I did the following exercise.  I took Census of Government Data on State and Local Spending for 2016 (the most recent available ye...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/06/is-california-big-spender.html

Of course there are far more than two, but two seem particularly all encompassing to me. They are (1) Should everyone, regardless of income, have access to housing in every neighborhood? (2)...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/06/two-moral-dilemmas-for-housing-policy.html

New York state is about to pass a suite of the most restrictive rent control laws in many years .  Among other things, the laws would restrict vacancy decontrol, and limit the ability to pass t...

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/06/rent-control.html

...other than housing, where governments impose supply ceilings?  Racking my brain on this, and I can't think of another product.  I could be wrong, though. 

https://real-estate-and-urban.blogspot.com/2019/06/is-there-in-us-necessity-of-life.html