Following on from this mornings post on house prices, I thought I should touch on an article in the press today, about an upcoming housing shortage. I’ll be honest here, terms like “housing shortage” and “over-supply” annoy me a bit – as what people are trying to say is that there are too many (or […]
In the US, one of the main reasons given for the housing bubble was a result of an “over-supply of housing“. In New Zealand we did not build that oversupply of housing even though population rose quickly pushing prices up. This was because it was very difficult to get consents and we had a substantial […]
The National party has announced that it wants more of the Cullen fund to flow into domestic investment projects. Now it may seem to make sense to “increase investment” at home – but we have to think about what this capital is doing when it moves around. If capital at home made the highest return, […]
In the food price index numbers there has been a big deal made about recent increases in the fruit and vegetable category. The common explanation is that an especially cold winter reduced supply, which has feed into higher prices now. This explanation seems believable, especially given that a shock during the season does not just […]
Mike Moreu is on the money again! The link is here. Why is there no haircut for the insurance? Why are the fees not linked in inherent risk? I agree that in some countries governments need to “recapitalise” banks by buying parts of them. I agree that a deposit insurance scheme can avoid bank runs […]
Paul Krugman won the 2008 Economics Nobel prize for his work on trade theory. This was a surprising result for me, as he is still relatively young and I expected Sargent to win. However, he is a deserving winner – congratulations are in order. Anti-Dismal goes into more detail, and links to a number of […]