The productivity commission has released its final report on “housing affordability”. Now there are a number of important points in the report, and there are undeniable issues in the New Zealand housing market which have caused a “misallocation” of resources. However, the justification for their being a housing affordability issue in the report is not […]
Given recent hectic times I’ve neglected to mention a couple of new New Zealand economics blogs. There is Fair play and forward passes (via Anti-Dismal), where an economics lecturer from Massey discusses sports and New Zealand economics. There is also Welly Gnome, where a Vic University undergrad takes it upon himself to get into economics […]
Over on his blog, Bill Bennett has been discussing hot cross bun inflation over the last couple of hundred years – saying that it has averaged about 1.1%pa. With the consumption of hot cross buns about to spike, I thought I would copy and paste my comments on hot cross bun pricing over here: One […]
James did an excellent post discussing tax issues recently. After this, he obtained a copy of the book, and dug out the three ways that Rob Salmond had noted GST was regressive. It is good to see Rob put some thought into it and found measurable reasons why regressivity exists – but I also need […]
I have a question where I would love some help 🙂 Via Marginal Revolution I noticed that there seems to be quite a war between economists regarding the financial sector. However, I actually don’t see where there is an issue in the argument that is going on. The way I see it Nick Rowe has […]
The NBR has pointed to an article to the Economist that shows house price to income and house price to rent ratios – pointing out that the very high house price to rent ratio can be used as an indicator that the return on housing is very low/house prices are heavily overvalued. Now one criticism […]