Thursday, September 05, 2019

Mortgage Spreads are Rising (although maybe it's a blip).

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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 s...
Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Robustness in Economics and Econometrics: Interview with William "Buz" B...

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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 le...
Monday, August 26, 2019

By world standards, the middle class in the US still does very well

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After reading Biyamen Applebaum's thought-provoking piece in the NYT today, I thought about how economists measure well-being, and how...
Sunday, August 11, 2019

The median male earner--the top line overstates progress

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Has the median man made progress economically since 1980?  Not really.  While male median income rose (in 2017 $) from $35,589 to $40,396, ...
Sunday, August 04, 2019

1984: Something happened to Rent CPI

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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....
Friday, August 02, 2019

Should young people borrow to get their 401(k) match?

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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) m...
Monday, July 29, 2019

I host a podcast.

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It's a chat about Robert Galbraith's Career of Evil .  Panelists Lisa Schweitzer and Aubrey Hicks made is work.
Sunday, July 28, 2019

Eight double spaced pages that might change the world.

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Geoffrey Heal computes the cost of going entirely to renewables by the year 2050.   The paper is short and to the point.  His computations ...
Saturday, July 27, 2019

Shopping

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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 ...
Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Is the increasing cost of housing about productivity?

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Construction productivity has long lagged productivity in other sectors.  For example, a McKinsey report has manufacturing productivity in...
Thursday, July 18, 2019

What is it about LA?

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Cities will make the following deal with developers: we'll give you more density, if you provide units that are deed restricted to be ...
Friday, July 12, 2019

Housing really is harder to afford

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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 ...
Thursday, July 11, 2019

Joel Kotkin, Housing Affordability, and the Fringe

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Joel Kotkin notes quite correctly that housing is expensive relative to incomes in California--he is certainly not alone in this view.  Hi...
Tuesday, July 09, 2019

Where are the half-million units?

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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 i...
Thursday, July 04, 2019

E.B. White on the definition of democracy (h/t Leslie Appleton-Young)

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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 Me...
Tuesday, July 02, 2019

Lots of folks over 65 are spending a lot on housing.

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The Census has a nice tool that allows one to map American Community Survey data by counties (at least counties with sufficient population...
Sunday, June 30, 2019

Is it reasonable for Angelinos to expect a shorter commute?

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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 c...
Tuesday, June 25, 2019

California is getting richer..because it is becoming clubbier.

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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 m...

Ads that amuse

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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."...
Thursday, June 20, 2019

For those that think homeless people migrate to warmer climates....

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....here is a scatterplot of the Census 2017 homeless count per capita against mean January temperature by state: See a correlation? ...