It's fitting that on a day when I was on campus I spotted a wild beaver, and while I was enjoying the wildlife I also enjoyed listening to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist! (1/10)
Next was a wide-ranging talk by Marianne Bertrand on the roots of gender disparities at work at the LSE. Bertrand systematically reviews the literature in this area, consistently pointing to the role of childcare and gender norms around unpaid labor as the source of most of the remaining gap here. FYI Bertrand gave a talk at the Toulouse School of Economics on a similar topic a few years later that is also great. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWpBM0ASLRQ (4/10) #economics#gender
Millennials are buying homes with friends by Tom Jones 5/17/24
"...A larger share of millennial homeowners have teamed up with friends...to purchase homes — a trend that housing experts predict will continue amid affordability issues in the housing market and the growing number of single Americans. Ten percent of millennial homeowners have purchased a home with a friend, and 7 percent have bought one with a relative other than their domestic partner or spouse.
...“Affordability is probably the key reason to do that, as well as the types of homes that are available for sale,” Dr. Lautz says. “We traditionally have seen that the most popular type of home purchased is a detached single-family home because that’s the type of inventory that we have in the country. That allows enough space for two people to live independently within that property.”
A new and silent land grab is underway – we must stop it - By Ian Scoones, Angela Serrano, originally published by Open Democracy May 20, 2024
“For us peasants, land is not just an investment or something we own, but is part of our lives and our existence”, said...the Network of Farmers’ Organisations & Agricultural Producers of West Africa at a meeting co-convened by the Land Deal Politics Initiative...and activists concerned about the rise of land, water and green grabs.
...Participants of the meeting agreed that policy debates on land have...been stuck in the hallowed halls of the UN or government bureaucracies, where they are captured by market demands, such as offsetting. The subsequent ‘solutions’ then end up incompatible with local livelihoods, failing to consider food-provisioning, as well as people’s cultures, histories and intimate connections with nature..."
An inflationary spiral based on expectations. It is a very different one from a deflationary one.
In the case of supply chain disruption (think floods and drought) it's a supply shock and at best businesses have to scramble to adapt (invest etc) to get around the problem. But hammering COL demand is perverse.
In all cases, messing around with interest rates is largely an exercise in futility.
Elsewhere the arrival of the Taylor Swift tour has prompted discussion (expectations) of how the tour ticket sales & other expenditure will prompt a focussed economic boomlet....
In the UK, predictions are focussed on the likely expansion of ticketing fraud.
As Rachel Reeves stresses the link between international relations & economics... for those of us who've been (in my case) or still are International Political Economists, this is all very much what we've been talking about for decades.
So, for those of you wondering how that might work, one great book that brings a lot of the things Reeves is talking about together is:
If you think consumer sentiment (confidence) is a good indicator of the general state of the economy, you'll (perhaps) be unsurprised that across the EU and in UK & USA, such sentiment has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Given the continuing cost of living crises, high(er) interest rates & a range of issues from conflicts to climate change, its perhaps more surprising sentiment has not declined more.
But, if capitalism is a system built on confidence about the future....
"The Great Retrofit is a near-future version of the city of Messina, in Sicily. Its science fictional element is the rise, and success beyond expectations, of a new type of economic agent, a form of for-benefit company that follows a quintuple bottom line approach, having the objective to improve its own performance across five dimensions: surplus (rather than profit), people, planet, beauty and truth, or knowledge sharing."
Good from Bill Mitchell on how the City of London lobbies and effectively controls government policy, even having an official parliamentary lobbyist, The Remembrancer, installed opposite the Speaker's chair.
Good too on Labour’s fear of the City and why this is wrong. Effective legislation can easily curb its power.
Ah, #capitalism. Neoclasical (mainstream) economic theory tells us it ensures resources will be put to the best, most efficient use. However, ignores the obvious: wealth equals power, so that what is "best" for society is what the richest value.
Like chasing everlasting youth by getting weekly blood transfusions from your teenage son and $40,000 gym membership add-ons.
"Modern #economics does not distinguish between renewable and non-renewable materials, as its very method is to equalise and quantify everything by means of a money price. Thus, taking various alternative fuels, like coal, oil, wood, or waterpower: the only difference between them recognised by modern economics is relative cost per equivalent unit. The cheapest is automatically the one to be preferred, as to do otherwise would be irrational and ‘uneconomic’."
A thing I think he doesn't give enough attention to is the role the Fed DOES play. The Fed indirectly controls bank lending rate through a couple mechanisms. The first is whatever rules it has for declaring a bank solvent. They've eliminated reserve requirements but now it's something like a stress test or whatever. A bank can't keep lending