Eric Crampton • Jun 16, 2015 •
What's the cost of bad urban planning policies? About 9.5% of GDP as a first cut, according to new work by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti at NBER.What's the mechanism? When productive cities make it hard to accommodate new workers, whether because of restrictive zoning downtown preventing densification or restrictions on the urban fringe, workers who could otherwise be … Read More
Aaron Schiff • Mar 16, 2015 •
Next up on my Census challenge is the number of usual residents per household. I decided to look at the ratio of the average number of usual residents per household to the average number of bedrooms per dwelling, by meshblock for 2013. As a very crude measure of household overcrowding, I’ve mapped the meshblocks in […] … Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 09, 2014 •
A real estate parable.Suppose that, when we bought our house in Khandallah, the realtor told us about a particularly nice feature of our house. A few doors down lived a lovely grandmotherly type who adored young children. She was in her early 50s, inde... Read More
Eric Crampton • Sep 10, 2014 •
I think I might have a partial solution to NIMBY blocking of urban intensification: a way of paying them at the margin for disamenity effects.The one-line version: if your neighbour develops, your taxes drop.Here's how we do it. Or at least the initial... Read More
William Taylor • Jul 30, 2014 •
A quite sensationalist headline on stuff this morning… “Uber app ‘sugar-coated poison’ – cabbies“. The head of the Taxi Federation is telling us that Uber is evil. Now Uber is a big threat to the traditional taxi business model so take these comments with a grain of salt. Particularly the fact that: The app is […] … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jan 07, 2014 •
I really really hope that the Christchurch Press's John McCrone is writing a book on the Christchurch rebuild. This weekend's installment in the Mainlander section, not online other than via PressDisplay, is must-read. [Update: Jack, in comments, points me to a now-ungated version.]McCrone uses the EPIC technology hub as exemplar of how government is blocking the rebuild. Recall that … Read More
William Taylor • Sep 10, 2013 •
Auckland Transport Blog have put up a post today discussing the costs and benefits of the planned transport projects in Auckland that the government is backing. I’ll discuss that in a second, but first there is something I want to get off my back regarding the assessment of transport projects. BCR ratios (aka CBA by […] … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jul 28, 2013 •
Ed Glaeser's Condliffe Memorial Lecture is now up at the University's "What If?" site. I've embedded it below. I tell my students of the Pantheon of the Econ-Gods. Ed Glaeser is one of our Elder Gods - fueled not by the apples of the Hesperi... Read More
Eric Crampton • Jul 16, 2013 •
The RBNZ will soon announce its Loan-to-Value rules. Matt Nolan makes a few reasonable points (all my paraphrasing):If the policy is targeted at financial stability, then it has to bite on high-leverage first home loans as those are the most likely to wind up in positions of default. I'm still a bit sceptical here as the OBR rules mean … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jul 11, 2013 •
I could grok changed building rules in Christchurch post-quake. Earthquake and liquifaction changed what we might want from foundations. But the percentage of building frontage that must be in windows, no matter what? That car parking be hidden? For example, the rules requiring buildings facing a road or public space to be between 60 and 90 per cent windows … Read More