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Articles by Tim Helm
Productivity Commission given two months to solve housing supply, again.
Australia’s Productivity Commission (PC) is an in-house economic research group for the federal government. They run inquiries into matters referred to them by politicians, and respond with sensible policy comments and recommendations. At the end of May, Treasurer Jim Chalmers asked them to look into Housing Supply Regulation. Those wishing to make a submission to the inquiry were given three weeks to do so, and the PC is expected to report their findings a month after that.
Supply starts when speculation ends: Searching for a theory of housing production
Wouldn’t it be great if we had a coherent way of understanding the economics of housing supply? You might be surprised, given the confidence of the prognostications of public commentators, that most don’t have a broadly accepted economic theory of why homes are built. It’s all ad hoc and often contradictory. Here, Tim Helm walks through the main empirical patterns that need to be explained by our economic theory of housing supply, and steps through why most current approaches are a poor fit.
Filtering Across Space and Time: A Scale Synthesis of Housing Supply
Hidden at the heart of the conversation about planning regulations and housing are two competing economic claims. First, a quantity theory — a claim that zoned density rules decrease (and upzoning increases) the rate of housing production and hence the stock of homes. Second, a distribution theory — a claim that zoning determines the locational distribution of new housing and what it looks like (including its density), without reducing the rate of housing production.
Hijacked housing debate trifecta
Today, dear reader, you have won the housing policy trifecta. The first of three pieces below is an extract from Cameron’s book The Great Housing Hijack which explains the symmetry of housing markets — a key feature of housing that encourages vested interests to hijack debates, and leads any attempt at consistent reasoning to appear out of tune with the public conversation.
Explainer: Supply Constraints do not Explain House Price and Quantity Growth
An article like this would usually be for paid FET subscribers only. But in the interest of enhancing the quality of our economic and policy debates, it is free for all. Please consider financially supporting Fresh Economic Thinking if you can. A recent working paper by Schuyler Louie, John A. Mondragon, and Johannes Wieland has been making waves in urban economics circles.
Supply Skepticism Needs Economic Theory
Advanced search Housing Policy Debate Latest Articles Submit an article Journal homepage Full Article Figures & data References Citations Metrics Reprints & Permissions Read this article /doi/full/10.1080/10511482.2024.2418052?needAccess=true Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure Statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Notes 1 Notable exceptions are the various recent papers by Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy of the University of Auckland.
The Auckland myth: There is no evidence that upzoning increased housing construction
Thank you to the 3,000 subscribers who read Fresh Economic Thinking. I want to ask a small favour. If you enjoy these articles, the best thing you can do to support me is to share them on your social media and forward the emails to your friends. And don’t forget to subscribe. It’s free after all. Many housing analysts argue that large-scale upzoning policies create affordable housing. This was a justification for the major upzoning in the 2016 Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP).
JobMaker is nowhere near bold enough. Here are four ways to expand it
The government has targeted its JobMaker Hiring Credit too narrowly. The scheme to go before the Senate this week will give employers who take on someone aged 16 to 29 years who has been on JobSeeker or a related benefit a bonus of A$200 per week, and a bonus of $100 per week if the person is aged 30 to 35 years. New hires older than 35 won’t attract a bonus, and nor will new hires who have been out of work but not on JobSeeker. The bonus will last for up to a year.
JobMaker needs to be far more ambitious
JobMaker needs to be far more ambitious by Brendan Coates, Matt Cowgill and Tim Helm Published at The Conversation, 10 November 2020 The government has targeted its JobMaker Hiring Credit too narrowly. The scheme to go before the Senate this week will give employers who take on someone aged 16 to 29 years who has been on JobSeeker or a related benefit a bonus of A$200 per week, and a bonus of $100 per week if the person is aged 30 to 35 years.
JobMaker is nowhere near bold enough: The government should make these four fundamental changes
Source: Shutterstock/Alessandro Biascioli. The government has targeted its JobMaker hiring credit too narrowly. The scheme to go before the Senate this week will give employers who take on someone aged 16 to 29 years, who has also been on JobSeeker or a related benefit, a bonus of $200 per week, and a bonus of $100 per week if the person is aged 30 to 35 years. New hires older than 35 won’t attract a bonus, and neither will new hires who have been out of work but not on JobSeeker.
Roadmap to nowhere | Tristan Edis
To best understand Technology Investment Roadmap: Global Leadership in Low Emissions Technologies, the government’s latest contribution to climate change and energy policy, you need to look up the back catalogue of Working Dog, the producers of ABC TV’s Utopia. There sits an episode of The Hollowmen, a political satire involving a team of advisers to the prime minister.
The biggest bang for the stimulus buck | Brendan Coates and Tim Helm
Tuesday’s federal budget is one of the most important in decades. Australia is mired in recession. The Reserve Bank expects unemployment to hit 10 per cent by Christmas. Treasury apparently expects unemployment to remain above 6 per cent for the next half-decade. But with the Reserve Bank’s cash rate now close to zero, its conventional monetary policy armoury is effectively out of ammunition.
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