2022 Wrap-up and podcast extravaganza

The best and worst of 2022 at FET. Many great posts you might have missed, and some recent podcast interviews.

Thank you readers for a wonderful 2022. There are now over 2,000 subscribers to the Fresh Economic Thinking substack.

I will now take a break for a couple of weeks, but be assured I have plenty of new content coming next year.

For your holiday reading and listening pleasure, here are some highlights, low-lights and curiosities from the year at FET.

Most popular posts

1. The Great Housing Supply Contradiction

   Where I explain that a large portion of the housing policy debate believes that rent-controls that limit rent increases stifle new housing supply, but also that the market will automatically supply enough new housing to force rents down. If the market doesn’t care about falling rents from more supply, why does it care about static rents from rent control?

2. Why politicians must pretend to want cheap housing

   Where I dig into the details of why it is politically popular to keep housing prices up.

3. Over 2,600 apply to Australia’s COVID vaccine injury compensation scheme

   Something the mainstream media doesn’t want to report on. I submitted a freedom of information request to find out that 1 in 7,700 vaccinated people in Australia applied for financial compensation for their COVID vaccine injuries.

4. Property cartel goes mainstream

   I have claimed for years that the limiting factor on the rate of new housing is the financial incentives of property owners. Now, we have property developers admitting in the NYT that when the market is soft they postpone perfectly good projects, limiting new supply.

5. Why is the rent-to-income ratio flat?

   One increasingly popular argument is that housing rents should fall over time, like the prices of other consumer goods like televisions and clothes. But what we see in the data is a flat rent-to-income ratio. Why do rents track incomes, not other consumer prices?

Least popular posts

I personally think these are insightful posts, but they are unpopular primarily because they are from early in the year when this substack was in its infancy.

1. New metrics show the value of delaying housing supply

   Where I look at the variation in the speed of development of major new projects and how much this is voluntarily changed over the market cycle.

2. Adam Smith’s Pin Factory: Capital vs division of labour

   Where I take another look at the division of labour hypothesis to explain productivity and compare it to the capital investment hypothesis.

3. Russia mad man story

   Where I explain that “no man rules alone” is a good lens through which to examine claims made about the personal motivations of Putin that sit behind the Russia-Ukraine war.

4. Public housing is way cheaper than rental subsidies

   For some reason the myth that subsidising private market rental is cheaper for the government than building and owning public housing never seems to die.

5. It's time to throw out the standard urban economics model

   I show why the Alonso-Muth-Mills spatial equilibrium model can’t fit many of the key facts about housing markets, especially supply dynamics.

6. My COVID story - Part 2

   A personal reflection on my experience in the COVID era, especially my public commentary about the foolish policy responses made around the world.

Hidden gems

1. Housing stock per capita mostly measures demographics

2. Mysteries of inflation measurement

3. Another superannuation lie

4. Our immune repertoire

5. Fertility rate paranoia

6. Money is not a token, it’s an accounting system

7. Is Ed Glaeser a NIMBY?

8. How much does a family need to earn to be as well off as an age pensioner?

9. How to get land into a HouseMate public housing system?

10. Speculative index update

Recent podcast interviews

Pilot season of the Fresh Economic Thinking podcast

There are now twelve episodes of the FET podcast found here or at Apple podcasts below.

See you all next year. As they say, please like, share, subscribe and comment.