Knowing and Making

Martin Wolf has an intriguing proposal to " end the land cycle " - by which he means: make sure that any future rise in the value of land goes to society rather than the individual landowner. This argument has three parts. First, he makes a moral case that increases in land value are largely a function of external effects - increasing population density and infrastructure investments - and therefore why should the current occupier of the land capture all the benefits? Second, a practical case that the current system has stymied productive new development - because it's easier and cheaper for landowners to get a return by reducing the competitive supply of new housing (through the planning system) than by investing in new infrastructure which benefits everyone. Third, the current system of land ownership through debt is one big casino: buyers borrow money in order to put a bet on the Ponzi game continuing. When it does not, the losses are shoved onto two groups of peop...

From a conversation with Richard Thinks yesterday: Thanks for the link today...looking back through the emails I notice we had another conversation about transparency a few months ago. I think the idea of publishing standardised information about financial products is one of the strongest part of Osborne's proposals - but the way it's sold as enabling "price comparison websites" is a bit misleading. One of the oddities about the price comparison market (and I wrote, with a colleague, the first version of confused.com so I have a bit of inside knowledge) is that they make their profits precisely because the providers do not offer their products in a standardised way. Instead, everyone (deliberately) distinguishes their products in many different dimensions so that they cannot be directly compared. Ever tried to figure out which mobile phone deal is the cheapest? This is why those sites are so popular. If everyone did publish their terms and conditions in a common mach...

A good writeup from Sloped Curve of some of the flaws in the debates taking place among leading economics bloggers. It's followed by some suggestions about how to structure the US mortgage market which are not so compelling, but worth a read anyway. Maybe this is a good structure for an article - lead in with something that's interesting, even gossipy, to get the attention of the reader. Discussion of other bloggers always gets a few points. Then subtly insert your policy recommendation at the end. Bait and switch, I think it's called.