Tag: Economics

Choice is an important element in economic thinking if there are scarce resources and infinite wants. Places that are booming will have to make choices,

Read MoreThe Economics of Choice and Opportunity Cost in Development

[2000 Words; 10 minute Read] The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is defined as a form of procurement to encourage private investment in public sector projects.

Read MoreThe Private Finance Initiative (PFI) – Paying for Public Goods with Private Money

[1500 Words; 10 Minute Read] This article looks at ‘environmental resource’ issues in connection with water. We look at ‘externalities’ as the third-party costs and

Given some recent announcements on social (public) housing provision in New Zealand, I have graphed the changes in tenure since 1991 to the start of

Read MoreNew Zealand Tenure Changes 1991 to 2016

[2000 Words; 20 Minute Read] There are forms of market failure due to external costs and benefits that need to be calculated and internalized to

Read MoreHow can you Value the Built and Natural Environment? Cost-Benefit Analysis

[1100 Words; 4 Minute Read] “Decent, affordable housing is fundamental to the health and well-being of people and to the smooth functioning of economies” (Woetzel

Read MoreHousing Affordability Determinants

[3100 Words; Reading Time 24 Mins] Ideas, concepts and theories are developed from intellectual thoughts that are of importance when studying urban and environmental economics.

Interesting house price index from The Economist post GFC

https://doi.org/10.1080/21681376.2019.1643777

Here’s part of an article I wrote for the main online NZ media outlet stuff.co.nz on housing affordability prior to the 2017 election… Talk of

Read More2 years on: Is the Housing Affordability crisis still a crisis?

            How do housing stakeholders align future private and public spending to identify investment opportunities and help meet the City’s broader economic and spatial

Read MoreSolutions to the housing crisis – Housing Associations in the Private Rented Sector?

Environmental resource issues involving water need to consider third-party external costs (and benefits) – water pollution being one example. Natural resource economics can be applied to this issue and set in

Read MoreUrban water economics – putting a value, price, and cost on natural resources

Best there is if you are interested in procuring and building

And what a book.

Wonderful introduction to economics in the field of property from my old room mate.

Arguing the case for housing as needing radical political and economic attention

Good compendium of journal papers looking at affordable housing as the contemporary crisis unfolds

Major textbook on globalisation of the economy in the social sciences.

Spatial application of economic theory using old and new modelling techniques to look at urban and regional phenomena.

Arguing early on that markets are driven by psychological and social factors rather than fundamental values. Especially in later editions that consider housing market bubbles.

Long running textbook that introduces the basics of urban economic theory and concepts. As well as some economic policy ideas to deal with urban problems.

1860 saw the birth of capitalism in political language. This book explores the period where private enterprise is maintained in a belief of developing economic

Read MoreInfluential books #86 The Age Of Capital 1848-1875 by Eric Hobsbawm

Important stocktake that cities should not necessarily be celebrated given their contradictions, and that these tensions make cities what they are.

Urban and economic geography, looking at what makes cities grow and decline. Particular focus on urban development from forces that are economic, institutional, innovational/interactional, and

Read MoreInfluential books #83 Keys to the city by Michael Storper

Islamic history and more importantly the birth of modern sociology 400 years before Comte.

Largely mathematical underpinning of urban economics principles, that help those new to subject have a clear and precise introduction

Useful economics text on real estate in cities , with examples helping to demonstrate the theory and practice

Looking at how societies see time, particularly as an economic ‘resource’ both natural and cultural

Postmodern thinking on taxonomies, in that structures are set within the parameters of their own historical epistemological norms such as scientific discourse. Subtitled the ‘Archaeology

Read MoreInfluential books #75 The order of things by Michel Foucault

Famous for macroeconomic thinking on the positives of fiscal intervention as counter-cyclical to peaks and troughs in growth.

Popularising early thought on human behaviour in the neoclassical economics paradigm – diagrams, maths, marginal utilities, and elasticities being embedded as principles.

Book that attracted new attention post global financial crisis, in that accumulation of non-government debt creates a condition for instability in the economy.

Work post WW2 that promotes the idea of limited government involvement, to enable universal market efficiency, and thus liberalism in the sense of individual freedoms.

A touchstone for political theory of distributive justice, looking normatively to rebalance equality of opportunity and helping the more disadvantaged in society.

One of the first to crystallise thinking of city economies working as hierarchies in a global system