News and Commentary
Ed Glaeser and David Cutler offer an essay in the Wall Street Journal on mobility through the US, adapted from their new book. “It’s a troubling sign that since 2007, geographic mobility has dropped by one-third, with fewer than 4% of Americans changing counties annually. The reason is clear: In the most prosperous cities and regions, insiders have figured out how to use regulations, laws and institutions to make life easier for themselves and harder for everyone else.”
Alex Schieferdecker wades through conservatism’s implications for zoning at Pocket Track. Schieferdecker points out that a clear affinity for stability is at cross-purposes with some conservatives’ avowed, if uneven, aversion to regulation. “One ideology says ‘not in my backyard’ and the other responds ‘it’s none of your damn business what I do in my backyard.'”
In wtopnews, Jeff Clabaugh covers record jumps in Washington DC rent.
In his Slow Boring newsletter, Niskanen’s Matt Yglesias challenges the orthodoxy on homelessness and mental health. “The top five states for homelessness are New York, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington . . . That’s because these states are expensive.”
New Research
In a note for the Federal Reserve, Neil Bhutta, Adithya Raajkumar, and Eileen van Straelen investigate whether lower than usual home listings have been the cause of steeper prices. They find “that counties which experienced sharper listings drops at the beginning of the pandemic subsequently experienced stronger acceleration in house price growth.”
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