One of the most frustrating things about housing policy debates is that a lot of self-styled "affordable housing" advocates spend a lot of time opposing the construction of new (market rate) housing. My latest looks at research showing this is misguided. fullstackeconomics.com/how-luxury-apa…
Affordable housing advocates lobby for subsidies for housing with below-market rents. This is a worthwhile effort, but budget constraints often mean that the number of units is wildly inadequate to meet the need.
Meanwhile, market-rate housing is free to the taxpayer. Better than free in fact, since it often generates additional tax revenue you can use to pay for more affordable units later.
And the moving chain literature indicates that a nice side effect of building market-rate apartments is that you often get vacancies in lower-end housing.
So given a choice between building one affordable unit or five market-rate units, people who care about affordability should take the market rate units—even if you only care about people in the bottom half of the income distribution! fullstackeconomics.com/how-luxury-apa…

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More from @binarybits

13 Sep
Alan only mentioned icome-based repayment in passing in his excellent piece on income-sharing agreements, but one way to think about what's been happening is that the entire system is evolving into a kind of ISA.
The problem with an ISA is that students know their earning potential better than schools do, and the highest-earning students will pick a traditional loan instead. In theory one solution is to make an ISA the only option, but no private entity has the power to do that.
But, over time we've seen: (1) tuition rising faster than inflation for decades, (2) federal loans offering an income-based repayment option starting in 1994, (3) the feds increasingly taking over direct administration of federal student loans.
Read 6 tweets
9 Sep
The anti-inflation case for bitcoin makes so little sense that I'm surprised anyone believes it. But apparently thousands (millions?) of people do! I didn't want to bog down my piece too much but let's unpack it here. fullstackeconomics.com/why-el-salvado…
Economists say that money serves three basic purposes: (1) medium of exchange, (2) unit of account, (3) store of value. To be good money, an asset has to serve all three functions well.
Bitcoin enthusiasts focus obsessively on the "store of value" part. The dollar loses about 2 percent of its value each year. Bitcoin has obviously gained a lot of value over the last decade. So if you only care about money as a store of value, maybe bitcoin is a good currency.
Read 15 tweets
1 Jul
@mattyglesias wrote about how groupthink and self-interest sometimes leads expert practitioners to advocate bad ideas. He cites virologists defending dangerous virus research, hawkish economists after 2008, and the military industrial complex. slowboring.com/p/experts-astr…
You can see the same dynamic at work in patent issues. In 1982, Congress effectively turned control of patent law over to patent lawyers by creating a specialized patent appeals court called the Federal Circuit. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…
The patent bar loves patents and overwhelmingly favors legal doctrines that make patents easy to get and enforce. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Federal Circuit developed a body of law that expanded what could be patented and strengthened the rights of patent plaintiffs.
Read 9 tweets
29 Jun
The Census Bureau asked me to participate in the National Survey on Children's Health. I'm generally inclined to participate in stuff like this since survey data is valuable but man do they make it a pain.
There are dozens of questions about whether each child has various ailments. Instead of giving me a list and letting me check the ones they have (which is basically none of them) they make me answer 1-3 yes/no questions per page and then hit the next button.
Also a bunch of questions for my 3-month-old baby that are obviously not applicable. All of which turns what could be a 15-minute survey into like 3 times that long.
Read 4 tweets
22 Jun
I was on vacation last week when a16z launched Future, but some quick thoughts about that and the broader frictions between Silicon Valley and the media...
So far Future isn't close to being a rival of mainstream news outlets. It seems like a good niche magazine for people in (and interested in) the tech sector. But if the goal is to shift the balance of tech coverage in a more positive direction, a few essays won't do it.
The power of mainstream media comes from the fact that they cover a broad range of topics, and hence draw in a broad cross-section of the public. Given that most people are not directly involved in tech, most people are going to get their news about tech from mainstream sources.
Read 9 tweets
7 Jun
The New York Times paywall works great for the New York Times, but the same strategy hasn't worked as well for smaller publications. rethinking.news/a-simple-marke… Image
Substack-style newsletters are based on the same try-before-you-buy marketing logic as a soft paywall, but they work a lot better for small publications. Image
Mid-sized, ad-supported publications are in a tough spot as both the NYT and Substack lure away their most prominent writers. rethinking.news/a-simple-marke…
Read 4 tweets

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