I watched a bit of the English leadership debate the other night. Eventually I got frustrated and went to bed, but I understand that housing affordability and overall affordability were important topics. What is clear, to anyone who cares to look, is that in most… Read More
Earlier this year, Enrico Moretti, who is a professor at UC Berkeley, published this research paper looking at the effect of high-tech clusters on productivity and innovation. (I am unclear if there is any relationship to the Italian brewing company Birra Moretti.) One of the… Read More
Years ago I wrote about a book that venture capitalist Albert Wenger was writing — in public I would add — called The World After Capital. The public bit is interesting. As he was writing the book over the last ten years or so, he… Read More
This is a chart by economist Gray Kimbrough from 2019. I recently saw it resurface and so I thought I would reshare it here on the blog. The y-axis is the percentage of US household wealth (by demographic cohort). And the x-axis is median cohort… Read More
We know that innovation and economic growth tends to be unevenly distributed. This is the bull case for living in cities and, more particularly, for living in certain cities. But of course, the big question these days is whether or not our little work from… Read More
The price of an existing home in the Netherlands increased 14.6% in the first 6 months of this year alone, according to this recent FT article. This is in comparison to 6.1% for existing homes across the EU on a year-over-year basis. Some economists estimate… Read More
There are many reasons why one might want to host the Olympics. Brand building is certainly one. Making some kind of profit is another. But the direct economic benefits aren’t always clear. Embedded above are two recent charts from the WSJ outlining 1) the cost… Read More
Here are some interesting figures from a recent Statistics Canada article about Canada’s national net worth. In the first quarter of this year, Canada’s national net worth increased by over $1 trillion or 7.7% to reach nearly $15 trillion. This is, as I understand it,… Read More
Benjamin Tal — CIBC’s Deputy Chief Economist — is seemingly everywhere. And earlier today, he was delivering an annual economic update at an online event hosted by Brattys LLP (our condo lawyers) in partnership with CIBC. Below are a handful of slides that I found… Read More
Inclusionary zoning has been on my mind this week and so I thought I would revisit some of my old posts on the topic. I wrote about it here, here, here, here, here, and probably in a bunch of other places that I am forgetting… Read More
