Flashback Saturday: Re-analysing the City Rail Link’s benefits

Every weekend we dig into the archives. This post was first published in November 2011. It has been frustrating to see the assessment of the City Rail Link’s benefits become so politicised over the past few months. You would think that something like undertaking a cost-benefit analysis of a transport project would be a fairly objective task, but as we have learned there are so many assumptions made when assessing transport projects – that the objectivity of the process has really become something of a myth.…
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The causes and economic consequences of rising regional housing prices (part 3)

This is a post from Peter Nunns. See Part 1 here and Part 2 here.  In the first two posts in this series I introduced the postgraduate research project I’ve been working on, which looks at the causes and economic consequences of rising regional housing prices in New Zealand, and outlined the role of scarcity in driving house prices up, especially in Auckland.…
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Flashback Saturday: If you want more consumption choices, live near lots of other people

Every weekend we dig into the archives. This post by Peter was originally published in March 2015. One of the many reasons that people choose to live in cities is that cities offer variety. As Stu Donovan has argued before, being around more people sometimes seems inconvenient, but it also exposes you to new ideas, new people, and new consumption choices.…
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Flashback Saturday: Demographia fails Urban Economics 101

Every weekend we dig into the archives. This post by Peter was originally published in March 2015. Every year since 2005, pro-sprawl think-tank Demographia has published a new edition of its “International Housing Affordability Survey“. They report a “median multiple” measure of housing affordability that compares median house prices to median household incomes within a number of cities, mostly in the English-speaking world.…
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Flashback Saturday: Alain Bertaud in Auckland

Every weekend we dig into the archives. This post by Peter was originally published in September 2014. Back in July former World Bank urban planner Alain Bertaud and his wife Marie-Agnes, a fellow professional in the field, came down to New Zealand at the invitation of the NZ Initiative and the Minister of Finance’s office to deliver a series of talks on urban economics.…
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