Erlend E Bø

Very interesting!

I've got a paper on small-scale (buy-to-let) housing investors. The results pointing in the same direction as the papers you mention. Taxing investors increases homeownership and total welfare, while increasing rents.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I'm going to try to put together a mini lit review on some of the recent institutional landlords papers. there are lots of papers, so I will be necessarily omitting many.

Mostly focused on impacts on prices, and whether institutional landlords are killing homeownership and driving up rents.

I have a new publication out, about the assessment of housing values for tax purposes.

Written with my colleagues Nygård and Thoresen, it is about the current model used for valuing housing in the Norwegian wealth tax, and how to improve the model.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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More info at: econjobmarket.org/positions/11...

Handelshøyskolen BI Programområdet - Doktorgrad - PhD Candidate in Economics PhD Candidate in Economics

BI is hiring PhD candidates in economics.

We offer:
- a friendly and collegial department
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- access to very rich Norwegian microdata
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Please share #EconSky 🙏🙏

bi.easycruit.com/vacancy/3539...

Very interesting working paper on market concentration in housing supply by @leqonomics.bsky.social. Higher concentration among house builders gives lower construction, higher price volatility and lower construction volatility. Likely as relevant outside of the US.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Trump Uses Legal Threats to Push Federal Reserve Member To Resign Trump administration's weaponization of the DOJ part of an authoritarian pattern

New, from me: A Trump official is concocting mortgage fraud claims to target opposition. It's a classic authoritarian trick.

Now they are doing it to Lisa Cook, the first Black female member of the Federal Reserve to push her to resign. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trump-uses...

Isn't the colors on the housing part wrong? The Haig-Simons should be light?

Absolutely! Getting at the total welfare effects, including increased demand for workers, changing ameneties etc. is really complicated. But the benefit likely differs. Even if the total effect of Airbnb is positive, the effect on those struggling with housing costs might be negative.

Do short-term rental platforms affect housing markets? Evidence from Airbnb in Barcelona In this paper, we assess the impact of Airbnb on housing rents and prices in the city of Barcelona. Examining very detailed data on rents and both tra…

Allowing more housing to be build is the most important solution, by all means.
But there is also convincing research that Airbnb can cause significant increases in housing prices and rents for cities with large tourist demand, like Barcelona. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

THREAD: the Ways & Means bill creates new opportunities for tax avoidance and evasion, adds complexity to the tax system, and increases filing burdens for low- & moderate-income families.

My @taxlawcenter.org colleagues have more analysis coming, but here's a starter list (suggestions welcome):

🚨 REPLICATION REPORT UPDATE: One year ago, a tweet by John Holbein alerted me, @ollefolke.bsky.social, and @jopieboy.bsky.social to a paper with a shocking result about Sweden’s law criminalizing the purchase of sex.🧵

How Well Is Congestion Pricing Doing? Very. One hundred days in, honking is down; bus speeds are up.

Some stats from 100 days in on congestion pricing:
- Complaints about car-honking are down 70%
- The Holland Tunnel has 65% fewer delays at rush hour; time to get thru it is down 48%
- 6 million fewer cars
- Half as many traffic-related injuries
- 1.5 million more visitors to BIDs year over year

The dataset described here (on Norwegian residential housing auctions) is very nice, though unfortunately not publicly available.
housinglab.oslomet.no/wp-content/u...

Excited that our paper about the highly policy-relevant group of students on the margin between dropping out and completing high school is finally forthcoming in JOLE. @eckhoffandresen.bsky.social

I wonder here about the construction outcome: % growth in housing. Is it a good supply measure?

Imagine City A has high regulation, B low. Both have 100 inhabitants, but A has 80 houses while B has 100.
Following an inflow of 10, A builds 8 houses, B 10. Same % increase, but not similar results.

I have a recent WP with colleagues about how that is done in Norway.
bsky.app/profile/erle...

I think this paper makes good arguments for using automatic valuation methods in property tax assessments.

That's interesting. I do however think that the capacity for implementing such a tax (particularly the valuation) has increased since the early 20th century. Though the political pressure to attach loopholes is of course still there.

Interesting on the strong influence of regulations on built form.

An administration serious about fixing the deficit would not fire the people who collect the money needed to fix the deficit.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/doge-misma...

While Norway has few inhabitants, it has a lot of variation both in geographic features and in density of housing. The simple model has a reasonabe fit even in rural areas with few transactions. In more densely populated countries, a similar model would likely have an even better fit. 5/5

The existing system in Norway functions quite well. It is not very data intensive, though does require digitalization of property register and transaction data.
We also present an improved system which better utilizes available geographic information. 4/5

We’re arguing that a simple, hedonic regression based system, as existing in Norway, can be accurate and cost-effective. An automatic system also avoids assessors corrupting the process for their own ends. 3/5 bsky.app/profile/nber...

The difficulty is that only a small subset of housing units is sold each year. That makes it hard to value the whole mass of housing units, which are quite heterogeneous. As a result, many countries use old, outdated values, while other countries use a lot of resources at valuation. 2/5

New working paper with two colleagues (Nygård & Thoresen). We look at how to value residential property for tax purposes.
There are several different taxes on residential property. Mostly, authorities want tax valuations to reflect market value of the property. 1/5 www.ssb.no/en/priser-og...

Trump singles out the I.R.S. work force in his hiring freeze executive order.

Helping out America’s tax cheats. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01...

Revealing inequality aversion from tax policy and the role of non‐discrimination Governments have increasing access to individual information, but they exploit little of it when setting taxes. This paper shows how to reveal inequality aversion from observed tax policy choices of ....

My paper on the relationship between inequality aversion and non-discrimination has just been published in Economica onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The main result is that inequality aversion in tax policy is overestimated when horizontal equity is ignored.

Changes to the classification

Finland has downgraded most MDPI and Frontiers journals to junk. Seems reasonable.
julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/news/chan...