Remember when mania led to a massive housing bubble? When Americans found themselves saddled with too many houses and were hit with the reality that our economy had been built on unsustainable borrowing? Everyone knows about that, right?What if that was wrong? What if, when we get down to brass tacks, Americans have been struggling to build enough new housing—especially in places where housing is in high demand—and this was true, even in 2005?Viewing the economic calamities...

The United States suffers from a shortage of well-placed homes. This was true even at the peak of the housing boom in 2005. Using a broad array of evidence on housing inflation, income, migration, homeownership trends, and international comparisons, Shut Out demonstrates that high home prices have been largely caused by the constrained housing supply in a handful of magnet cities leading the new economy.The same phenomenon is occurring in leading countries across the globe. Gentrif...

This guide consists of basic macroeconomics concepts and principles, which can be used in school, home or in work place. Topics covered include: supply & demand, market equilibrium & measuring, output/income & price level, inflation & unemployment, consumption & savings, fiscal policies and much more.

Previously published as The Trillion Dollar MeltdownNow fully updated with the latest financial developments, this is the bestselling book that briefly and brilliantly explains how we got into the economic mess that is the Credit Crunch. With the housing markets unravelling daily and distress signals flying throughout the rest of the economy, there is little doubt that we are facing a fierce recession. In crisp, gripping prose, Charles R. Morris shows how ...

"A concise and powerful account of how the great recession happened and what should be done to avoid another one . . . well-argued and consistently informative." — Wall Street JournalThe Great American Recession of 2007-2009 resulted in the loss of eight million jobs and the loss of four million homes to foreclosures. Is it a coincidence that the United States witnessed a dramatic rise in household debt in the years before the recession—that the total amoun...

Despite their passion and fury, contemporary Americans are remarkably clueless about how their tax system works. But with heated debates over taxation now roiling Congress and the nation, an understanding of our tax system is of vital importance. Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know®, by preeminent tax scholars Leonard E. Burman and Joel Slemrod, offers a clear, concise explanation of how our tax system works, how it affects people and businesses, and how it might be impr...

By November 2009, 120 banks had failed since the start of the year, unemployment was at 10.2%, a twenty six year high, and the government had invested billions of tax dollars in failing financial institutions that were deemed Too Big to Fail. WHY? What made them too big to fail and why did the government bail them out? Was this a necessary evil or just plain evil? This book takes an important look back at the amazing legislative and financial events that created these monstrosities and lea...

In this highly original piece of work, Steven D. Gjerstad and Nobel Laureate Vernon L. Smith analyze the role of housing and its associated mortgage financing as a key element of economic cycles. The authors combine data from both laboratory and real markets to provide insight into the bubble propensity of real-world economic actors and use novel historical analysis on the Great Recession, the Great Depression, and all of the post-World War II recessions to establish the critical roles of ...

HOW TO MAKE DEBT WORK FOR USWhen we talk about debt and its impact on our economy, we almost always mean 'government debt'. However, this is only a small part of the picture: individuals, private firms and households owe trillions, and these private debts are vital to understanding the economy.In The Paradox of Debt, Richard Vague shows that the real factor that drives both financial crises and spiralling inequality – but also, paradoxically, economic growth – is e...

The new edition of a popular guide to the key issues in tax reform, presented in a clear, nontechnical, and unbiased way.To follow the debate over tax reform, the interested citizen is often forced to choose between misleading sound bites and academic treatises. Taxing Ourselves bridges the gap between the oversimplified and the arcane, presenting the key issues clearly and without a political agenda. Tax policy experts Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija lay out ...

Social Security is in jeopardy, private pension systems have fallen apart, and workers are trying to save on their own for retirement with the stock market in the worst shape since the Great Depression. In The Predictable Surprise, Sylvester J. Schieber shows that forewarnings of the coming retirement crisis have been apparent for decades, but we have never mustered the political will to address the problem. This book explains how we have gotten into the retirement predicament and...

This book focuses on the core issues in money and banking. By using simple applications for anyone that understands basic economics, the lessons in the book provide any student or reader with a background in how financial markets work, how banks as businesses function, how central banks make decisions, and how monetary policy affects the global economy.Money and Banking is split into sections based on subject matter, specifically definitions and introductions, financial ma...