Category: Essentials of Economics: Ch 02

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The housing market: feeling the pinch

According to the Halifax house price index, house prices fell in the UK in the three months to April. This is the first quarterly fall since 2012. The Nationwide index (see below), shows that prices in April were 0.4% lower than in March (although the 3-month rate was still slightly positive).

The fall in house prices reflects a cooling in demand. This, in turn, reflects a squeeze on household incomes as price rises begin to overtake wage rises. It also reflects buyers becoming more cautious given the uncertainty over the nature of the Brexit deal and its effects on the economy and people’s incomes.

The fall in demand is also driven by recent Bank of England rules which require mortgage lenders to limit the proportion of mortgages with a mortgage/income ratio of 4.5 or above to no more than 15% of their new mortgages. It is also affected by a rise in stamp duty, especially on buy-to-let properties.

Despite the fall in prices, this may understate the fall in demand relative to supply. House price movements often lag behind changes in demand and supply as people are reluctant to adjust to equilibrium prices. In the case of a falling market, sellers may be unwilling to sell at the lower equilibrium price, believing that a lower price ‘undervalues’ their property. Indeed, they may not even put their houses on the market. This makes prices ‘sticky’ downwards. The result is a fall in sales.

Eventually, such people will reluctantly be prepared to accept a lower price and prices will thus fall more. Once people come to expect price falls, supply may increase further as vendors seek to sell before the price falls even more. So we could well see further falls over the coming months.

Lower house prices and falling sales is a picture repeated in many parts of the UK. It is particularly marked in central London. There, estate agents have begun to offer free gifts to purchasers. As The Guardian puts it:

London estate agents have begun to offer free cars worth £18,000, stamp duty subsidies of £150,000, plus free iPads and Sonos sound systems to kickstart sales in the capital’s increasingly moribund property market. The once super-hot central London market has turned into a ‘burnt-out core’ according to buying agents Garrington Property Finders, prompting developers to offer ever greater incentives to lure buyers.

… Land Registry figures show that in the heart of the city’s financial district, average property prices plummeted from £861,000 at the time of the EU referendum to £773,000 in February, a decline of 15%, although in London’s outer boroughs prices are still up over the year.

But lower property prices are good news for first-time buyers, although some of the biggest falls have been in the top end of the market.

The fall in property prices may continue for a few months. But population is rising, and with it the number of people who would like to buy their own home. Once real incomes begin to rise again, therefore, demand is likely to resume rising faster than supply. When it does, house prices will continue their upward trend.

Articles

UK house prices in first quarterly fall since 2012 BBC News (8/5/17)
UK house prices fall again in April as buyers feel the pinch The Guardian, Angela Monaghan (28/4/17)
Buy a home, get a car free: offers galore as London estate agents struggle to sell The Guardian, Patrick Collinson (3/5/17)
London is now one of the five cities with the lowest house price growth in the UK City A.M., Helen Cahill (28/4/17)
London Housing Market Property Bubble Vulnerable To Crash The Market Oracle, Jan Skoyles (3/5/17)
A key indicator of a healthy housing market is flashing red in London Business Insider, Thomas Colson (29/5/17)

House Price Data
UK House Prices – links to various sites Economic Data freely available online – Economics Network

Questions

  1. Why are UK house prices falling?
  2. What determines the rate at which they are falling? How is the price elasticity of demand and/or supply relevant here?
  3. How does speculation help to explain changes in house prices? How may speculation help to (a) stabilise and (b) destabilise house prices?
  4. Draw a demand and supply diagram to show how house transactions will be lower if the market is not in equailibrium.
  5. Why are house prices falling faster in central London than elsewhere in the UK?
  6. Why are rents falling in central London? How does this relate to the fall in central London property prices?
  7. How has the Help to Buy scheme affected house prices? Has it affected both demand and supply and, if so, why and how?
  8. How do changes in residential property transaction volumes relate to changes in property prices?
  9. What market imperfections exist in the housing market?
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Studies show that money can buy happiness (but only if you spend on experiences)

Guest post by Hazel Garcia from InvestmentZen

An oft-repeated quote is that money can’t buy happiness. But according to multiple studies, yes, it can. The key is what you spend that hard earned cash on. When researchers asked individuals to reflect on their recent purchases, those who had made experiential purchases i.e. trips, lessons, events, etc. were much happier compared to those who had made material purchases.

Why is this the case? According to a 20 year study at Cornell, our excitement from new purchases fades quickly over time. That new watch you bought quickly becomes a part of your everyday life. This is what psychologists call the “hedonic treadmill,” which describes the way we return to our normal state of happiness after a momentous occasion. However, buying a new chair will return you much quicker to that state than an adventure across the Rocky Mountains.

Researchers identified several key reasons why this is the case. One reason is that an object is just an object and can never become a part of your identity (at least, not a healthy one), whereas experiences shape us over time. In addition, because by definition unique experiences are only short-lived, we don’t adapt to them the way we might with a new phone or watch. They do not become part of the routine and as such are usually viewed in a special light.

Interestingly, researchers found that even a negative experience could be rated more highly than purchasing a luxury good. In the study, participants were asked to describe a bad experience they had recently and a few weeks later, they were asked again about it. Over the course of just a few weeks, most people’s opinion of that moment had changed.

This is because the human brain has a tendency to reduce the impact of stressful situations. In fact, a significant portion of those polled even stated that in the end, they were happy to have had the negative encounter as it gave them a fresh way to look at things. When similar questions were asked to those who had purchased a high-end item, their levels of happiness were consistently lower as time went on.

So when it comes to the age old question of “Does money buy happiness?” the answer is a resounding yes – provided you spend it on the right things. But of course, you should still aim to make every dollar go as far as possible in pursuit of great experiences. Take a look at the infographic below to see a visual summary of the research on money and how it can buy happiness.

If you want to be happy, spend money on experiences, not things

Blog

References

Questions (by JS)

  1. Why does buying material goods not buy happiness? Does this apply to all material goods?
  2. What is different, in terms of happiness, about buying experiences? Does this apply to the consumption of all services?
  3. Is the consumption of experiences subject to diminishing marginal utility (a) for specific experiences; (b) for experiences in general? Explain.
  4. Why do we seem not to care as much about the “Jones'” vacation as about their income or possession of material goods?

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Google it

The term ‘Google it’ is now part of everyday language. If there is ever something you don’t know, the quickest, easiest, most cost-effective and often the best way to find the answer is to go to Google. While there are many other search engines that provide similar functions and similar results, Google was revolutionary as a search engine and as a business model.

This article by Tim Harford, writing for BBC News, looks at the development of Google as a business and as a search engine. One of the reasons why Google is so effective for individuals and businesses is the speed with which information can be obtained. It is therefore used extensively to search key terms and this is one of the ways Google was able to raise advertising revenue. The business model developed to raise finance has therefore been a contributing factor to the decline in newspaper advertising revenue.

Google began the revolution in terms of search of engines and, while others do exist, Google is a classic example of a dominant firm and that raises certain problems. The article looks at many aspects of Google.

Just google it: The student project that changed the world BBC News, Tim Harford (27/03/17)

Questions

  1. Is Google a natural monopoly? What are the characteristics of a natural monopoly and how does this differ from a monopoly?
  2. Are there barriers to entry in the market in which Google operates?
  3. What are the key determinants of demand for Google from businesses and individuals?
  4. Why do companies want to advertise via Google? How might the reasons differ from advertising in newspapers?
  5. Why has there been a decline in advertising in newspapers? How do you think this has affected newspapers’ revenue and profits?
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Secondary ticket markets: legitimate, a rip-off or downright illegal?

The UK Parliament’s Culture Media and Sport Select Committee has been examining the secondary ticketing market. The secondary market for events is dominated by four agencies – viagogo, eBay-owned StubHub and Ticket-master’s Get Me In! and Seatwave. These buy tickets to events in the primary market (i.e. from the events or their agents) and then resell them, normally at considerably inflated prices to people unable to get tickets in the primary market.

One example has grabbed the headlines recently. This is where viagogo was advertising tickets for an Ed Sheeran charity concert for £5000. The original tickets were sold for between £40 and £110, with the money going to the Teenage Cancer Trust. None of viagogo’s profits would go to the charity. The tickets were marked ‘not for resale’; so there was doubt that anyone buying a ticket from viagogo would even be able to get into the concert!

There are four major issues.

The first is that the tickets are often sold, as in the case of the Ed Sheeran concert, at many times their face value. We examined this issue back in September 2016 in the blog What the market will bear? Secondary markets and ticket touts).

The second is that the secondary sites use ‘bots’ to buy tickets in bulk when they first come on sale. This makes it much harder for customers to buy tickets on the primary site. Often all the tickets are sold within seconds of coming on sale.

The third is whether the tickets sold on the secondary market are legitimate. Some, like the Ed Sheeran tickets, are marked ‘not for resale’; some are paperless and yet the secondary ticket agencies are accused of selling paper versions, which are worthless.

The fourth is that multiple seats that are listed together are not always located together and so people attending with friends or partners may be forced to sit separately.

These are the issues that were addressed by the Culture Media and Sport committee at its meeting on 21 March. It was due to take evidence from various people, including viagogo, the agency which has come in for the most criticism. Viagogo, however, decided not to attend. This has drawn withering criticism from the press and on social media. One of the other witnesses at the meeting, Keith Kenny, sales and ticketing director for the West End musical Hamilton, described viagogo as ‘a blot on the landscape’. He said, ‘Ultimately, our terms and conditions say ticket reselling is forbidden. If you look at the way that glossy, sneaky site is constructed, they’ve gone an awful long way not to be compliant in the way they’ve built their site.’

The Competition and Markets Authority launched an enforcement investigation last December into suspected breaches of consumer protection law in the online secondary tickets market. This follows on from an earlier report for the government by an independent review chaired by Professor Waterson.

The government itself is considering amending the Digital Economy Bill to make it illegal to use bots to buy tickets in excess of the limit set by the event. Online touts who break this new law would face unlimited fines.

Articles

Official sites and documents

Questions

  1. Use a demand and supply diagram to demonstrate how secondary ticket agencies are able to sell tickets for popular events at prices several times the tickets’ face value.
  2. If secondary ticket sites and ticket touts are able to sell tickets at well above box office prices, isn’t this simply a reflection of people’s willingness to pay (i.e. their marginal utility)? In which case, aren’t these sellers providing a useful service?
  3. How do secondary ticket agencies reduce consumer surplus? Could they reduce it to zero?
  4. See Tickets, the primary market ticket agency, has set up a secondary site, whereby fans can trade tickets with one another at a mark-up capped at just 5%. Will this help to reduce abuses on the secondary market, or is it a totally separate part of the market?
  5. Would it be a good idea for event organisers to charge higher prices for popular events than they do at present, but still below the equilibrium?
  6. How does the price elasticity of demand influence the mark-up that secondary ticket agencies can make? Illustrate this on a diagram similar to the one in question 1.
  7. What measures would you advocate to make tickets more available to the public at reasonable prices? Explain their benefits and any drawbacks.
  8. What would be the effect on prices if the use of bots could be successfully banned?
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Irrational exuberance

Both the financial and goods markets are heavily influenced by sentiment. And such sentiment tends to be self-reinforcing. If consumers and investors are pessimistic, they will not spend and not invest. The economy declines and this further worsens sentiment and further discourages consumption and investment. Banks become less willing to lend and stock markets fall. The falling stock markets discourage people from buying shares and so share prices fall further. The despondency becomes irrational and greatly exaggerates economic fundamentals.

This same irrationality applies in a boom. Here it becomes irrational exuberance. A boom encourages confidence and stimulates consumer spending and investment. This further stimulates the boom via the multiplier and accelerator and further inspires confidence. Banks are more willing to lend, which further feeds the expansion. Stock markets soar and destabilising speculation further pushes up share prices. There is a stock market bubble.

But bubbles burst. The question is whether the current global stock market boom, with share prices reaching record levels, represents a bubble. One indicator is the price/earnings (PE) ratio of shares. This is the ratio of share prices to earnings per share. Currently the ratio for the US index, S&P 500, is just over 26. This compares with a mean over the past 147 years of 15.64. The current ratio is the third highest after the peaks of the early 2000s and 2008/9.

An alternative measure of the PE ratio is the Shiller PE ratio (see also). This is named after Robert Shiller, who wrote the book Irrational Exuberance. Unlike conventional PE ratios, which only look at average earnings over the past four quarters, the Shiller PE ratio uses average earnings over the past 10 years. “Because this factors in earnings from the previous ten years, it is less prone to wild swings in any one year.”

The current level of the Shiller PE ratio is 29.14, the third highest on record, this time after the period running up to the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. The mean Shiller PE ratio over the past 147 years is 16.72.

So are we in a period of irrational exuberance? And are stock markets experiencing a bubble that sooner or later will burst? The following articles explore these questions.

Articles

2 Clear Instances of Irrational Exuberance Seeking Alpha, Jeffrey Himelson (12/2/17)
Promised land of Trumpflation-inspired global stimulus has been slow off the mark South China Morning Post, David Brown (20/2/17)
A stock market crash is a way off, but this boom will turn to bust The Guardian, Larry Elliott (16/2/17)
The “boring” bubble is close to bursting – the Unilever bid proves it MoneyWeek, John Stepek (20/2/17)

Questions

  1. Find out what is meant by Minksy’s ‘financial instability hypothesis’ and a ‘Minsky moment’. How might they explain irrational exuberance and the sudden turning point from a boom to a bust?
  2. Is it really irrational to buy shares with a very high PE ratio if everyone else is doing so?
  3. Why are people currently exuberant?
  4. What might cause the current exuberance to end?
  5. How does irrational exuberance affect the size of the multiplier?
  6. How might the behaviour of banks and other financial institutions contribute towards a boom fuelled by irrational exuberance?
  7. Compare the usefulness of a standard PE ratio with the Shiller PE ratio.
  8. Other than high PE ratios, what else might suggest that stock markets are overvalued?
  9. Why might a company’s PE ratio differ from its price/dividends ratio (see)? Which is a better measure of whether or not a share is overvalued?