Research director Sam writes for City A.M.

Our research director Sam Bowman writes in City A.M.'s forum section how San Francisco's housing problem is not driven by wealthy tech workers—but government.

Read the whole piece here.

ASI explains that liberalisation of supply is the only long-term solution to London's housing woes

Reacting to EY Item Club's new report on London's housing bubble, Ben Southwood, the ASI's Head of Macro Policy, said:

"This new report confirms what the Adam Smith Institute said in last year's report Burning Down the House—rampant demand and tightly-restricted supply are driving a huge and damaging rise in London house prices.

"Demand-stoking policies, especially Help to Buy, exacerbate the issue by driving prices upwards. The answer is to scrap these policies and allow housebuilders to build the homes the capital needs. Rolling the green belt out just one mile would create space for a million more homes, the LSE has estimated. 

"Scrapping regulations on height, density and usage would allow hundreds of thousands more to be built. And paradoxically, affordable housing regulations are actually like to drive average prices up overall, as well as creating an inefficient distribution of stock. Help to Buy should be scrapped but the government should not to go too far in the other direction, distorting the market by putting an arbitrary limit on loans individuals can secure in the marketplace, as some have suggested.

"It is a scandal how much badly-off Londoners must plough into their rents, and the situation is getting worse and worse as we build at a rate that would have been paltry in the 1920s, with a UK population tens of millions fewer. If the government can give the planning system the liberalisation it badly needs it can stop another housing bubble and allow prices to return to an affordable level."

For further comment or to arrange an interview with an Adam Smith Institute spokesperson, please phone 02072224995 or email media@adamsmith.org.

The Adam Smith Institute is an independent libertarian think tank based in London. It strives to engineer policies and educate the public in order to create a richer, freer world.

Free schools report mentioned in the Guardian

James Croft's report, which argued that free schools would make little difference unless the profit motive was allowed to operate, was mentioned in a Guardian article by Lola Okolosie.

Read the guardian piece here. Get the full report here.

Lars in City AM

Senior Fellow Lars Christensen explains what's going on in emerging markets in City A.M.

Read the whole thing here.

It's nice to see growth but real recovery will take change

Ben Southwood, Head of Macro Policy at the Adam Smith Institute, said:

"It is heartening and refreshing to see real output tick along nicely, putting it 0.7% up on the quarter, 1.9% up over 2013, and 2.8% higher than the same quarter last year."

"Despite all the talk about Forward Guidance failing, this looks like a win for Mark Carney's modest flagship policy. Without a futures market in nominal income it's nearly impossible to say for sure, but it seems like the policy gave markets extra confidence policy would not be prematurely tightened. We can say that the Bank of England was wrong about how quickly unemployment would fall, but that's a good problem to have."

"Still, it's not time to be complacent. Planning policy is so tight that even small liberalisations could add percentage points to GDP. The same goes for immigration, where an unnecessarily tight policy is clamping down on a major export—education—and keeping out potential entrepreneurs. The return to growth should not let us forget that CPI targeting allowed the 2008-9 crash and we need to seriously consider alternatives like nominal income targeting."

For further comment or to arrange an interview with an Adam Smith Institute spokesperson, please phone 02072224995 or email media@adamsmith.org.

The Adam Smith Institute is an independent libertarian think tank based in London. It strives to engineer policies and educate the public in order to create a richer, freer world.

Conservative backbenchers risk turning a bad bill into a terrible one

Commenting on the Conservative backbench amendment to the Immigration Bill, the Adam Smith Institute's Research Director Sam Bowman said:

"The anti-immigration amendment to the Immigration Bill being put forward by Conservative Party backbenchers is deeply misguided, and the Prime Minister is right to oppose it. Fears of a tidal wave of Romanian and Bulgarian immigration at the start of the year proved to be entirely wrong and highlighted the huge disconnect between the political debate about immigration and the reality.

"Immigration is good for Britain: Recent research shows that EEA immigrants pay more into the Exchequer than they cost in social services, meaning that they effectively subsidise the welfare state. [1] Public perceptions about immigration are based on mistaken ideas about basic facts: the average Briton thinks that 31% of the UK's population are immigrants, when in reality the number is 13%. [2]

"In the long-run, a high amount of immigration is vital: according to the ONS, the UK will suffer a debt crisis by the middle of the century unless net immigration exceeds 260k annually between now and then. [3] Conservatives who oppose immigration are thus no more fiscally responsible than the left-wing tax-and-spend politicians they oppose. Furthermore, immigrants reduce the cost of living by providing services and producing goods – particularly essentials like childcare – more cheaply. [4] These findings are generally true of both high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants.

"With its nanny statist provisions that turn private citizens into enforcers of state border controls, the Immigration Bill is already a dog's dinner. By trying to use it to restrict immigration even more, Conservative backbenchers risk turning a bad bill into a terrible one."

[1] http://www.cream-migration.org/publ_uploads/CDP_22_13.pdf
[2] http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3188/Perceptions-are-not-reality-the-top-10-we-get-wrong.aspx
[3] See http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/fiscal-impact-immigration-uk; http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/wordpress/docs/FSR2012WEB.pdf
[4] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.153.5754&rep=rep1&type=pdf

For further comment or to arrange an interview with an Adam Smith Institute spokesperson, please phone 02072224995 or email media@adamsmith.org.

The Adam Smith Institute is an independent libertarian think tank based in London. It strives to engineer policies and educate the public in order to create a richer, freer world.

Iain Dale mentions ASI work on NHS in a speech

2013 radio presenter of the year Iain Dale mentioned the ASI's 2011 work on the NHS in a 45 minute lecture given in Romford.

Read the text of the lecture here. Read the 2011 report here.

Eamonn quoted in the Sunday Times

Summary

Adam Smith Institute Direction Dr. Eamonn Butler was quoted in a feature in the Sunday Times, explaining how inequality is a feature of rapid economic growth, hence the many billionaires being created in China.

Read the (paywalled) piece here.

Letter from Sam Bowman featured in the FT

Summary

A letter from ASI research director Sam Bowman, arguing for greater focus on demand-side stabilisation in macroeconomic policy.

Read the letter here.

Eamonn's letter featured in City A.M.

Summary

A letter from ASI Director Dr. Eamonn Butler was featured in City A.M. In it, he argues against the claim there is much competition in UK banking.

Read the letter here.