These are 10 of my favourite #UrbanEconomics articles published in 2020, in alphabetical order by author, continuing with a tradition from the last couple of years

I’m beginning to think that the left has been too obsessed with GDP as a broken economic metric governing the global shitshow, when inflation is more insidious. Deflation may be a more radical demand than degrowth. Burst bubbles. Deflate the price of fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s amazing just how much political economy is still determined by the threat of stagflation. This has created a weird metonymy in which as long as you’re fight inflation (preserving the interests of (older) savers) you’re also fighting stagnation (supporting (younger) earners).

To some extent the residual fear of deflationary spirals lies behind this, waiting in the wings for any suggestion that stagnation must be fought with deflation. This is entirely understandable, as uncontrolled deflation hits the poorest hardest.

The assumption that conjoins these fears into an engine of unbridled economic stagnation is that there’s a unitary market effectively mediating between the markets in different sectors, be this unity micro-economic or macro-economic in flavour. But this just isn’t how it works.

There is so much more logistic friction in the price system than the popular story of just in time production suggests, not least in the concrete details of differentiated trade between economic actors from local businesses to nation states.

‼️𝗦𝗖𝗔𝗠/𝗙𝗥𝗔𝗨𝗗/𝗖𝗢𝗡
So there is a self proclaimed successful business woman that started her business ventures at 15 y/o with $5 (=8000Tsh🤡) as per 2013 exchnange rate, now in 2020 she is 22 y/o and allegedly revenues millions of dollars from her many businesses

She claims to have had 25 businesses, yes 25 businesses but now only has 7 that are running successfully 24/7 earning her millions of dollars in revenue.

I have no doubt that she has been hustling with a lot but that does not legitimise any of those hustles as most were shady.

Call me a hater/jealous/poor/broke or whatever but I know a scammy business when I see one and my concern is not a personal matter against her but rather people who fall for the rags to riches story and therefore pay her for business mentoring/wealth management

The following are just few among many red flags about this person's businesses, I welcome any others to contribute in this thread however they want but just keep it respectful.

🚩 Stealing photos from the Internet and editing her name on them for her Ad campaigns, branding them as if they were her actual products and projects while they're not. You source most of her posts just by a Google image search . And they have nothing to do with her.

A thread on an interesting report by Goldman Sachs' Peter Oppenheimer, the bank's chief global equity strategist. He points out that Goldman's "Bear Market Risk Indicator" is looking ominous.

There are three factors that suggest that the recent stability could evaporate and that equities are "about to enter a sustained bear market", Oppenheimer says.

First is the fact that growth, inflation and interest rate outlook is unfriendly for equities.

Second is that greater volatility, such as multiple corrections and new peaks (which we've seen in 2018) tend to presage a full bear market.

Here is Goldman's data showing how falls and bounces tend to come ahead of "the dramatic final fall".

To see how the innovation economy has left much of the US behind, we traveled to the small town of Bryan, in northwestern Ohio's Williams County. This is a thread about how to fix what the innovation economy broke about America.

This is Valerie. She’s 46 and has worked all her life—three jobs currently—yet she has just $65 in her checking account. Her husband works full time at a metal fastener plant.

Altogether, after health insurance premiums but before taxes, Valerie and her husband make about $45,000 a year.

The story of her working life is also the story of Bryan. The town is broken in some of the same ways that much of the rest of the country is broken. Understanding what broke Bryan is crucial to understanding how it might be fixed.

For decades, America’s political and business leaders acted as if places like Bryan didn’t matter.

Long rant: So earlier today, I got into a spat over the $15 minimum wage with @JamesSurowiecki and @noamscheiber. Because this disagreement over whether there is a mechanical relationship between raising wages and less jobs is incredibly consequential, I wanted to say more.