For many younger and lower-income people, housing affordability continues to worsen. Based on the academic research of two distinguished housing economists – and stimulated by working with governments across the world - this wide-ranging book sets out clear theoretical and empirical frameworks to tackle one of today’s most important socio-economic issues. Housing unaffordability arises from complex forces and a prerequisite to effective policy is understanding the causes of rising house prices and rents and the interactions between housing, housing finance and the macroeconomy. The authors challenge many of the conventional wisdoms in housing policy and offer innovative recommendations to improve affordability.
Throughout the Western world, a whole generation is being priced out of the housing market. For millions of people, particularly millennials, the basic goal of acquiring decent, affordable accommodation is a distant dream. Leading economist Josh Ryan-Collins argues that to understand this crisis, we must examine a crucial paradox at the heart of modern capitalism. The interaction of private home ownership and a lightly regulated commercial banking system leads to a feedback cycle. Unlimited credit and money flows into an inherently finite supply of property, which causes rising house prices, declining home ownership, rising inequality and debt, stagnant growth and financial instability. Radical reforms are needed to break the cycle. This engaging and topical book will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why they can’t find an affordable home, and what we can do about it.
Thanks to remarkable advances in modern health care attributable to science, engineering, and medicine, it is now possible to cure or manage illnesses that were long deemed untreatable. At the same time, however, the United States is facing the vexing challenge of a seemingly uncontrolled rise in the cost of health care. Total medical expenditures are rapidly approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product and are crowding out other priorities of national importance. The use of increasingly expensive prescription drugs is a significant part of this problem, making the cost of biopharmaceuticals a serious national concern with broad political implications. Especially with the highly visible and very large price increases for prescription drugs that have occurred in recent years, finding a way to make prescription medicinesâ€"and health care at largeâ€"more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative. Affordability is a complex function of factors, including not just the prices of the drugs themselves, but also the details of an individual's insurance coverage and the number of medical conditions that an individual or family confronts. Therefore, any solution to the affordability issue will require considering all of these factors together. The current high and increasing costs of prescription drugsâ€"coupled with the broader trends in overall health care costsâ€"is unsustainable to society as a whole. Making Medicines Affordable examines patient access to affordable and effective therapies, with emphasis on drug pricing, inflation in the cost of drugs, and insurance design. This report explores structural and policy factors influencing drug pricing, drug access programs, the emerging role of comparative effectiveness assessments in payment policies, changing finances of medical practice with regard to drug costs and reimbursement, and measures to prevent drug shortages and foster continued innovation in drug development. It makes recommendations for policy actions that could address drug price trends, improve patient access to affordable and effective treatments, and encourage innovations that address significant needs in health care.
Embrace data and use it to sell and market your products Data is everywhere and it keeps growing and accumulating. Companies need to embrace big data and make it work harder to help them sell and market their products. Successful data analysis can help marketing professionals spot sales trends, develop smarter marketing campaigns, and accurately predict customer loyalty. Data Driven Marketing For Dummies helps companies use all the data at their disposal to make current customers more satisfied, reach new customers, and sell to their most important customer segments more efficiently. Identifying the common characteristics of customers who buy the same products from your company (or who might be likely to leave you) Tips on using data to predict customer purchasing behavior based on past performance Using customer data and marketing analytics to predict when customers will purchase certain items Information on how data collected can help with merchandise planning Breaking down customers into segments for easier market targeting Building a 360 degree view of a customer base Data Driven Marketing For Dummies assists marketing professionals at all levels of business in accelerating sales through analytical insights.
Impact fees are one-time charges that are applied to new residential developments by local governments that are seeking funds to pay for the construction or expansion of public facilities, such as water and sewer systems, schools, libraries, and parks and recreation facilities. In the face of taxpayer revolts against increases in property taxes, impact fees are used increasingly by local governments throughout the U.S. to finance construction or improvement of their infrastructure. Recent estimates suggest that 60 percent of all American cities with over 25,000 residents use some form of impact fees. In California, it is estimated that 90 percent of such cities impose impact fees. For more than thirty years, impact fees have been calculated based on proportionate share of the cost of the infrastructure improvements that are to be funded by the fees. However, neither laws nor courts have ensured that fees charged to new homes are themselves proportionate. For example, the impact fee may be the same for every home in a new development, even when homes vary widely in size and selling price. Data show, however, that smaller and less costly homes have fewer people living in them and thus less impact on facilities than larger homes. This use of a flat impact fee for all residential units disproportionately affects lower-income residents. The purpose of this guidebook is to help practitioners design impact fees that are equitable. It demonstrates exactly how a fair impact fee program can be designed and implemented. In addition, it includes information on the history of impact fees, discusses alternatives to impact fees, and summarizes state legislation that can infl uence the design of local fee programs. Case studies provide useful illustrations of successful programs. This book should be the first place that planning professionals, public officials, land use lawyers, developers, homebuilders, and citizen activists turn for help in crafting (or recrafting) proportionate-share impact fee programs.
"Generation Priced Out is a call for action on one of the most talked about issues of our time: how skyrocketing rents and home values are pricing out the working and middle-class from urban America. Telling the stories of tenants, developers, politicians, homeowner groups, and housing activists from over a dozen cities impacted by the national housing crisis, Generation Priced Out criticizes cities for advancing policies that increase economic and racial inequality. Shaw also exposes how boomer homeowners restrict millennials' access to housing in big cities, a generational divide that increasingly dominates city politics. Defying conventional wisdom, Shaw demonstrates that rising urban unaffordability and neighborhood gentrification are not inevitable. He offers proven measures for cities to preserve and expand their working- and middle-class populations and achieve more equitable and inclusive outcomes. Generation Priced Out is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of urban America"--Provided by publisher
