Niko Block

10/ And the most fundamental thing: end this illegal war. The fallout already in the pipeline must be addressed urgently. Governments must use every lever available — not let the shocks ripple through our economies and rip apart our societies.

It is a real honour to be published in this volume alongside thinkers like Alan Freeman, Andrew Kliman, Fred Moseley and (especially) Riccardo Bellofiore.

In this framing Marxists' abstract value theory can coexist with institutionalists' objective orientation towards transactions, yet the former is not integral to the latter.

Research in Political Economy has just published my paper "Institutionalism and the Macro-Monetary Labour Theory of Value". emerald.com/books/edited-v…

@_scornful_one @ccpa Yeah, I think they're different concepts. Financialization as I define it in this piece presupposes that housing is a commodity of sorts (i.e. privately bought and sold). The latter has been true for a long time, but the former is more recent. nber.org/papers/w20501

@nikoblock @ccpa Could you separate financialization from commodification? Instead of looking at lending tools that affect all buyers, focusing on the ones that have allowed housing to become an exploited investment commodity rather than homes.

My analysis for @ccpa shows that arguments about immigration and "supply shortages" cannot explain housing inflation in Canada. #cdnpoli #housing #financialization policyalternatives.ca/news-research/…

@EstelSpaghetti Inflation in food is often instigated by price shocks in oil. But credit can come into play when investment funds place big bets on wheat futures and so on. My understanding is that this happened in 2007-08. @IsabellaMWeber’s work on this topic great.

@EstelSpaghetti If you’re asking whether consumers’ access to credit might be boosting prices, my answer would be probably not — at least not meaningfully, but perhaps marginally.

And under what circumstances would you start to view the supply-shortage argument as lacking predictive power?

If you see that a rise in the relative housing stock has been paralleled by a massive rise in real price, then why do you believe a further increase in the relative stock will on its own produce a different trend in the future than it has in the past?

3. Yes, there are many empty bedrooms in the suburbs. This is part of the broader picture of housing inequality that I discuss at the end of the article. x.com/MikePMoffatt/s…