The UK has the most dysfunctional housing market amongst the major economies. It also has the highest fraction of the value of the home in the land rather than the building. It has the most regressive property tax in the world, and one of the most cumbersome planning systems. It holds the record for the highest commuting times, and the worst insulated homes in northern Europe. Housing affordability and inequality remain huge problems. The lecture will discuss a four-part solution: 1. Enabling “land value capture” to retrieve for the tax-payer rather than landowners more of the increase in land values that results from planning permission and public investment. 2. Building many more affordable social homes. 3. Reforming the planning system. 4. Making property taxes fair and green, with a simple deferral scheme to address cash-flow problems, and extending the tax base.
About the speaker
Professor John Muellbauer is a Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield College and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Econometric Society. He is best known for his work on household economics, housing markets and on finance-real economy interactions. Beginning in the 1980s, he was one the first economists to focus on the many complex interactions between housing markets and the economy. He has worked with many central banks and the OECD and is a frequent contributor to CEPR’s VoxEU columns.
About the lecture series
The Peter Sinclair Town Hall lecture series features world class economists presenting their research and its real world implications to an audience of academic economists, economics students, and the wider community. The lectures are diverse in topic but united in that they bring the lens of economics to real world issues, demonstrating how economics can be both useful and a force for good in understanding and shaping the world. The lecture series is inspired by and commemorates Emeritus Professor Peter Sinclair, whose breadth of knowledge, curiosity, and kindness inspired his students and colleagues immeasurably.
