2 ms·
Wouldn't you also need numbers to arrive at the implication that foreign investment is? The numbers, at least historically, have always been hard to find, but
by ACow_Adonis 9y ago
Wouldn't you also need numbers to arrive at the implication that foreign investment is?
The numbers, at least historically, have always been hard to find, but the macro economic theory and indicators are generally quite boring and straight forward: employment stays high and household incomes improve, interest rates drop, lending and leveraging increases to household, supply is inelastic, house prices rise.
Everything lines up pretty well, so why look to blame foreigners (who, even at the most generous estimates on what data does exist, are still a minority).
- chris_wot 9y agoIf the numbers are hard to get, then it’s difficult for you to say whether foreign investment is or isn’t part of the problem.
- sushid 9y agoThat's literally what your parent commenter is getting at...
- ACow_Adonis 9y agoWell, one can use ockhams razor and plug the aggregate finance stats and household numbers in for each country: foreign investment will likely be related to the residual. That is, whatever amount is left over after domestic statistics and aggregate lending are taken into account. We don't have an accurate primary source for foreign investment, but we can reason. The rba website would be my first stop in aus for aggregate finance stats available publicly. The Abs has some construction/hiding investment data, but there are some issues with definitions you'd need to take into account. And our neighbors across the pond, although I'm not a kiwi, I imagine will have very similar structures and data. Additionally, such a simple model explains house prices quite well since the 1990s, across various markets with various levels of foreign investment, so we would need very good reasons to insert a "foreign investor" cause in there.