Aside: Here's an example of what "new paradigm" language actually sounds like. This from the real estate bubble (and Bob Toll is Bertrand Russell compared to what the "new economics" people were saying in the tech bubble). New York Times:
In the past couple of years, Toll and his deputies have begun analyzing European housing data to see if they hold any lessons for a maturing American housing market. Toll has been talking up the research to stock analysts and the financial press for the past year. His conclusions carry a whiff of new-paradigm thinking, but he nevertheless seems convinced that Europe's present-day reality is America's destiny. I asked Toll what our children - my kids are both under 8, I told him - would be paying when they're ready to buy. "They're going to live with us until they're 40," Toll said matter-of-factly. "And when they have their second kid, then we'll finally kick them out and make them pay for the house that we paid for. And that house will cost them 45 to 50 percent of their income."
I grew alarmed. Was he kidding? He assured me he was not. "It's all just logic," Toll said. "In Britain you pay seven times your annual income for a home; in the U.S. you pay three and a half." The British get 330 square feet, per person, in their homes; in the U.S., we get 750 square feet. Not only does Toll say he believes the next generation of buyers will be paying twice as much of their annual incomes; in terms of space, he also seems to think they're going to get only half as much. "And that average, million-dollar insane home in the burbs? It's going to be $4 million."
...
One idea that shapes the outlook of real-estate economists is the notion that cities, in a rough conceptual sense, are replacements for one another. A city is founded, and residents and industries settle there; over time, that city and its metro area might reach a population of a million residents. As demand to live there increases and the supply of good land diminishes, housing gets more expensive. But lo, another city arises nearby, where land is cheaper and jobs are plentiful. Residents can now leave the first big city, if they choose, and move to the second, smaller city. Until, that is, the second city becomes large and crowded and expensive as well. Then another city grows nearby, and so on. As pressure on prices and land builds, a new city can act as a pressure release.
It's possible that this model has broken down over the past few years. A small cadre of economists, in fact, has begun to ask whether the irrepressible inflation of home values in many coastal metro areas actually reflects a deeper logic based on the straitened land supply in these cities. Boom-time rationalists always run the risk of earning a black mark of infamy like that worn by the Yale professor Irving Fisher. (Just before the 1929 stock-market crash, Fisher declared that stocks had reached "what looks like a permanently high plateau.") And it is virtually impossible to find an economist - or a home builder, for that matter - who thinks the recent growth rates in home prices are sustainable; even the most sanguine among them predict more moderate appreciation over the long run. Yet almost without exception these thinkers, though they come from different political persuasions and even different research specialties, have attributed high home prices to zoning. Further, they have amassed a fair amount of data to support their arguments.
In the past couple of years, Toll and his deputies have begun analyzing European housing data to see if they hold any lessons for a maturing American housing market. Toll has been talking up the research to stock analysts and the financial press for the past year. His conclusions carry a whiff of new-paradigm thinking, but he nevertheless seems convinced that Europe's present-day reality is America's destiny. I asked Toll what our children - my kids are both under 8, I told him - would be paying when they're ready to buy. "They're going to live with us until they're 40," Toll said matter-of-factly. "And when they have their second kid, then we'll finally kick them out and make them pay for the house that we paid for. And that house will cost them 45 to 50 percent of their income."
I grew alarmed. Was he kidding? He assured me he was not. "It's all just logic," Toll said. "In Britain you pay seven times your annual income for a home; in the U.S. you pay three and a half." The British get 330 square feet, per person, in their homes; in the U.S., we get 750 square feet. Not only does Toll say he believes the next generation of buyers will be paying twice as much of their annual incomes; in terms of space, he also seems to think they're going to get only half as much. "And that average, million-dollar insane home in the burbs? It's going to be $4 million."
...
One idea that shapes the outlook of real-estate economists is the notion that cities, in a rough conceptual sense, are replacements for one another. A city is founded, and residents and industries settle there; over time, that city and its metro area might reach a population of a million residents. As demand to live there increases and the supply of good land diminishes, housing gets more expensive. But lo, another city arises nearby, where land is cheaper and jobs are plentiful. Residents can now leave the first big city, if they choose, and move to the second, smaller city. Until, that is, the second city becomes large and crowded and expensive as well. Then another city grows nearby, and so on. As pressure on prices and land builds, a new city can act as a pressure release.
It's possible that this model has broken down over the past few years. A small cadre of economists, in fact, has begun to ask whether the irrepressible inflation of home values in many coastal metro areas actually reflects a deeper logic based on the straitened land supply in these cities. Boom-time rationalists always run the risk of earning a black mark of infamy like that worn by the Yale professor Irving Fisher. (Just before the 1929 stock-market crash, Fisher declared that stocks had reached "what looks like a permanently high plateau.") And it is virtually impossible to find an economist - or a home builder, for that matter - who thinks the recent growth rates in home prices are sustainable; even the most sanguine among them predict more moderate appreciation over the long run. Yet almost without exception these thinkers, though they come from different political persuasions and even different research specialties, have attributed high home prices to zoning. Further, they have amassed a fair amount of data to support their arguments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16brothers.html?p...