Home economics

摘要

A large part of the recent growth in wealth- in some economies nearly all of it-consists of rising property values, according to Thomas Piketty's analysis. House prices in many parts of the world have been booming for the better part of two decades. The biggestincreases have been in rich cities such as London, New York and San Francisco. Rising house prices are a response to an imbalance between supply and demand. Demand has been affected by the globalisation of economies. As transport costs started to fall at the beginning of the 20th century, many of the manufacturing firms clustered in cities in developed countries left in search of cheaper land and labour. This threw many of those cities into crisis as their tax base crumbled and their public services deteriorated, hastening the exodus. Yet starting in the 1980s cities that had retained a core of highly skilled workers enjoyed a rebound. Population decline slowed and eventually halted, and local economic growth and property prices picked up.