{"id":444081,"date":"2010-03-18T11:14:46","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T15:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/economics\/2010\/03\/18\/secondary-sources-foreclosures-zimbabwe-farmland-unemployment-benefits\/"},"modified":"2010-03-18T11:14:46","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T15:14:46","slug":"secondary-sources-foreclosures-zimbabwe-farmland-unemployment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/444081","title":{"rendered":"Secondary Sources: Foreclosures, Zimbabwe Farmland, Unemployment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>A roundup of economic news from around the Web.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagofed.org\/digital_assets\/publications\/chicago_fed_letter\/2010\/cflapril2010_273b.pdf\" ><strong>Foreclosures:<\/strong><\/a> A <strong>Chicago Fed<\/strong> paper summarizes some alternative ideas for dealing with home foreclosures now that they\u0092re being spurred more by loss of jobs and income, declining home values and strategic defaults than by unaffordable loan products. Among the suggestions: \u00931) expanding the use of mandatory mediation between borrowers and lenders; 2) streamlining the Obama administration\u0092s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) process so that loan modifications are made permanent after three months of steady payments; 3) enacting bankruptcy reform that protects primary residences; and 4) imposing a moratorium on foreclosures for people who lose their jobs.\u0094 The paper concludes that \u0093the longer it takes to follow through with bold actions, the more families and communities will face economic hardships and the slower and more challenging the road to recovery will be.\u0094<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2010\/03\/see-the-tragedy-of-the-commons.html\" ><strong>Zimbabwe:<\/strong><\/a> On the Marginal Revolution blog, <strong>Alex Tabarrok<\/strong> gives a fascinating Google Earth look at what happened when Zimbabwe forcibly redistributed  lush, private farmland (which was predominantly white-owned) to share it with poorer blacks who largely worked on dry, unproductive communal farms. One theory was that the whites had the better quality land. The other was \u0093The Tragedy of the Commons \u0096 the farmers on the communal lands did not have the incentives to invest in the land and thus the land eroded and turned to desert\u0085 So what happened after the land was redistributed beginning in 2000 and all of it made communal? After reform the land quality worsened everywhere. In particular, note that the blue lakes and ponds on the right became dry and empty as farmers no longer had an incentive to invest in maintaining these resources. The tragedy of the commons.\u0094 <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/economix.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/03\/17\/do-jobless-benefits-discourage-people-from-finding-jobs\/#more-57175\" ><strong>Unemployment Benefits:<\/strong><\/a> <strong>University of Chicago<\/strong>\u0092s, <strong>Casey B. Mulligan<\/strong>, writing on the Economix blog, takes the stance that \u0096 even in a recession when demand is exceptionally low \u0096 unemployment benefits still deter people from looking for new jobs. He uses data from Pittsburgh in the early 1980s when the unemployment rate was above 10% for two and half years to make his point: \u0093Very few people started working during the two to three weeks prior to the exhaustion of their unemployment benefits\u0085But almost 30 percent started work just a week after their benefits ran out (19 percent started a new job, 10 percent returned to a previous job). \u0091Demand\u0092 may have been lacking in Pittsburgh in the early 1980s, but that did not stop unemployed people from responding to the work incentives presented to them by the unemployment insurance program\u0085Unemployment insurance is only a small part of the reason why the labor market has so far failed to restore employment to pre-recession levels. But unemployment insurance is not free: It results in less employment and less output, not more. The real question is whether, and for how long, this price is worth paying to continue a just and compassionate program.\u0094<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/HVtHp6PcB14hjwIRIHI7VSsbAqY\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/HVtHp6PcB14hjwIRIHI7VSsbAqY\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/HVtHp6PcB14hjwIRIHI7VSsbAqY\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/HVtHp6PcB14hjwIRIHI7VSsbAqY\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?a=A67ET64QPIo:Pedddw10z1c:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?a=A67ET64QPIo:Pedddw10z1c:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?i=A67ET64QPIo:Pedddw10z1c:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?a=A67ET64QPIo:Pedddw10z1c:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?i=A67ET64QPIo:Pedddw10z1c:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?a=A67ET64QPIo:Pedddw10z1c:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/wsj\/economics\/feed\/~4\/A67ET64QPIo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A roundup of economic news from around the Web. Foreclosures: A Chicago Fed paper summarizes some alternative ideas for dealing with home foreclosures now that they\u0092re being spurred more by loss of jobs and income, declining home values and strategic defaults than by unaffordable loan products. Among the suggestions: \u00931) expanding the use of mandatory [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}