There can be few everyday financial issues more important than the price of houses. Whether we own one and worry about its value or aspire to own one and are frustrated by their high prices, nobody can avoid the issue. In the UK, while prices have fluctuated during our lifetimes, overall they have risen steadily and sometimes spectacularly. The accepted wisdom is that houses are a safe and excellent investment for the long term. But are they really as good an investment as we believe? Might the future be different from the past? Are houses really so safe? This book looks at house prices over the long term in several countries -- including the UK, the US, France, Holland, Norway, Germany and Australia -- to find out what has happened to house prices and why. The author illustrates his findings with authoritative data on trends and provides intriguing details including a century-long index of UK house prices, an analysis of the value of the White House and a fascinating four-hundred-year story of houses in Amsterdam. - To what extent are we right to view our houses as an investment as well as a home?- If prices can rise for decades and then fall for more than a whole generation, then what does the future hold? - If prices rise further, will houses become unaffordable for many young people? How will that affect our society? - If they crash, will that endanger our banks once more? - Are politicians, policymakers and regulators prepared for the true range of possibilities? Anybody who owns a house, wants to own a house or follows the prices and economics of housing will find this book an accessible, fascinating and door-opening read. Neil Monnery studied at Oxford and Harvard Business School. He worked for many years at The Boston Consulting Group as a Director and Senior Vice President and is now active in business, investing and research.

Safe as Houses?: A Historical Analysis of Property Prices

Business & Money

Monnery, Neil

Economics

London Publishing Partnership

At the end of the Second World War, Hong Kong lived up to its description as “the barren island.” It had few natural resources, its trade and infrastructure lay in tatters, its small manufacturing base had been destroyed and its income per capita was less than a quarter of its mother country, Britain. As a British colony it fell to a small number of civil servants to confront these difficult challenges, largely alone. But by the time of the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, it was one of the most prosperous nations on Earth. By 2015 its GDP per capita was over 40% higher than Britain's. How did that happen? Around the world, post-war governments were turning to industrial planning, Keynesian deficits and high inflation to stimulate their economies. How much did the civil servants in Hong Kong adopt from this emerging global consensus? Virtually nothing. They rejected the idea that governments should play an active role in industrial planning - instead believing in the ability of entrepreneurs to find the best opportunities. They rejected the idea of spending more than the government raised in taxes - instead aiming to keep a year's spending as a reserve. They rejected the idea of high taxes - instead keeping taxes low, believing that private investment would earn high returns, and expand the long-term tax base. This strategy was created and implemented by no more than a handful of men over a fifty-year period. Perhaps the most important of them all was John Cowperthwaite, who ran the trade and industry department after the war and then spent twenty years as deputy and then actual Financial Secretary before his retirement in 1971. He, more than anyone, shaped the economic policies of Hong Kong for the quarter century after the war and set the stage for a remarkable economic expansion. His resolve was tested constantly over his period in office, and it was only due to his determination, independence, and intellectual rigor that he was not diverted from the path in which he believed so strongly. This book examines the man behind the story, and the successful economic policies that he and others crafted with the people of Hong Kong.

Architect of Prosperity: Sir John Cowperthwaite and the Making of Hong Kong

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

As the world entered the turbulent 1960s, two men, half a world apart, one a doctor and the other a classicist, both foreigners far from home, were charged with shaping the economic strategy of their adopted countries. They held a common objective. Both were determined to create a better world. More than half a century later, their principles still drive the policies of those economies today. Their proposed solutions could not have been more different. 
One, Che Guevara, is well known as a revolutionary. He is less well known as the key architect of Cuba’s communist economic system. He was as serious about economics and its effect on society as he was about revolutionary warfare. The other, John Cowperthwaite, is largely unknown today. And yet he was fundamental to establishing Hong Kong’s unique laissez-faire economic policy. 
These two men are arguably the originators of the most significant natural economic experiment of the last century, pitting the free-market model of Hong Kong against the state interventionism in Cuba. Each suite of policies has been pursued faithfully for over half a century with remarkable results that have lessons for us all. 
REVIEWS\nThe message is startling. Over the last sixty years, Cuba has been a pure socialist economy and Hong Kong a pure capitalist one. Over this period Cuba’s GDP per capita has doubled. That growth may sound okay but over 60 years it is actually pretty pitiful. Strikingly, over the same period Hong Kong’s per capita GDP has risen fourteen-fold. Roger Bootle, Chairman Capital Economics\nA Tale of Two Economies, provides a thorough and penetrating analysis of why Hong Kong has thrived for the last sixty years where Cuba has stagnated. It’s a powerful lesson of how state involvement must be targeted carefully and sparingly if human progress is not to be damaged. The story is an enjoyable read, told through the lens of the architects of the two economies – the unsung hero Sir John Cowperthwaite and the misguided icon Che Guevara. It’s a story that all economic policy makers should know, and a story that will enlighten students of economics and human progress. Marian Tupy, HumanProgress.org\nThis book compares Cowperthwaite with “Che” Guevara. In spite of geography, “each came to represent the beacon of a peculiar political theory in the 1960s and after: Hong Kong, what Milton Friedman and many others called an experiment in ‘free enterprise and free markets’; and Cuba, the last bastion of socialism after the Soviet Union faltered and China reformed. Monnery’s book is a fun, engaging read. I highly recommend him, if you are searching for a book to persuade a friend of the benefits of free enterprise. Alberto Mingardi, The Library of Economics and Liberty\nMonnery wrote the excellent (2017) Architect of Prosperity about Sir John Cowperthwaite’s shaping of colonial Hong Kong. Who he, you might ask? Indeed, that was part of the interest – an unknown who had laid the foundations for modern Hong Kong’s role as a financial and trading centre. This new book is, intriguingly, a compare and contrast of Cowperthwaite and Che Guevara, or rather an assessment of the natural experiment of two polar opposite economic systems, both intended to deliver the same aim of economic development and lasting prosperity. Diane Coyle, Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge\nNever mind the politicians, every journalist and opinion former should read this book. A brilliant book, characterised by objectivity and rigour. Fabulous. Steve Baker MP, Minister of State for Northern Ireland\nA superb comparison of the two men’s radically different philosophies, which set the economic destinies of two societies. We can learn much from that experiment. George C. Leef, James Martin Center

A Tale of Two Economies: Hong Kong, Cuba and the Two Men who Shaped Them

Gulielmus Occamus & Co. Ltd

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