2015考研必看《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》節(jié)選：住房

　　Housing

　　住房

　　Nimble opposition

　　靈活的反對(duì)

　　A new study confirms suspicions about what drives planning decisions

　　一項(xiàng)新的研究證實(shí)了對(duì)規(guī)劃決定的推動(dòng)力的質(zhì)疑

　　ON A road called Glyders, in Benfleet, east of London, it looks as though every house is on the market. But the crucial words “for sale” are missing from the estate agents'signs, and have been replaced with “RAGE:Residents Against Glyders Expansion”. The locals are protesting against plans to build 35 new homes on farmland at the end of their road. “Look how narrow this road is,” says Susan Baillie, whose husband, Robert, runs the campaign. “It will never cope with the additional traffic.” The Baillies organised the signs, which are sponsored by the estate agent. The irony seems lost on the residents.

　　在Glyders，這個(gè)位于倫敦東部本弗利特的一條大街上，每一間房屋似乎都在等待它的買主。但是房屋中介的招牌上卻偏偏缺少重要字眼“待售”，取而代之的是“暴怒：當(dāng)?shù)鼐用窬芙^Glyders 的擴(kuò)大?！碑?dāng)?shù)厝丝棺h在這條街道末端的農(nóng)田上建造35 棟新屋的計(jì)劃?！罢?qǐng)看看這條街有多窄，”蘇珊貝利如是說(shuō)，而她的丈夫羅伯特正是這次抗議行動(dòng)發(fā)起人。“它負(fù)擔(dān)不起額外的交通了?！必惱氲嚼谜信?，這一舉措得到了房屋中介的大力支持。諷刺的是此舉會(huì)導(dǎo)致住戶的流失。

　　Local opposition to new housing developments is common across Britain. It has long been argued that such opposition — NIMBYism to its critics — is linked to home ownership. Homeowners, unlike distant landlords, vote in local elections and receive planning consultations in their postboxes. They lose out from development in multiple ways. Loss of green space reduces their quality of life and increased supply of housing suppresses prices. Landlords managing diversified portfolios are less exposed to the value of one property. The idea that planning decisions are driven by the desire of homeowners to maximise house prices is known as the “ home-voter hypothesis”.

　　當(dāng)?shù)胤磳?duì)新的房屋開(kāi)發(fā)政策在英國(guó)是很常見(jiàn)的。一直以來(lái)都認(rèn)為這種反對(duì)—批評(píng)家稱之為鄰避主義—都與房屋所有權(quán)息息相關(guān)。與過(guò)去的地主不同，房主參與當(dāng)?shù)剡x舉和規(guī)劃咨詢。在開(kāi)發(fā)過(guò)程中他們?cè)诙喾矫嬗兴潛p。綠地的損耗降低了他們的生活質(zhì)量，而且增加的房屋供應(yīng)壓制了房屋價(jià)格。管理多樣投資的房東對(duì)于一棟房屋的價(jià)格會(huì)有所疏忽。房主們意欲提高房屋價(jià)格從而驅(qū)使決策產(chǎn)生，這種想法被稱之為“房屋投票假說(shuō)”。

　　On October 24th the Institute for Government, a think-tank, released a study supporting this theory with data. It looked at English local planning authorities (LAs) between 2001 and 2011 and found that for every additional ten percentage points in the proportion of homes that are owner-occupied, 1.2 percentage points were knocked off growth in the housing stock. Average growth was 8.8%, so the effect was marked. The authors are cautious about making a causal claim,but the correlation was observed after controlling for the number of planning applications and the amount of available land. A rough calculation suggests that, without the NIMBY effect, one million more homes would have been built during the period.

　　在10 月24 日，智庫(kù)政府研究所(IFG)公布了一項(xiàng)佐以數(shù)據(jù)支撐此次理論的研究。通過(guò)2001到2011 年對(duì)英國(guó)地方規(guī)劃局的觀察發(fā)現(xiàn)，屋主自用的房屋占所有房屋比例中每增加10 個(gè)百分點(diǎn)，住房存量的增長(zhǎng)就會(huì)下跌1.2 個(gè)百分點(diǎn)。平均增長(zhǎng)是8.8%，所以此種現(xiàn)象的影響是顯而易見(jiàn)的。至于是否可以得出兩者存在因果關(guān)系的結(jié)論，作者持保留態(tài)度。但是在控制了規(guī)劃申請(qǐng)和可用土地的數(shù)量后，相關(guān)效果還是很容易看到的。若不考慮鄰避效應(yīng)，一項(xiàng)粗略計(jì)算表明，在2001 至2011 年間大約有逾一百萬(wàn)棟房屋建成。