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Add Comment 09 October 2008 - Piracy (but not the fun kind) by David

Ars Technica has an article that provides an example of how difficult it is to calculate the real world impact of economic phenomena, as well as the difficulty of figuring out where estimates come from when they enter the public sphere. In this case the subject is the economic impacts of intellectual property "theft". It's a pretty entertaining read.

Show Comments (2) 04 July 2008 - A General Update by David

I haven't been doing much around here recently, largely because I've been running into trouble getting data I've been pursuing.

• I contacted Kwame Kilpatrick's office to get a copy of the stimulus package writeup, but I was never able to get anything from them, and my contacts didn't pan out, either.
• I've investigated the Gross Municipal Product work that's going on, and currently there's more talk than action, with not much to show datawise. More to the point, it appears that what work is going on is based on MSAs, which as I've found previously cover the entirety of Wayne County.
• I've been trying to get the full historical datasets for Comerica's Detroit and Michigan Commercial Activity Indexes, but I've had no luck getting through to Dana Johnson, the researcher who produces the indexes. I can potentially reconstruct the datasets by checking the monthly releases, but they only appear to go back to 2006, while the dataset goes back to 1999 or so.

All of this is on top of my site being down for about 6 weeks starting in mid-April. Needless to say I'm a bit disappointed, but I'm hopeful to shake loose some more useful stuff. In the meantime, I'll be updating the Charts page with the most recent monthly data releases.

Add Comment 09 June 2008 - Methinks He Doth Protest Too Much by David

The reliable Crain's Detroit has a story today with the title "Tax bill jumps 14,000% for Plymouth Twp. company", due to the recent replacement of the Single Business Tax. Call me callous, but I have two main thoughts: More...

Add Comment 21 May 2008 - Ilitch Promotes In-sourcing Meetings To Detroit by David

According to the Free Press, Christopher Ilitch is promoting a new initiative called "Let's Meet In The D" to encourage businesses in the region to use the rapidly growing supply of meeting space in the Metro Detroit area for conferences and conventions, rather than go out of the region for such meetings. This kind of insourcing has been discussed by C2BE as one way of encouraging a virtuous cycle of economic development in the region, and obviously we aren't alone.

Add Comment 04 April 2008 - On the Trail of Stimulation by David

I'm currently working to get ahold of a copy of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's recent economic stimulus package, which he presented to the City Council just a couple of days ago. I have a call into the Deputy Mayor's office, so we'll see if I'm able to get a one through them. If not, I may be able to shake my network and see if a copy falls to the ground.

Add Comment 01 April 2008 - A Meta-post: Blogging about this blog by David

I just took a stab at seeing how well this site is ranked on Google under the phrase economics of Detroit. Not too surprisingly given the relatively brief tenure of the Potato Patch, it isn't great; it doesn't even appear in the top 500 entries. Surprisingly, though, the link to here from the front page of my domain shows up as entry 86. Given what I've read over the last few years about Google putting newer pages into a "sandbox" until they have shown some longevity, it's likely that the Patch's spot in the rankings won't be too bad a few months from now. On the positive side, however, I did discover that there are some sites I should check out and potentially link to.

Add Comment 31 March 2008 - Stories from Crain's by David

Crain's Detroit Business has a couple of stories of note. The first covers the business fallout of Kwame Kilpatrick's text message scandal. In an nutshell, anything which would involve association with the Mayor (such as the recently cancelled National Conference of Black Mayors convention), or which could be influenced by perceptions of corruption in the local government (particularly foreign investments) is taking a hit, while major international deals in the auto industry are progressing without a blip. One of the people quoted in the article characterizes it as "the Superbowl in reverse", which makes a lot of sense, as the apparent consequences have emerged due to changed perceptions of the city rather than concrete concerns.

On a different front, the Detroit MSA has lost 27,000 residents in 2006 and 2007. Once again Florida and Texas have picked up a huge number of new residents. I really wonder how long it will be before greenhouse effects on climate will start driving people back from the coasts.

Add Comment 31 March 2008 - More From Alan Blinder On Nationalizing The Mortgage Market by David

Alan Blinder has a follow up to his previous proposal for government intervention in the evolving financial crisis. Again, not strictly Detroit, but still important in setting the playing field for the city's economy. I was pointed to this by Brad Delong once again, and he has some very straightforward insights into the logic driving these proposals. He's got graphs and everything :)

My reduced posting volume can largely be blamed on Lee Gaddies, to whom I've been providing a small amount of assistance with his campaign. Send him money, he'll make a good legislator.

Add Comment 24 March 2008 - Designers for Prosperity? by David

Crain's Detroit Business has an article today about a new effort to draw 1000 designers to live in Detroit as a way of establishing the city as a center of design. I'm going to have to think about this one and post a follow-up.

Add Comment 16 March 2008 - Charts Part 3 - Income by David

I've just posted data from the American Community Survey on Median Household Income, which highlight the problem with using the census regions as measures of conditions in Detroit.