WHEN THE pandemic shut down the world’s economies last year, you may have supposed that housing markets would be clobbered. Not a bit of it. In 25 economies tracked by The Economist, house prices rose by 5%, on average, in the latest 12 months for which figures are available. In America they climbed by 11% in the year to January. In Britain they are up by 8%. In almost covid-free New Zealand, they have soared by 22%. Like other asset prices, house values have been buoyed by ultra-low interest rates and fiscal stimulus. Furlough schemes have limited distress sales. And the expectation (or hope) that people will keep working at home more and in offices less has fuelled demand for space away from the centres of big cities (a trend already long under way in the American West). Some central bankers worry about the pace of price rises. But there is no sign of slackening lending standards, as in past booms. Policymakers should tackle the market’s long-term problems: that means getting rid of tax breaks for homeowners and regulations that shackle supply.
America’s economic recovery seems well under way—as we report this week, using mobility data from Google and other “high-frequency” sources. The IMF, which has raised its forecast for global GDP growth this year to 6%, thinks that by 2024 America’s economy will be as big as it had expected before the pandemic. That’s a faster return to form even than in China. Fiscal stimulus and vaccinations have made the fund cheerier about rich countries (but gloomier about the poorest, which lack financial firepower and jabs). President Joe Biden’s $2trn splurge on infrastructure (including a climate-friendly dollop) should fuel the economy further. To finance it, he wants companies to pay more tax; and this week his treasury secretary floated a global minimum corporate-tax rate.
Even before the pandemic, many of the world’s workers were already under pressure, because of competition from freer trade, technological change and more. Covid-19 cost millions of jobs and exacerbated severe inequalities. Yet as economies recover, labour markets are bouncing back too—America’s unemployment rate is already down to 6% from 15% last spring. And a special report in this week’s issue argues that labour markets before the pandemic were better than many critics argued (measured, for example, by employment rates or by wage increases at the bottom end). The pandemic’s legacy to the world of work may benefit many, by speeding up trends already under way, such as remote working. This may even encourage bosses to communicate better with their underlings—although some may never learn.
On current trends South Asia will soon overtake the European Union as the centre of the covid-19 pandemic. India, where new cases jumped from 15,000 per day to 100,000 in a month, has passed America and Brazil in daily infections. Numbers are also rising fast in neighbouring Bangladesh and Pakistan, and outstripping vaccination efforts in all three countries. India is inoculating more than 3m people a day, but in a country of 1.4bn with the disease spreading rapidly, perhaps 10m are needed to flatten the curve. The biggest vaccine-maker has been told to halt exports. But there is far better news from another neighbour, tiny Bhutan, which received a gift of vaccines from India in January, waited for an astrologically auspicious moment in late March to start inoculations—and then jabbed 85% of its adults within a week.
Palace feuds in Jordan are not unknown. But public ones, such as that between King Abdullah and his half-brother, Prince Hamzah, are rare. Confined to a palace, the prince accused the government in a video message of corruption and authoritarianism. The affair seems to have calmed down. But Jordan’s problems run deeper than a family tiff. The economy shrank by 5% last year. Jordanians are fed up with their leaders and with having to pay bribes for jobs and basic services. Before the pandemic, almost half were thinking of emigrating. The king acts as if he were above it all. Yet he is in charge—and has chosen 13 prime ministers since ascending the throne in 1999. Change is unlikely unless he gives up some of his power. If he does not respond to his critics, he could face more hostile challenges.