Fred Harrison (author)

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For other people with the same name, see Fred Harrison.

Fred Harrison
Born1944 (age 79–80)
British Cyprus
NationalityBritish
Alma mater
  • Ruskin College, Oxford
  • BA (Hons)
    )
  • MSc
    )
Occupation(s)Author, economist

Fred Harrison (born 1944) is a British author, economist, economic commentator, and corporate policy advisor, notable for his stances on

2008 global financial crisis.[2] In 2005 Harrison commented: "The next property market tipping point is due at end of 2007 or early 2008 ... The only way prices can be brought back to affordable levels is a slump or recession.”[3]

Early life

Harrison was born in

MSc at University of London. Harrison lives in London with his wife, Rita.[4]
They have one daughter, Nina Harrison.

Journalism career

Harrison's first career was in newspaper journalism, working at papers such as the Wellington Journal and Shrewsbury News, in

The People
newspaper, where he became chief reporter.

Most of his stories involved investigating criminal and anti-social behaviour, such as stories about speedway riders buying championship titles, but Harrison's most famous and intricate assignment was a long campaign of reports, interviews, and interaction with police to convince them to reopen the case on the serial child killings between 1963 and 1965 that were called the Moors murders.[5]

Economic advisor to Russia

With the fall of the

USSR, Harrison took an opportunity to work with the Russian government[6] in developing economic policy. He spent 10 years in Russia advising their Federal Parliament (Duma) and local authorities on property tax reform and establishment of land markets. He conducted long-range economic studies, attempting to steer economic policy towards investment in schools, science, and healthcare. He was the organizer of the Duma's Land Policy Congress and conducted several hearings and studies commissioned by a wide range of Russian authorities. In 2002 he ended his work in Russia when it became apparent that the trend of investment from resource rents was not into the ventures he had recommended, but instead into what he termed conspicuous consumption, such as buying Western real estate and football clubs. He wrote "The Silver Bullet"[7] as a response to his disaffection for the choices of the Russian Duma
on these and other issues.

Economist, media figure, and author

Harrison is inspired by the writings of the American

political economist Henry George.[8]

After his sojourn in Russia, Harrison returned to his work in England. He had already become the Research Director of the Land Research Trust, London, in 1998[6] and worked as a corporate business advisor, as well as giving lectures on property and tax policy.

His main focus in both writing and lecturing has been to warn of what he considers to be the dangers of using land and

macro-economic analysis is based on the theory that business conforms to a pattern of 18-year cycles, determined by the unique characteristics of the land market. According to Harrison, economists erroneously "assume that the health of the property market depends upon the condition of the rest of the economy. In fact ... property is the key factor that shapes the business cycle, not the other way around."[2]

Predicting the 2007-08 crash

Harrison says he warned

depression in 2010. In 2005 he commented: "The next property market tipping point is due at end of 2007 or early 2008 ... The only way prices can be brought back to affordable levels is a slump or recession.”[3]

In 2009, Dirk Bezemer, a professor of economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, noted that Harrison was one of the earliest to have predicted the global financial crisis.[2]

In the media

Harrison has been very active in the UK media,

house prices would moderate and that any talk of a "housing bubble" was both premature and indicated a false understanding of debt economics.[6]

Harrison argued that building more properties is not the solution because speculative demand will always outstrip supply in the winner's curse stage of the cycle: "In the land market, a rise in demand cannot result in an offsetting increase in supply in places where people want to live and work. So prices are driven to dizzying heights by speculators, who outbid each other with offers for tracts that cannot yield an economic return. The market stalls and the house of cards comes crashing down.[10]

In 2015, Harrison published the first of a trilogy of Handbooks on Humanity. He integrated cultural studies with economic theory to test hypotheses that seek to explain why governments persist with sub-optimal fiscal policies.

neo-liberal") culture had been shaped by rent-seeking
to deliver sub-optimum outcomes through tax policies that have the permanent effect of mal-distributing income and retarding economic growth.

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ a b Howell, Jeff (14 October 2008), "On the level : a few home truths", The Telegraph, archived from the original on 5 May 2013
  2. ^ a b c Quoted in Bezemer, Dirk (16 June 2009). ""No One Saw This Coming": Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models" (PDF). uni-muenchen.de. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 April 2015. Abstracted at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15892/.
  3. ^ a b Bezemer, Dirk J, 16 June 2009. "“No One Saw This Coming”: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models"
  4. ISBN 0-415-18717-6
  5. ISBN 0-906798-70-1
  6. ^ a b c d Heath, Allister (12 February 2006), "Real cost of taxes now more than half UK GDP", Sunday Business
  7. ^ a b Harrison, Fred (24 October 2007), "Bust will follow boom – but when?", MoneyWeek
  8. ^ "6. (2013 October) Announcements: Fred Harrison's New Website and Homage to Henry George". Georgist News. 14 October 2013.
  9. ^ a b Seager, Ashley (8 January 2007), "A land tax is 200 years overdue", The Guardian, London
  10. TheGuardian.com
    . 27 March 2005.
  11. ISBN 978-0-993339-80-6

External links
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