Fred Harrison

Overview

Fred Harrison is a British author, economic commentator, and research director at the Land Research Trust. He is best known for a series of books applying Henry George's analysis of land rent to modern economies, particularly his work on the 18-year land and credit cycle and his documented prediction of the 2008 financial crisis.

The Power in the Land (1983)

Harrison's first major work, The Power in the Land (1983), applied Georgist analysis to the British economy and land market. The book argued that land speculation was a primary driver of economic instability and that land value taxation was the essential remedy. It established Harrison as a leading voice in the British Georgist tradition.

Predicting the 2008 Crisis

Harrison's most celebrated contribution was his 1997 prediction — in the book The Chaos Makers and subsequently in Boom Bust (2005) — that the next major financial crisis would arrive around 2007–2010. The prediction was based on the 18-year land cycle: a recurrent pattern in which land prices rise, attract speculative credit, reach an unsustainable peak, and collapse, dragging the wider economy with them. The cycle had been identified by economists including Homer Hoyt (who traced it in Chicago from 1830 to 1933) and was consistent with George's analysis of how land speculation generates economic instability.

The 2008 collapse confirmed the prediction with notable accuracy.

Ricardo's Law (2006)

Ricardo's Law: House Prices and the Great Tax Clawback Scam argues that existing tax systems effectively allow landlords to "claw back" from tenants and workers the taxes they nominally pay, because all taxes on production ultimately reduce wages and returns to labour and capital, while the locational premium on land absorbs these losses. This is the ATCOR theorem applied to contemporary tax policy.

The Traumatised Society (2012)

The Traumatised Society extends the analysis to culture and governance, arguing that rent-seeking behaviour — enabled by the failure to capture land values publicly — corrupts institutions and perpetuates social dysfunction.

See Also

• Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers — the London publisher behind Harrison's The Power in the Land, Boom Bust, and Ricardo's Law
• Jones & Harrison, The Chaos Makers (1997) — the cross-country land-value data underlying Harrison's documented forecast of the 2008 crash
• Donald Shoup — UCLA economist whose 1980 deferred-assessment proposal, cited in Harrison's Power in the Land, answers the asset-rich/cash-poor objection to LVT
• Henry George — the intellectual tradition
• Mason Gaffney — co-author of The Corruption of Economics
• Homer Hoyt — the economist whose Chicago land-value data founded the 18-year cycle
• ATCOR — the theorem central to Ricardo's Law
• Land Value Tax
• Harrison, The Power in the Land — the 1983 foundational book
• Harrison, Boom Bust — the 2005 sequel
• Harrison, Ricardo's Law — the 2006 tax clawback analysis
• Narrative: Land Speculation Causes Boom and Bust — the narrative page built on his 18-year cycle forecasting

Sources

1. Fred Harrison (1983), The Power in the Land (book) — used for the land-speculation instability thesis and Harrison's place in the British Georgist tradition (mined on the wiki's book page).
2. Fred Harrison (2005), Boom Bust: House Prices, Banking and the Depression of 2010 — used for the 18-year-cycle framework and the 1997 crisis prediction (mined on the wiki's book page). Publisher
3. Fred Harrison (2006), Ricardo's Law; articles at Share The Rents — used for the tax-clawback/ATCOR argument and Harrison's current affiliation.