"Construction Economics" Presentation (deadline approaching quickly)

Economics Economics Questions
1

Hello,

I’m new to these forums but not new to the Mises website. I’ve also attended a Mises circle.

I am going to be giving a presentation on “Construction Economics” to a Construction-oriented consulting group in my company. The first part of the presentation is somewhat set and basically covers things like PPI, BCI (Building Cost), MCI (Materials Cost), ISM Manufacturing Index, Architectural Billing Index, Construction Spending, CCI (Construction Cost), Construction Spending, and Housing Starts.

The second part of the presentation will deal with how construction industry participants (owners & contractors) use economic information in their decisions.

The presentation has to be politically palatable and factual. I showed the people I am working with the paper on Skyskrapers and Business cycles by Mark Thornton in order to see if they would bite on more detailed discussions of the business cycle and capital theory. I think they might have been a little confused and intimidated by it.

The entire presentation is going to be 1 hr long and delivered via PowerPoint.

Any suggestions for topics or material to cover would be helpful.

Thanks,

Colin

2

Companies such as Buxton and ESRI are doing some real interesting things with customer analytics and these were driving construction decisions by retailers and other commercial builders up until about two years ago. Lately, however, the vast majority of construction has been for various governments, and they aren’t particularly concerned about economic issues (except for, perhaps, forecasts of job creation).