When a publication like The Hill or Politico decides to take up their valuable (cyber) real estate with stories like this you know the issue has moved from the the econometrics realm to the political realm.
Which is maybe why this area of study used to be called political economy.*
From The Hill, April 5:
CORRECTION: Patrick Roosenberg is director of automotive finance intelligence at J.D. Power. His name was misspelled in a previous version of this story.At some point in the not-too-distant past, a new car became a luxury purchase.
The average price for a new vehicle hit $49,500 at the end of last year, compared to $38,948 just three years earlier. Skyrocketing interest rates pushed the average monthly car payment on a five-year loan to $723 in March.
New vehicles priced under $25,000, a range that the average American might deem affordable, now account for less than 5 percent of all sales....*****....Customers who walk onto a dealer’s lot expecting such enticements as zero-APR financing and thousand-dollar rebates are in for a surprise: For the first time in recent memory, the automobile industry is a seller’s market.“It is no longer a $25,000, $30,000 transaction. It is a $50,000, $60,000 transaction,” said Patrick Roosenberg, director of automotive finance intelligence at J.D. Power, a data and analytics company that researches the automotive sector. “It is a greater financial commitment than it has ever been.”....
....MUCH MORE
*via Princeton uni. "What is Political Economy?":
"Economists must not only know their economic models,
but also understand politics, interests, conflicts, passions
the essence of collective life. For a brief period of time you
could make changes by decree; but to let them persist,
you have to build coalitions and bring people around.
You have to be a politician."
—Alejandro Foxley, Chilean Minister of Finance
quoted in Williamson and Haggard 1994
