The financial and economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 has taken its toll on the South African economy. The economy contracted for the first time since 1998, and entered recession during the fourth quarter of 2008. The GDP contraction was soon transmitted to the labor market. Between the second...

This study explores the hypothesis that high home-ownership damages the labor market. We show that rises in the home-ownership rate in a U.S. state are a precursor to eventual sharp rises in unemployment in that state. The elasticity exceeds unity: a doubling of the rate of home-ownership in a...

This paper presents the quantile estimation of house price between two years, 2004 and 2007 (a boom house price period) in several Spanish cities. We decompose the change in house price distribution into portions: changes in the distributions of the explanatory variables and changes in...

This paper estimates the impact of the murder of film maker Theo van Gogh on November 2, 2004, on listed house prices in Amsterdam with a unique dataset. We use an hedonic-market approach to show that general attitudes towards Muslim minorities were negatively affected by the murder....

It is now well-established that the U.S. housing market crisis preceded the labor market crisis and that, in the wake of these crises, doubling-up and cohabitation increased and homeownership fell. What is less clear is what happened at the subnational level. This study reports on: 1) how the...

The existence of compensating differentials in Russian labor and housing markets is examined using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) augmented by city and regional-specific characteristics from other sources. While Russia is undergoing transition to a market economy, we...

We estimate empirically the effect of immigration on house prices and residential construction activity in Spain over the period 1998-2008. This decade is characterized by both a spectacular housing market boom and a stunning immigration wave. We exploit the variation in immigration across...