This report reviews the macroeconomic determinants of the rapid growth in the Spanish housing market, including various policy elements. It examines the vulnerabilities of households' finances as a result of the rapid growth of housing prices and mortgage debt. It also describes the Spanish...

For most citizens, buying a residential property (dwelling) is the most important transaction during their lifetime. Residential properties represent the most significant component of households’ expenses and, at the same time, their most valuable assets. The Residential Property Prices...

This Selected Issues paper for Belgium evaluates whether price increases in Belgium are excessive. It assesses the household and bank balance sheets and their vulnerability to a slowdown in housing prices, and identifies differences in real estate markets between Belgium and other countries. The...

The financial turmoil of the late 1990s prompted a broad search for tools and techniques for detecting and preventing financial crises, and more recent episodes of instability have high lighted the importance of continuous monitoring of financial systems as a tool for preventing crises. This...

Sharp increase in house prices in Hong Kong SAR in 2009-2010 has led to concerns of an emerging real estate bubble. According to our measure of price deviation from fundamentals, which should be taken as an early warning indicator of market exuberance, the current level of house prices in Hong...

The paper describes a global model consisting of several industrial and developing country blocks built to analyze alternative economic policies in a medium-term context. The model, which has been used to construct medium-term scenarios for the World Economic Outlook, consists of aggregate...

This paper develops a simple model for measuring potential output that uses data on inflation, unemployment, and capacity utilization. We apply the model to 10 countries, in addition to the United States and the euro area. While there is a substantial amount of uncertainty around our estimates,...

Rebalancing in Spain’s private sector is under way, but with more modest progress on reducing stocks. Spain is subject to significant spending pressures, reflecting unfavorable demographic trends and subdued growth prospects, and will require substantial structural reform. Priority...

Sharp increase in house prices combined with the extraordinary Chinese lending growth during 2009 has led to concerns of an emerging real estate bubble. We find that, for China as a whole, the current levels of house prices do not seem significantly higher than would be justified by underlying...