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 recent housing bust has reignited interest in psychological theories of speculative excess (Shiller, 2007). I investigate this issue by identifying a segment of the U.S. population-evangelical protestants-that may be less prone to speculative motives, and uncover a significant negative...

This paper argues that making affordable home mortgage loans available to a large cross section of the population will serve both the redistributive and growth-enhancing objectives of poverty reduction policies. The current state of housing and mortgage markets in selected Middle East and North...

House prices in Europe have shown diverging trends, and this paper seeks to explain these differences by analyzing three groups of countries: the "fast lane", the average performers, and the slow movers. Price movements in the first two groups are found to be driven mostly by income and trends...

Several countries in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe used a rich set of prudential instruments in response to last decade’s credit and housing boom and bust cycles. We collect detailed information on these policy measures in a comprehensive database covering 16 countries at a...

This paper analyses the effect of asset prices on credit growth in France and tries to disentangle credit demand and supply factors, both for the whole 1993-2010 period and during periods of financial instability. Using bank-level panel data at a quarterly frequency, stock price growth is shown...

We examine the properties of house price fluctuations across 18 advanced economies over the past 40 years. We ask two specific questions: First, how synchronized are housing cycles across these countries? Second, what are the main shocks driving movements in global house prices? To address these...

A key element in the build-up to the global recession and subsequently was the movement in house price indexes (HPIs). These indexes are particularly prone to methodological and coverage differences which can undermine both within-country and cross-country economic analysis. The paper outlines...

This paper documents developments in mortgage credit and the housing sector in Latin America over the past decade, and compares them with those of other emerging economies. In particular, it examines the real estate and mortgage markets to assess whether (i) growth in mortgage credit is...

This Selected Issues paper analyzes pace of economic growth for Brazil. Moderating activity and stubbornly elevated inflation since 2010 have led to a reevaluation of Brazil’s long-term potential growth rate. Growth accounting suggests that potential growth is probably lower than was...