This paper studies the determinants of house prices in eight transition economies of central and eastern Europe (CEE) and 19 OECD countries. The main question addressed is whether the conventional fundamental determinants of house prices, such as GDP per capita, real interest rates, housing...

The crisis enveloping global financial markets since August 2007 was triggered by actual and prospective credit losses on US mortgages. Was the United States just unlucky to have been the first to experience a housing crisis? Or was it inherently more susceptible to one? I examine the limited...

We identify the causal effect of house prices on mortgage demand and supply in Switzerland by exploiting exogenous shocks to immigration and thereby to house prices. Detailed micro data on individual requests and offers allow to close down possible other channels. We find that within the same...

We argue that financial institutions responded by raising their acceptable borrowing standards on borrowers, enhancing the quality of their portfolio, but also contracting their supply of mortgage credit. We reach this conclusion by developing a stylized imperfect information model which we use...

The paper investigates the characteristics of house price dynamics and the role of institutional features in nine Asia-Pacific economies during 1993-2006. On average, house prices tend to be more volatile in markets with lower supply elasticity and a more flexible business environment. At the...

The paper investigates the characteristics of house price dynamics and the role of institutional features in nine Asia-Pacific economies during 1993-2006. On average, house prices tend to be more volatile in markets with lower supply elasticity and a more flexible business environment. At the...

This paper estimates the response of house prices to changes in short- and long-term interest rates in 47 advanced and emerging market economies. We use data that statistical authorities selected as their best house price series, covering almost half a century of quarterly observations for the...

Piketty (2014) documents how the share of aggregate income going to capital in the United States has risen in the post-war era. Rognlie (2015) has since shown that this is largely due to the housing sector. This paper explores the determinants of the secular rise in the share of housing capital...

Among the policy responses to the global financial crisis, the international provision of US dollars via central bank swap lines stands out. This paper studies the build-up of stresses on banks' balance sheets that led to this coordinated policy response. Using the BIS international banking...

A large body of literature has shown that small firms experience difficulties in accessing the credit market due to informational asymmetries. Banks can overcome these asymmetries through relationship lending, or at least mitigate their effects by asking for collateral. Small firms, especially...