The peak of the first global real estate boom was reached around 1990 in most Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. Asset inflation was massive: in office markets across Europe, capital values rose 400 percent between 1980 and 1990, accelerating after 1986 -...

The transformation of the planned economies of central and eastern Europe to market economies has focused on economic stabilization and liberalization, privatization, and financial sector development. The housing sector and the mortgage market have been factors in each of these processes but not...

The authors describe the structure of Russian cities after 70 years of Soviet development. This is the longest socialist experience on record and its results are of paramount interest to urban economists. In the absence of price signals and of economic incentives to recycle land over time, the...

The objective of this paper is to explore the interactions between financial and urban policies, and their joint impact on the performance of the housing sector during the course of economic development. The central hypothesis is that extended periods of financial repression and the scarcity of...

Problems of developing financial services for housing are acute in transitional socialist economies. The authors examine contractual savings for housing (CSH), which are often advocated as a primary solution, especially in Central and Eastern European countries. A CSH instrument links a phase of...