This text deals with the topic of housing shortage vs. residential vacancy – housing market intervention as a task of politics? At the beginning there will be some basic assertions on the relation of market vs. state, especially bearing in mind, the overall importance and social responsibility...

There are four major challenges for housing policy in the near and midterm future: First, rents in many German conurbations have been rising significantly faster than incomes over the last five years. Though it can rightly be argued, that the suggested policies of the new German federal...

The regional differences in the housing markets are enormous and will continue to exacerbate in the future. The main task for the housing policy is to take appropriate long term measures depending on the market structure. A central aspect of future housing policy is the site development....

Germany's risk-adjustment scheme (RAS) includes the statutory health insurance (SHI), but not the full private health insurance (PHI). We analyzed that the expansion of the RAS to the PHI would cause a transfer of 9.9 billion Euros per year from the PHI to the SHI (thresholds of relevant income...