Numerous papers have tried to understand housing’s role in the economy and have not reached an agreement. In this paper we turn to the asymmetric relationship between housing and the overall economic activity. We find that the relation between building permits and GDP is regime-dependent....

This paper employs panel data on 413 counties and cities over 2004-2009 to investigate the local supply of new single-family housing in Germany. Construction activity in local housing markets (measured by new housing permits related to the local housing stock) is modeled as a function of local...