The global financial crisis of the past decade has shaken the research and policy worlds out of their belief that housing markets are mostly benign and immaterial for understanding economic cycles. Instead, a growing consensus recognizes the central role that housing plays in shaping economic...

Demographic change brings complex challenges to the economic, social, and environmental systems of cities, with its asymmetric, overlapping, and compounded impacts across people and places. This paper analyses the main demographic trends and challenges in cities across OECD countries, with a...

This paper assesses how the degree of the mortgage market flexibility alters the effect of a residential house price shock on household credit and GDP. We estimate a panel vector autoregression model for a sample of 16 OECD countries for the period 1985Q1-2012Q4 and we identify a house price...

This paper assesses the linkages between money, credit, house prices and economic activity in industrialised countries over the last three decades. The analysis is based on a fixed-effects panel VAR estimated using quarterly data for 17 industrialized countries spanning the period 1970-2006. The...

Cross-country differences in homeownership rates are large and persistent over time, with homeownership rates ranging from 44% in Switzerland to 83% in Spain. This paper investigates whether cultures-defined as behavioral attitudes passed across generations-may value homeownership differently,...

This paper examines the mediating effect of the recent financial crisis on the relationship between house value fluctuation and households' liquid portfolio choice. To isolate exogenous variation in homeowners' home equity and mortgage debt before and after the crisis, I use a new regional level...

Cross-country differences in homeownership rates are large and persistent over time, with homeownership rates ranging from 44% in Switzerland to 83% in Spain. This paper inves- tigates whether cultures—defined as behavioral attitudes passed across generations—may value homeownership...

A nation needs the function of the all its economic machine to work properly with better lubricant and oil of remuneration and employment generating capacity, having some good productivity in the economy, but after democratizing with involving all citizen in the direct form of democracy, people...

We investigate the linkage between business cycle convergence and financial portfolio choice for a panel of 18 EU countries. We construct an index of similarity of financial portfolios which we then put into context with the view that “the financial world” has an impact on business cycles...

The benchmarks of a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) should take into account the economic and political context behind the creation of the SWF and the role the SWF plays as one part of a government's overall policy. The first benchmark of legitimacy ensures that the capital of the SWF is not...