Prior studies debating the effects of changes to the minimum wage concentrate on impacts on household income and spending or employment. We extend this debate by examining the impact of changes to the minimum wage on expenses associated with shelter, a previously unexplored area. Increases in...

Housing policies in Japan after World War II were focused on the quantitative supply of houses with a wide range of targeted groups and public rental houses. The Japan Housing Corporation (now the Urban Renaissance Agency) and the Government Housing Loan Corporation (now the Japan Housing...

Singapore has developed a unique housing system, with three-quarters of its housing stock built by the Housing & Development Board (HDB) and homeownership financed through Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings. As a result, the country's homeownership rate of 90% is one of the highest among...

From a broad macro-financial structure perspective, overly easy credit conditions gave rise to house price booms and busts in several advanced economies (e.g., Ireland, Spain, and the U.S.), and, more specifically in the U.S., an underpricing of risk made possible by regulatory arbitrage and...

This paper analyzes the housing markets and housing policies in Hong Kong, China and the People's Republic of China (PRC). Both markets face housing affordability problems due to limited land supply, for which the solutions vary considerably. Hong Kong, China has adopted a railway and property...

We provide an analysis of the housing market and current housing policies in three developed countries: the United Kingdom (UK), Switzerland, and the United States (US). We focus on these three countries mainly due to the marked differences in their institutional settings. The UK is...

This paper evaluates housing policy in the Republic of Korea over the past several decades, describes new challenges arising from the changing environment, and draws lessons for other countries. The most important goals of the housing policy have been to alleviate housing shortages and to...

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on household mobility using micro data. The UK (until 2014) provided an ideal setting to explore the impact of housing transfer taxes on mobility decisions. This is partly because the stamp duty liability is quite substantial, at least for...

This paper synthesizes and extends the results of urban land market studies carried out in three Brazilian cities - Brasília, Curitiba and Recife. The purpose of the studies is to empirically assess the performance of urban land markets in different cities and to gauge the feasibility of...

This paper presents the adaptation of the "Florida Affordable Housing Needs Assessment Methodology" (Noll et al., 1997) to Brazil. This was a task developed jointly by the Florida team with researchers from IPEA and the World Bank. The Affordable Housing Needs Assessment Methodology, developed...