This volume was prepared by Constantin Mang while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes a short introduction and four self-contained chapters that focus on ICT...

The primary goal of monetary policy in most economies of the world is to achieve and maintain price stability. This paper evaluates price developments and consumer price indices in south-eastern European countries, i.e. countries that have either recently joined the EU or are candidate or...

In this paper we review the well-known problem of how to measure price developments when the quality of the underlying goods and services is changing over time. The importance of appropriate methods to take account of quality change is highlighted from the perspective of monetary policy. In...

In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden für Berliner Mietshäuser praktikable multiple Regressionsmodelle, sog. hedonische Modelle zur Wertermittlung von Mietwohnhäusern und Wohn- und Geschäftshäusern entwickelt. Die hedonische Bewertungsmethode beurteilt Objekte nach ihren intrinsischen Werten...

This report examines whether Google search queries can be used to predict the present and the near future house prices in Finland. Compared to a simple benchmark model, Google searches improve the prediction of the present house price index by 7.5 % measured by mean absolute error. In addition,...

Verfolgt man die aktuelle Diskussion, kann man den Eindruck gewinnen, dass Wohnraum unbezahlbar geworden sei. Doch ist dieser Anschein gerechtfertigt? Wird Wohnen tatsachlich insgesamt teurer oder entspricht der Anstieg der allgemeinen Lohn- und Preisentwicklung? Steigen die Preise in der Breite...

Persistent, structural housing affordability challenges in Ireland have been well documented for particular groups (private renters, low to middle income households and those in urban areas (Corrigan et al., 2019)). Recent research has also documented the access to credit constraints faced by...