The Center for Real Estate periodically publishes the Working Paper Series which provides a vehicle for faculty, research associates, fellows, and visiting scholars to highlight their research.
Below is the most recent submitted working paper:
- Brief Thoughts on Housing Supply and Policy* – Albert Saiz
- Raising housing prices are coming to garner substantial interest
from policymakers and the public. In this short piece, I focus on
elucidating the key interactions between supply and demand that
generate macroeconomic problems and lack of affordability. I make a
distinction between short run and long run housing supply. The main
conclusions are not new: policymakers should be aware of the
Tinbergen rule and use multiple tools to address the multiple problems
arising from housing markets. I also argue that countercyclical supplyside
policies can be particularly damaging. I further advocate for better
data-driven mortgage underwriting models that go beyond mark-tomarket
and try to forecast future equilibrium prices. Finally, I make
an argument for a return to ambitious master-planned city-building
endeavors in Europe’s most expensive cities.
* This working paper is the companion of a homonymous presentation in the conference
about housing markets organized by the Nederlandsche Bank in Amsterdam on May 24-25, 2018.
A revised version of this document is expected to be published in the volume: “Hot
Property – The Housing Market in Major Cities.” Lohuis, Melanie; Nijskens, Rob; Hilbers,
Paul; and Heeringa, Willem (Editors). Willey, Amsterdam (forthcoming).
