The Blackwell Companion to the Economics of Housing

The Blackwell Companion to the Economics of Housing will help students and professionals alike to explore many aspects of the housing economy: home prices, housing wealth, mortgage debt, and financial risk. Gathering together a wide-ranging collection of original data, new analyses, and innovative ideas, the Companion is written by a team of highly-respected scholars, including banking and finance professionals as well as academics whose experience spans the globe. Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand are particularly well-represented by authorship and focus. This Companion explores timely issues including: the volatility of home prices and the implications of such booms and busts for the wider economy; the puzzling link between housing wealth and consumption; innovations in mortgage markets including subprime and the crisis it precipitated; the changing face of housing risk, and the challenge of mitigation. Drawing on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data to illustrate specific topics and explore core concepts it provides students of economics and public policy with an ideal supplement to standard textbooks; for professionals in the field, it is an essential reference work and handbook.