The Economics of Affordable Housing
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Book Description
The economic system of competitive capitalism has proven to be both resilient and flexible over time and has contributed to the economic welfare of citizens in liberal and coordinated market economies in diverse regions and countries. At the same time, over the entire post-World War II period, there has been a notable endemic shortage of affordable housing in many advanced economies.
This book points at both the causes and the consequences of this circumstance and provides an integrated economic and legal view of how housing production is dependent on housing finance, which, in turn, means that legal conditions and the sovereign state play an active role. Further, the book contributes to the literature from two otherwise partially separated disciplines-housing and urban development studies on the one hand and the institutional centrality of the finance industry in the contemporary economic system on the other. The author asserts that although somewhat assimilated due to the ambitions of policy makers to optimize social and economic welfare for their constituencies, the combining of these two realms of expertise generates many favorable outcomes, but also some costs derived from finance industry instabilities. The book connects theoretical perspectives and provides an empirical explanation for how affordable housing is generated in an actual real world economy context.
The book will be relevant to the work of a number of academic disciplines including economics, government studies, housing policy and urban planning, social geography and law and society.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Affordable housing for all, and other political ambitions Part I: Institutional conditions 1. Affordable housing policies 2.The credit formation process and the role of housing production and financing Part II: Empirical cases 3. The institutional setting and the design and methodology of the study 4. Ambiguous policy objectives and their consequences: Urban development project goals, their legitimacy, and the role of professional ignorance 5. Housing welfare and the value of amenities 6. What needs to be done?: The challenge to provide affordable housing
Author(s)
Biography
Alexander Styhre is chair of organization theory and management, Department of Business Administration, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.