What Have African Housing Policies Wrought?

This paper is a review of contemporary African housing markets, particularly the consequences of current housing policies. Overall, we conclude that the resource allocation which results from the current housing policies are quite contrary to their intended objectives. Many of the policies are suspect, both in terms of underlying economic rational and realistic economic achievement. In many respects, these policies have discouraged housing investment, and have been both inequitable and distortional. In rethinking these policies, our prescription is that since the private sector has efficiently provided the majority of the housing in the past, African governments must disengage themselves from direct production of housing. They must deregulate the housing markets and provide the right incentives, so as to realign the risks and rewards of investment in housing and permit private production to flourish. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Differentiated Contracts, Heterogeneous Borrowers, and the Mortgage Choice Decision.

Previous analyses of mortgage choice assume that adjustable rate mortagages are standard contracts and estimate bivariate models. The authors estimate a multinomial logit model that explicitly treats mortgages as differentiated contracts and provides insights on several important issues: the impact of price variables differs significantly across alternative mortgage contracts; borrower heterogeneity, particularly mobility, influences the type of contract chosen; and borrowers respond to market conditions as expected when choosing between alternative mortgage contracts. Copyright 1995 by Ohio State University Press.

A Test of Integration and Cointegration of Commercial Mortgage Rates

integration, securitization, commercial mortgage yields, capital markets, Treasury Securities Yields,