Homeownership and Wealth in Switzerland and Germany

Property wealth represents the most important wealth component in nearly all OECD countries. Homeownership is linked to wealth accumulation in several ways: Wealthier households are more likely to buy a house or apartment, home owners tend to save more and rising house values typically yield higher returns than money in a bank account. Moreover, owners can borrow on a mortgage to finance, e.g., the formation of an enterprise or other economic activities. At the aggregate level, these relations can explain why countries with low rates of homeownership tend to have a high wealth inequality. This paper looks at wealth and homeownership in Germany and Switzerland. These countries show the lowest proportion of owner-occupiers in Europe and a high wealth inequality. We analyse to what extent this high inequality can be explained by homeownership status. In the first part of this contribution, we review explanations for the low share of owner-occupiers in the two countries. In the second part, we analyse wealth and homeownership empirically using data of the SHP and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) from 2012. We make use of decomposition methods to analyse how renter and owner households differ in wealth levels and wealth inequality

Estimation of bubble dynamics in the Chinese real estate market: a state space model

This paper analyses the existence of a bubble in the Chinese real estate market and examines its driving factors with a state-space model. The model considers macroeconomic and real estate time series variables as inputs and employs a Kalman filter to obtain an estimated fundamental price using demand and supply for Chinese real estate. We then measure the deviation between actual and estimated fundamental real estate prices to test for the existence of a bubble. We find evidence for the existence of a bubble especially post 2010, when the deviation ratio is found to be significantly higher with a peak of 80% in 2012. Our estimation of overvaluation is generally much higher than in other studies

Poliomyelitis surveillance report number 18, May 20, 1955

Dr. Edwin Lennette, Virus Laboratory, California Department of Public Health, reports isolation of type 1 virus from the stool of case PSU No. Cal-21. He also reports isolation of type 1 virus from the stool of a third \uc2\ub0th contact of non-paralytic case PSU No. Cal-14. Isolations from 2 other contacts of this case were previously reported.Dr. Werner Henle, Children\ue2\u20ac\u2122s Hospital, Philadelphia, reports isolation of type 1 poliomyelitis virus from Case PSU No. Pa-2. This is the first isolation from a case receiving Wyeth Vaccine. This case had first paralysis at the same site as inoculation.One new case was accepted today from West Virginia. This seven-year-old female developed bulbar signs 26 days after inoculation with Lilly Vaccine. Vaccinated cases total 79 at 12:00 noon 5-20-55 (Table l)

Listening geographies: Landscape, affect and geotechnologies

This paper argues for expanded listening in geography. Expanded listening addresses how bodies of all kinds, human and more-than-human, respond to sound. We show how listening can contribute to research on a wide range of topics, beyond enquiry where sound itself is the primary substantive interest. This is demonstrated through close discussion of what an amplified sonic sensibility can bring to three areas of contemporary geographical interest: geographies of landscape, of affect, and of geotechnologies

Understanding New Zealand’s decline in homeownership

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Homeownership is an important component of the New Zealand lifestyle. In recent decades, however, the ownership rate has been declining and the reasons are poorly understood. This paper explains the decline using a decomposition technique that has been applied in other contexts. We find that borrowing constraints and ethnicity have been particularly important contributors to the decline. Rapidly rising house prices clearly have played a major role in the inability of income to keep up with prices and the increased impact of borrowing constraints. We also show that the increased down payment requirements imposed by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in 2013 are unlikely to have affected the ownership rate

Real estate landscapes and the historic city : on how looking inside the market

The real estate capital is one of the most resistant forms of the process through which the social surplus product was consolidated, making possible the phenomenon of cities as a gradual layering of the \u201ctraces\u201d of a settled community. The complexity and complementarity between homogeneity of the urban fabrics and heterogeneity of the architectural shapes led to the multiplicity of functions that properties play, encouraging the expectations of the players of its enhancement process: administrations, owners, large and small investors. This paper focuses on the interpretation of the urban pattern of the historic city through the analysis of the housing markets. The research deals with the case study of the town of Syracuse, a multifaceted urban context from several points of view. The formal and functional articulation of this real estate market justifies the use of different, layered and structured analysis tools to identify sub-markets, deepening the relationship between value/price