The origins of national housing finance systems: a comparative investigation into historical variations in mortgage finance regimes

Blackwell, Timothy; Kohl, Sebastian

doi:10.1080/09692290.2017.1403358

Cited by 42 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…These insights have also penetrated CPE, particularly in the work of Gerber and Schelkle (2013) and Ansell (2014). Recent works in CPE have also demonstrated that house price inflation is closely connected to the institutions that shape income growth and mortgage markets (see Johnston and Regan 2017;Schwartz and Seabrooke 2008), and that housing is central to the politics of social policy preference formation, particularly where finance is concerned (Blackwell and Kohl 2018;Bohle 2014;Kohl 2018). Within the housing literature, there is a parallel discussion taking place: the state of the art suggests that pro-homeownership public policy regimes facilitate financialised approaches to the welfare state (Lennartz and Ronald 2017).…”

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confidence: 98%

Housing prices and wealth inequality in Western Europe

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Johnston

Regan

2019

West European Politics

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Comparative political economy (CPE) has robustly examined the political and institutional determinants of income inequality. However, the study of wealth, which is more unequally distributed than income, has been largely understudied within CPE. Using new data from the World Income Database (WID), this article examines how economic, political and institutional dynamics shape wealth-to-income ratios within Western European and OECD countries. It is found that the political and institutional determinants that affect income inequality have no short-or long-run effects on the wealth-to-income ratio. Rather, the rise in wealth-to-income ratios is driven by rising housing prices, as well as price changes in other financial assets, not home ownership or national saving rates. The article concludes by examining how the changing dynamics of housing prices and wealth inequality will increasingly shape intergenerationaland associated class-basedpolitical conflict in Western Europe. KEYWORDS Wealth inequality; wealth accumulation; income inequality; housing prices; comparative political economy Comparative political economy (CPE) has long been preoccupied with the political and institutional determinants of economic inequality, particularly within Western Europe. Robust debates in CPE have examined how left-wing governments, strong unions and collaborative wage-setting institutions, progressive taxation, a redistributive welfare state and public sector employment impact on income inequality (

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confidence: 98%

Housing prices and wealth inequality in Western Europe

Fuller

Johnston

Regan

2019

West European Politics

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“…62 If nonregistered interpersonal mortgages are included, an estimated 90 percent of mortgages were interpersonal around 1900 in Canadian cities, 63 and as many as one-third of mortgages in post-WWII Switzerland. 64 When mortgage banks emerged in the nineteenth century-as specialized bond-based mortgage banks or building societies or as general savings banks 65 -their market often constituted only a minority. In other words, the bank-centered measures downplay the increases of mortgages that happened particularly during the earlier nonbanking periods of homeownership increases.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More Mortgages, More Homes? The Effect of Housing Financialization on Homeownership in Historical Perspective

Kohl

2018

Politics & Society

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Recent research has emphasized the negative effects of finance on macroeconomic performance and even cautioned of a “finance curse.” As one of the main drivers of financial sector growth, mortgages have traditionally been hailed as increasing the number of homeowners in a country. This article uses long-run panel data for seventeen countries between 1920 (1950) and 2013 to show that the effect of the “great mortgaging” on homeownership rates is not universally positive. Increasing mortgage debt appears to be neither necessary nor sufficient for higher homeownership levels. There were periods of rising homeownership levels without much increase in mortgages before 1980, thanks to government programs, purchasing power increases, and less inflated house prices. There have also been mortgage increases without homeownership growth, but with house price bubbles thereafter. The liberalization of financial markets might after all be a poor substitute for more traditional housing policies

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“…These point to at least three important shifts in housing finance and house price dynamics, which need to be explained by macroeconomic and political economy theories. Firstly, Blackwell and Kohl (2018) and Kohl (2018) give an overview of the history of mortgage credit institutions. These differ in important ways from the banks that deal with businesses.…”

Section: Economic and Financial Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, financial crises or house prices cycles do not feature. Blackwell and Kohl (2018) provide a history of housing finance. They offer a classification based on the distinction a deposit-based bank system, a mortgage bond-based bank system, state-based and a peer-based lending system.…”

Section: Comparative Political Economy and The Financialisation Debatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building blocks for the macroeconomics and political economy of housing

Stockhammer

Wolf

2019

The Japanese Political Economy

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Housing has played an essential part in the global financial crisis 2007-08 and the Euro crisis. Large parts of bank lending go to mortgages. Housing wealth is the largest part of wealth for most households and is, at the same time, more dispersed than other forms of wealth. House prices exhibit pronounced fluctuations that are closely linked to credit growth. Housing thus plays a crucial role in the macroeconomy, which has become even more pronounced under neoliberalism. We scrutinise different theoretical approaches to housing. Despite its theoretical shortcomings mainstream economics has pioneered empirical research on wealth effects in consumption and recently documented the role of house prices in financial cycles. Post-Keynesian theory emphasises endogenous money creation, cycles in asset prices and debt, and have formalised the notion of a debt-driven demand regime. Comparative Political Economy research has recently developed the concept of the varieties of residential capitalism, which has different structures of house ownership and housing finance at the core of political coalitions. Marxist political economy has long established the intrinsic link between ownership of land and economic rent and notes that homeownership can act as force of working class fragmentation. Wealth surveys can be used to trace the extent of conflicting interests in a class-relational approach.

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The origins of national housing finance systems: a comparative investigation into historical variations in mortgage finance regimes

Cited by 42 publications

References 36 publications

Housing prices and wealth inequality in Western Europe

Housing prices and wealth inequality in Western Europe

More Mortgages, More Homes? The Effect of Housing Financialization on Homeownership in Historical Perspective

Building blocks for the macroeconomics and political economy of housing

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