Economic analysis of housing markets in developing and transition economies

The purpose of this chapter is to survey recent research on housing markets and policy in what used to be called the "second" and "third" worlds. We adopt the labels "transition" economies to refer to countries as disparate as Russia and Vietnam, and "developing" to refer to countries as disparate as Korea and Singapore (arguably now developed) and countries like Mozambique and Laos. It is therefore quite interesting that the bulk of the research surveyed finds that housing market behavior is remarkably similar from place to place. Institutions and constraints, particularly the amount of income available for housing and other goods and services certainly do vary dramatically from place to place. And the stakes of how well housing markets work vary from place to place. But these differences in institutions and constraints do not obscure regularities in behavior. The first major section, on housing markets (Section 2), examines property rights, supply, demand and tenure. Section 3 presents research on the related markets for land, finance and infrastructure. Housing policy is covered in Section 4, including housing subsidy systems, privatization, taxation and regulation. Section 5 concludes with a discussion of current issues and research.