ECONOMICS OF A REGULATED HOUSING MARKET. POLICY PERSPECTIVES AND MODELING METHODS.

The purpose of this book is to build a framework that can be used to answer questions about housing market efficiency in a systematic manner which is consistent with economic theory and with state-of-the-art econometric modeling. This book is written for readers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and, for that matter, any ocean. Therefore, we make a conscious effort to conceal our own opinions and beliefs about the efficiency of housing markets and the likely magnitude for this or that type of market failure. Our goal is to find and formalize a framework which, with appropriate implementation and quantitative research, could eventually yield the correct regulatory prescription for a particular society's housing market. We regard the mathematical model and its preliminary testing as just the prototypical form of such a tool.