This briefing paper provides an overview of the social housing sector in the EU area. After presenting how Member States define social housing, it details the response of the sector to the 2007-2008 financial crisis. In addition, it sheds light on the most recent developments at the EU level on...

Information and communication technology plays an important role in achieving a higher level of energy efficiency. In particular, energy efficiency can be achieved by integrating information technology into electricity networks to enable the interaction between suppliers and customers (smart...

Neighborhood decline is a complex and multidimensional process. National and regional variation in economic and political structures (including variety in national welfare state arrangements), combined with differences in neighborhood history, development and population composition, makes it...

Ukraine's economy lacks dynamism, and this is both the cause and the effect of people not moving across the regions. The rate at which Ukrainians move from one region to another within the country is only half of what would be expected in comparison with other countries. This paper examines the...

This study explores the hypothesis that high home-ownership damages the labor market. We show that rises in the home-ownership rate in a U.S. state are a precursor to eventual sharp rises in unemployment in that state. The elasticity exceeds unity: a doubling of the rate of home-ownership in a...

The housing and labor market crises of the late 2000s left few families and individuals unscathed. In the wake of these events, evidence points to more "doubling-up" of families in the same household. To what extent have these crises affected individuals' decisions to live independently? What...

The existence of compensating differentials in Russian labor and housing markets is examined using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) augmented by city and regional-specific characteristics from other sources. While Russia is undergoing transition to a market economy, we...

We estimate empirically the effect of immigration on house prices and residential construction activity in Spain over the period 1998-2008. This decade is characterized by both a spectacular housing market boom and a stunning immigration wave. We exploit the variation in immigration across...

This paper estimates the impact of the murder of film maker Theo van Gogh on November 2, 2004, on listed house prices in Amsterdam with a unique dataset. We use an hedonic-market approach to show that general attitudes towards Muslim minorities were negatively affected by the murder....

In this paper, we investigate whether evidence of discriminatory treatment against immigrants in the Spanish mortgage market exists. More specifically, we test whether, ceteris paribus, immigrant borrowers tend to be charged with higher interest rates on their mortgages than their Spanish born...