Housing and Wealth Accumulation:

The distribution of housing wealth in 16 European countries: accounting for institutional differences

Housing wealth is the largest source of household wealth, but we know little about the distribution of housing wealth and how institutions have shaped this distribution. Subsidies for homeownership, privatisation of social housing and mortgage finance liberalisation are likely to have influenced the distribution of housing wealth in recent decades. To examine their impact, we describe housing w...

How Do Local Housing Market Cycles Affect Long-Term Wealth Accumulation?

For most people, the purchase of their first home is not driven by an attempt to time the local housing market. Instead it is often driven by life-cycle motivations that are independent from the local housing cycle. Is there a lasting effect on life-time wealth accumulation as a result of the timing of the household’s entry into the housing market? To answer this question, data from the Panel S...

Household Wealth Accumulation and Portfolio Choices in Korea

This paper constructs a quantitative lifecycle model with uninsurable labor income and aggregate housing return risk to assess how Korean households make saving and portfolio allocation decisions. The model incorporates the special roles housing plays in the portfolio of households: collateral, a source of service flows, as well as a source of potential capital gains or losses. In the model, a ...

Essays on Household Labour Market Participation, Housing, and Wealth Accumulation Decisions

Wealth Accumulation and Distribution in Urban China

Wealth Accumulation and Distribution in Urban China Under socialism it was neither possible nor necessary to accumulate significant levels of personal wealth. The acceleration of economic reform in the last decade, however, has brought dramatic increases in income and investment opportunities. Reform has also reduced social protections provided by the state welfare system. In response to these ...