Housing affordability during the urban transition in Spain

Juan Carmona (), Markus Lampe and Joan Rosés

Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History

Abstract: During the decades previous to the Civil War, Spain experienced a rapid process of urbanization, which was accompanied by the demographic transition and sizeable rural-urban migrations. This article investigates how urban housing markets reacted to these far-reaching changes that increased demand for dwellings. To this end, we employ a new hedonic index of real housing prices and construct a crossregional panel dataset of rents and housing price fundamentals. This new evidence indicates that rents were not a significant financial burden on low-income families and, hence, housing was affordable for working classes. Also, we show that families’ access to new homes was facilitated by a sizable growth of housing supply. Substantial investments in urban infrastructure and the institutional framework enabled the construction of new homes at affordable prices. Our results suggest that housing problems were not pervasive during the urban transition as the literature often seems to claim.

Keywords: Demand and Supply of Housing; Regulation in Housing Markets; urban growth. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N93 N94 R30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2014-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60556/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Housing affordability during the urban transition in Spain (2017)
Working Paper: Housing affordability during the urban transition in Spain (2017)
Working Paper: Housing affordability during the urban transition in Spain (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:wpaper:60556

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