Markets and housing finance

Veronica Warnock and Francis Warnock

Journal of Housing Economics, 2008, vol. 17, issue 3, 239-251

Abstract: We examine the extent to which markets enable the provision of housing finance across a wide range of countries. Housing is a major purchase requiring long-term financing, and the factors that are associated with well-functioning housing finance systems are those that enable the provision of long-term finance. Across all countries, controlling for country size, we find that countries with stronger legal rights for borrowers and lenders (through collateral and bankruptcy laws), deeper credit information systems, and a more stable macroeconomic environment have deeper housing finance systems. These same factors also help explain the variation in housing finance across emerging market economies. Across developed countries, which tend to have low macroeconomic volatility and relatively extensive credit information systems, variation in the strength of legal rights helps explain the extent of housing finance. We also examine another potential factor--the existence of sizeable government securities markets--that might enable the development of emerging markets' housing finance systems, but we find no evidence supporting that.

Keywords: Mortgage; Housing; finance; Emerging; markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (63)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1051-1377(08)00011-9
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Markets and Housing Finance (2008)
Working Paper: Markets and Housing Finance (2007)
Working Paper: Markets and Housing Finance (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhouse:v:17:y:2008:i:3:p:239-251

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Housing Economics is currently edited by H. O. Pollakowski

More articles in Journal of Housing Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().