Housing and labor market distortions in Poland: linkages and policy implications

Stephen K. Mayo, James I. Stein and Inu

No 361, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Poland's housing and macroeconomic policies have restricted investments in housing and urban infrastructure to a level well below that of other European countries. This has resulted in a shortage of housing typified by 15 to 20 year waits for government sponsored housing. Shortages of this magnitude are likely to cause distortions with impacts on patterns of savings and consumption, the price level, and on the functioning of labor markets. This paper focuses particularly on how housing market distortions are transmitted to labor markets, with impacts on rates of migration, relative wage levels among different regions, and, by implication, on the productivity of the Polish work force. The basic thesis of the paper is that if housing markets are prevented from reaching their competitive equilibrium that labor markets will similarly be prevented. Evidence is examined on the extent of housing and labor market disequilibria, and estimates econometric models that relate internal migration and relative wages to alternative measures of housing market disequilibria. From these analyses it is concluded that labor markets are in fact distorted by housing market distortions, with potentially major macroeconomic costs.

Keywords: Banks&Banking Reform; Municipal Financial Management; Housing&Human Habitats; Public Sector Economics&Finance; Urban Housing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1988-06-30
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... d/PDF/multi_page.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:wbk:wbrwps:361

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().