The dynamics of Swedish national and regional house price movement

In this study, the recent persistent growth of regional house price pattern in Sweden is explained by the fundamental variables and the regional distributive perspective on household income and wealth are indicated to be important to understand the different level and development of regional housing market. We also discuss the long running relationship between house prices and migration flows and highlight its critical role on house price analyses.     

The dynamics of Swedish national and regional house price movement

In this study, the recent persistent growth of regional house price pattern in Sweden is explained by the fundamental variables and the regional distributive perspective on household income and wealth are indicated to be important to understand the different level and development of regional housing market. We also discuss the long running relationship between house prices and migration flows and highlight its critical role on house price analyses.     

House price inflation in the news: a critical discourse analysis of newspaper coverage in the UK

Abstract

In the UK, house prices have been rising over a long period, notwithstanding the disruption caused by the financial crisis, creating growing concerns about affordability particularly for younger households, while existing owners continue to enjoy windfall wealth gains. This paper uses critical discourse analysis to examine how these competing interests with respect to house price rises are represented in popular discourse. It systematically analyses newspaper coverage, comparing two time periods, one relatively stable and the second a period of rising house prices. This analysis exposes the powerful influence of industry insiders in creating the discourse of the housing market news, and how price rises are positioned as both beneficial and the ‘natural order’. Analysing the metaphoric representations of housing markets allows a closer interrogation of the ideological construct that associates a ‘healthy’ housing market as one of continuous price rises and shows how these discourses are deeply embedded, in ways that limit the scope for imagining an alternative house market functioning.     

The Residential Housing Market in Iceland: Analysing the Effects of Mortgage Market Restructuring

In June 2004 the government-backed Housing Financing Fund eased its loan regulations in an attempt to consolidate its position in the domestic credit market. This led to a strong response from the domestic commercial banks that actively entered the mortgage market for the first time. These changes led to a substantial decline in long-term real mortgage rates, increased the access to credit, and allowed homeowners for the first time to withdraw equity from their homes without actual transactions. This paper sets up a simple model of housing demand and supply to analyse these effects. The results suggest that the structural changes led to a substantial rise in housing demand, with house prices rising by 25 per cent one year after the shock. This triggered a similar rise in housing investment approximately two years after the shock. The model predicts that the effects on house prices gradually die out as house prices return to the level that is consistent with normal profit margins in the construction sector. However, the housing stock remains approximately 5 per cent larger than in the baseline scenario.     

The value of trees, water and open space as reflected by house prices in the Netherlands

An attractive environment is likely to influence house prices. Houses in attractive settings will have an added value over similar, less favourably located houses. This effect is intuitively felt, but does it always occur? Which environmental factors make a location an attractive place to live in? The present study explored the effect of different environmental factors on house prices. The research method was the hedonic pricing method, which uses statistical analysis to estimate that part of a price due to a particular attribute. Nearly 3000 house transactions, in eight towns or regions in the Netherlands, were studied to estimate the effect of environmental attributes on transaction prices. Some of the most salient results were as follows. We found the largest increases in house prices due to environmental factors (up to 28%) for houses with a garden facing water, which is connected to a sizeable lake. We were also able to demonstrate that a pleasant view can lead to a considerable increase in house price, particularly if the house overlooks water (8–10%) or open space (6–12%). In addition, the analysis revealed that house price varies by landscape type. Attractive landscape types were shown to attract a premium of 5–12% over less attractive environmental settings.     

Policy implications for the performance gap of low-carbon building technologies

ABSTRACT

It is widely recognized that the actual impact of low-carbon technologies is often lower than predicted by models alone, a phenomenon which has been coined the ‘performance gap’. Despite this awareness, in many instances estimates of both energy savings and renewable energy generation in domestic buildings continue to rely on engineering models and building energy simulations rather than approaches that are based on measured parameters. Much of the existing literature on the performance gap focuses on energy efficiency and is concerned with the quantification of the scale of the performance gap. This paper adds to this body of evidence by drawing retrospectively on a range of grey literature evaluations of low-carbon technologies (including energy-efficiency measures, renewable heat and renewable electricity) in the UK household sector. The focus is on not only the quantification of the performance gap but also the qualitative factors often overlooked, such as installation issues or installer/user behaviour. Recommended policy changes include the development of evaluation standards, the experimentation with pay-for-performance programmes, ensuring that installation standards for low-carbon technologies are being enforced, and taking reasonable steps to ensuring that end users can use any new technology effectively.     

Development of house prices in the Netherlands: An international perspective

This article deals with the questionwhether it is plausible to assume, on the basis ofexperiences in other countries and general insightsinto the operation of the market for owner-occupiedhousing, that a price correction will take place inthe market for owner-occupied dwellings in theNetherlands or rather that it is reasonable toexpect that the rising trend in real sales prices,which started in the 1980s, will continue steadilyon the same course. On the grounds of thisinformation, we conclude that in the medium term, weshould expect to see a decline in the sales pricesfor dwellings in the Netherlands.     

The contribution of the spatial dimension to inequality: A counterfactual analysis for OECD countries

This paper provides recent evidence on the contribution of the spatial dimension to inequality and more specifically accounts for the impact of the changes in the territorial distribution of the population on the recent dynamics of income inequality. We use LIS harmonized microdata for a selected sample of OECD countries. We provide new evidence over a more varied group of countries and a more recent period than in previous studies. We perform different types of decompositions to isolate the contribution of the changes in the territorial distribution of the population. The results show a generalized increase in income inequality, with an interesting “reducing effect” on this trend due to inter–territorial population movements.     

境外地质勘查测量坐标系统选择——以津巴布韦某矿区为例

本文论述了境外地质勘查项目工作初期矿区测量工作坐标系统的选用问题,简要介绍了坐标系统相关概念及其示例,并从工作实际出发以津巴布韦A矿区为例介绍了该矿区的测量工作史及其所沿用的测量坐标系统及津巴布韦国家现行坐标系统,并分析了在该区近期地质勘查活动所采用的坐标系统情况及其存在的问题,结合矿区历史资料研究分析提出了在矿区的下...     

Chinese investment in the Australian construction industry: the social amplification of risk

Chinese companies are investing heavily in overseas construction and property assets. In Australia, and in many other countries such as the United States and United Kingdom, this has generated an emotive and polarized debate about the risks and opportunities posed to local industry and to wider national interests. To explore the social and cognitive mechanisms which people are using to make sense of this new global phenomenon, Kasperson’s Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) was mobilized, through semi-structured interviews with senior Australian construction industry leaders. The results show that the SARF is a valuable lens to explore perceptions of risk and opportunity associated with Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), although it represents a rather linear view and underplays the importance of power, collaboration and social media in forming perceptions. They also show that senior practitioners in the Australian construction industry are taking a highly rational, commercial and pragmatic approach to increasing FDI. Despite some concerns around non-compliant materials, labour standards and safety standards, Chinese FDI is seen as inevitable and crucial to the development of Australia’s construction industry. Surprisingly, given negative media coverage of Chinese FDI in Australia and a lack of experience in working with Chinese investors, we found little evidence for the social amplification or attenuation of risk. Knee-jerk regulatory reactions which are advocated by many groups are generally seen as risky and we conclude that the nature of Chinese – Australian business experiences over the near future will have a major effect on whether those perceptions eventuate as negative or positive. It is recommended that the best way to mitigate any risks and maximize the opportunities is not to withdraw and oppose Chinese FDI but to build collaborative links to improve direct interactions between Australian and Chinese firms, underpinned by targeted risk and opportunity management protocols.     

From suburbia to post-suburbia in the Netherlands: Potentials and threats for sustainable regional development

Deconcentration of both people and employmenthas been the major trend in most metropolitanareas in Northwest Europe since the 1960s. Withregard to policy goals of sustainable regionaldevelopment, deconcentration has so far mainlybeen seen as a counterproductive tendency.Compact city development, leading to newconcentrations of employment and housing areasin or close to the existing built-up areas, wasoften preferred because it was said tocontribute more to sustainable regionaldevelopment. Initially, the deconcentrationprocess mainly resulted in monofunctionalhousing, employment and consumption areas inlow densities, which generated increasing cartraffic and huge losses of open space. However,in recent years we can increasingly witness atendency towards new multifunctionalconcentrations in the area around the citiesformerly known as `suburbia'. The centralquestion of this paper is how this shift from`suburbia' to `post-suburbia' might contributeto a more sustainable regional development ofmetropolitan areas.Employment deconcentration might contribute toa more sustainable regional development by`bringing jobs to the people', especially whenit leads to new concentrations close to, oreven in, suburban housing areas. In addition,combinations of production and consumptioncould produce areas that are used moreintensively than the traditional monofunctionalindustry or office areas. The possibilities toproduce such mixed-use areas have improvedconsiderably since most present-day employmentconcentrations produce much less noise andpollution than the industrial complexes of thepast. However, a really constructivecontribution to sustainable regionaldevelopment is only reached when the new jobconcentrations meet various othersustainability criteria like promoting the useof public transport, applying forms ofintensive and multiple land use, or decreasingtransport distances to suppliers andcustomers.     

A spatial regression methodology for exploring the role of regional connectivity in knowledge production: Evidence from Chinese regions

We explore the role of alternative types of connectivity between regions in knowledge production. Past literature has criticized exclusive focus on the role played by spatial proximity in knowledge production. We introduce a methodology that allows for simultaneous consideration of multiple dependence sets, based on a convex combination of multiple n × n weight matrices. Each matrix represents a different set of connections between regions on which knowledge production exhibits dependence. We show how to estimate spatial panel regression models based on the convex combination of alternative dependence sets, and to draw inferences regarding the relative importance of each type of dependence. We illustrate our method using a model of knowledge production for 263 Chinese regions.     

Becoming a landlord: strategies of property-based welfare in the private rental sector in Great Britain

Ongoing neoliberal policies have realigned the links between housing and welfare, positioning residential property investment – commonly through homeownership and exceptionally also through landlordism – at the core of households’ asset-building strategies. Nonetheless, the private rented sector (PRS) has been commonly portrayed as a tenure option for tenants rather than a welfare strategy for landlords. Drawing on qualitative interviews with landlords across Great Britain, we explore landlords’ different motivations in engaging in landlordism; and the ways in which their property-based welfare strategies are shaped by the particular intersection of individual socioeconomic and life-course circumstances, and the broader socioeconomic and financial environment. By employing a constructionist grounded approach to research, our study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the different ways that asset-based welfare strategies operate within the PRS. We draw attention to an understudied nexus between homeownership and landlordism which we argue represents a promising route for future research.     

Retail investments by real estate investment trusts: A comparative analysis of local retail returns for the United States

This exploratory paper examines the localsuccess conditions and the region-specificorientation of real estate investment trusts(REITs). After a concise overview of thehistory of REITs in the USA, the criticalperformance factors of retail REITs areaddressed by investigating the empiricalrelationship between local retail rents and aselected set of local explanatory factors. Asequential regression method is deployed toidentify the most prominent, statisticallysignificant variables and to create a rankingof most promising metropolitan areas from aninvestor's perspective.     

What drives heterogeneity in the resilience of trade: Firm‐specific versus regional characteristics

Employing micro‐data of Dutch local business units, we show that firm characteristics such as size, economic activity, the traded product portfolio, the focus of trade involvement and the geographic pattern of trade are important determinants of recovery following the trade collapse of 2008–2009, both in terms of speed and depth. Our findings suggest that post‐crisis growth is faster for trade in goods further downstream of the value chain and thus closer to the final consumer. Trade recovery at the firm‐level does not crucially hinge on locational factors such as the province in which a firm is located or regional revealed comparative advantages in particular product groups.     

The impact of local factors on the scope of benefits from public investment: the case of tourism infrastructure in Saxon municipalities

Following the transition from socialist central planning economies to market economies in all of the former socialist countries, many regions have had to cope with severe structural changes and economic development problems. To overcome these problems, local governments have tried to invest in new public infrastructure to support the development of new industries. This paper looks at infrastructure that supports tourist activities and argues that the impact of infrastructure generally depends on certain local factors which differ between municipalities. One important factor is whether the local population possesses the relevant complementary factors, in particular the right ‘soft skills’.     

Perspectives of different parties involved in the selection of capital equipment for sewerage and wastewater-associated infrastructure investment projects

This paper presents a study of UK water industry capital equipment selection, focusing in particular on behaviour in relation to sewerage/combined sewer overflow (CSO) and wastewater‐associated investment activities. Valuable new insights into the perspectives of different parties, including water service providers (WSPs), design consultants and construction companies, are provided. Through analysis of over 200 questionnaires, equipment selection is confirmed to be multi‐organisational, with different parties dominating different roles. Among the selection criteria, service and quality are found to be valued as parameters worth paying for. Relationships and sustainability considerations are also found to be important, although views on whether sustainability benefits will be paid for are divided. While interparty alignment of views is generally good, there are occasional discrepancies at the individual water region level. It is suggested that optimisation might derive from recognising the significance of intangible components of the supplier offering, and managing relationships to allow these to be capitalised upon.     

A look behind the curtain: Measuring the complex economic effects of regional structural funds in Germany

This paper investigates the mutual impact channels of Germany's major regional policy instrument (GRW) on regional economic development. Different from earlier studies which have predominately focused on a partial assessment of output effects, we explicitly endogenize the factor inputs of the underlying production function. This allows us to comprehensively assess the role of the GRW in driving per capita output, employment, human and physical capital intensities as well as the region's technological growth. The results from a spatial panel vector autoregressive model show that GRW funding has significant positive effects on regional output, the employment rate and human capital intensity.     

矿产勘查投资的经济和社会效益预评估方法初探——以贵州省省级整装勘查区为例

以贵州省42片省级整装勘查区为例,从财税收入贡献、经济增长贡献、新增劳动就业岗位数、城镇居民收入增长贡献等4项评估指标进行了经济和社会效益预评估,评估结果显示42片省级整装勘查区勘查投资的经济和社会效益前景较好。该评估方法系对大范围矿产勘查投入经济和社会效益评估方法的初步探索,可供类似情形下的宏观决策参考。     

阿尔金山西部区域化探数据处理方法对比研究

分别采用常规统计法(对数)、EDA法和分形法(含量-频数法和含量-面积法)对阿尔金山西部地区水系沉积物As元素数据进行处理。不同方法所得结果相差较大,其中含量-面积法最大,常规统计法(对数)和EDA法次之,含量-频数法最小。通过对比异常圈定结果及与矿点对比情况认为,常规统计法(对数)确定的异常下限更适合本研究区,其它方法造成异常面积过大或过小,会给异常查证带来困难。因此,在实际工作计算异常下限之前要充分分析其原始数据分布规律,考虑其地球化学数据的分布模式,其次要与实际地质情况相结合,选择较适宜的异常下限计算方法。