Although Japan and the United States are the world's leading economies, there are significant differences in the ways their wealth is translated into living standards. A careful comparison of housing markets illustrates not only how living standards in the two countries differ, but also reveals much about saving patterns and how they affect wealth accumulation. In this volume, ten essays discuss the evolution of housing prices, housing markets and personal savings, housing finance, commuting, and the impact of public policy on housing markets. The studies reveal surprising differences in housing investment in the two countries. For example, because down payments in Japan are much higher than in the United States, Japanese tend to delay home purchases relative to their American counterparts. In the United States, the advent of home equity credit may have reduced private saving overall. This book is the first comparison of housing markets in Japan and the United States, and its findings illuminate the effects of housing markets on productivity growth, business investment, and trade.

This book addresses essential questions about housing by building theoretical models based on various real world problems in Japan and testing these models using econometric methods. Almost all related empirical analyses use Japanese household longitudinal data. Accordingly, the author analyzes whole aspects of the data, based on an understanding of the actual situation, theory, and empirical analysis, to directly derive a vision of a future housing policy. Why are houses expensive and difficult to obtain in Japan? Why do people have to live in small houses? Why do people not relocate frequently? Why is the earthquake insurance subscription rate so low, particularly in an earthquake-prone country such as Japan, even after such a catastrophic event as the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011? How do existing housing finance and tax policies or laws relate to these real world problems? To answer these questions, the book clarifies the unique criteria that characterize housing problems in Japan and presents a vision of future housing policy. The short answer is that existing housing finance policy that adopts criteria based on the floor space of houses creates incentives for people to live in even smaller houses. Furthermore, the Japan Rental Act, which affects people renting homes, reduces residential mobility. The incidence of underinsurance against earthquake risk is a result of earthquake insurance market imperfections such as crude and rough geographical risk ratings. The book elaborates on these factors in four parts and will be of interest to all readers who are concerned with the housing market and household behavior in Japan.

A global look at the reasons behind the recent economic collapse, and the responses to it The speculative bubble in the housing market began to burst in the United States in 2007, and has been followed by ruptures in virtually every asset market in almost every country in the world. Each country proposed a range of policy initiatives to deal with its crisis. Policies that focused upon stabilizing the housing market formed the cornerstone of many of these proposals. This internationally focused book evaluates the genesis of the housing market bubble, the global viral contagion of the crisis, and the policy initiatives undertaken in some of the major economies of the world to counteract its disastrous affects. Unlike other books on the global crisis, this guide deals with the housing sector in addition to the financial sector of individual economies. Countries in many parts of the world were players in either the financial bubble or the housing bubble, or both, but the degree of impact, outcome, and responses varied widely. This is an appropriate time to pull together the lessons from these various experiences. Reveals the housing crisis in the United States as the core of the meltdown Describes the evolution of housing markets and policies in the run-up to the crisis, their impacts, and the responses in European and Asian countries Compares experiences and linkages across countries and points to policy implications and research lessons drawn from these experiences Filled with the insights of well-known contributors with strong contacts in practice and academia, this timely guide discusses the history and evolution of the recent crisis as local to each contributor's part of the world, and examines its distinctive and common features with that of the U.S., the trajectory of its evolution, and the similarities and differences in policy response.

Japanese and American economists assess the present economic status of the elderly in the United States and Japan, and consider the impact of an aging population on the economies of the two countries. With essays on labor force participation and retirement, housing equity and the economic status of the elderly, budget implications of an aging population, and financing social security and health care in the 1990s, this volume covers a broad spectrum of issues related to the economics of aging. Among the book's findings are that workers are retiring at an increasingly earlier age in both countries and that, as the populations age, baby boomers in the United States will face diminishing financial resources as the ratio of retirees to workers sharply increases. The result of a joint venture between the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Japan Center for Economic Research, this book complements Housing Markets in the United States and Japan (1994) by integrating research on housing markets with economic issues of the aged in the United States and Japan.

As the Clinton administration considers major overhauls in health insurance, welfare, and labor market regulation, it is important for economists and policymakers to understand the impact of social and welfare programs on employment rates. This volume explores how programs such as social security, income transfers, and child care in Western Europe, the United States, and Japan have affected labor market flexibility—the ability of workers to adjust to fast-growing segments of the economy. Does tying health insurance to employment limit job mobility? Do housing policies inhibit workers from moving to new jobs in different areas? What are the effects of daycare and maternity leave policies on working mothers? The authors explore these and many other questions in an effort to understand why European unemployment rates are so high compared with the U.S. rate. Through an examination of diverse data sets across different countries, the authors find that social protection programs do not strongly affect labor market flexibility. A valuable comparison of labor markets and welfare programs, this book demonstrates how social protection policies have affected employment rates around the globe.

Essential reading for professional investors, risk managers, regulators, central bankers, and real estate professionals, Risk in the Global Real Estate Market: International Risk Regulation, Mechanism Design, Foreclosures, Title Systems, and REITs takes an international look at the ways in which U.S.-style constitutional laws, financial laws, and real estate laws in various countries affect global economics and risk; and analyzes specific constraints that deter market development such as Asset Liability Matching, inappropriate financial products, land title systems, inefficient constitutions and human biases. The sub-prime mortgage crisis (that began around 2006) and the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2010 disrupted the economies of various countries and exposed many of the psychological, social, and economic problems inherent in the legal/risk infrastructure for mortgages, land title systems, REITs, securitization, and pensions. In this remarkable new book, Michael Nwogugu explains how these processes and statutes are unconstitutional and inefficient, and how they influence demand for housing, real estate prices, retirement savings, household wealth, consumer disposable income, marriage opportunities, job markets, crime, and regional economic growth. The resulting major economic and public health problems have continued to reduce the quality-of-life of nations, and continue to cause permanent declines in wealth, increases in crime and delinquency, high divorce rates, depression, and inadequate job creation, among other problems. The book examines a range of fields—including mechanism design, psychology, risk finance, and corporate governance; and emphasizes Constitutional economics as a distinct dimension of risk analysis. Risk in the Global Real Estate Market makes a compelling case about how constitutional torts increase information asymmetry, transaction costs, agency problems, and compliance costs, as well as inefficiency in real estate transactions. These problems, the book argues, are not unique to the United States, but also affect Commonwealth countries and other nations that have developed regulations that are similar to, or are based on U.S. commercial, securities, and or constitutional laws. Risk in the Global Real Estate Market presents a novel analysis of the sub-prime crisis (that first began in 2006), the failure of securitization (CMBS/MBS) markets, the Global Financial Crisis, and socio-economic problems caused by traditional mortgages and securitization. The book reveals that many of the statutes and processes that define mortgages, foreclosures, securitization, and REITs in the United States (and many common-law countries and nations that have adopted American-style real estate regulations) are fundamentally unconstitutional and inefficient, and have lasting negative effects on consumer psychology, the demand for real estate, price discovery in property markets, economic growth, and quality of life. The book examines the nature of constitutional torts and property rights as the foundation for business transactions and economic growth within the context of risk regulation, interstate commerce, takings, and legislation. Risk in the Global Real Estate Market introduces new theories of consumer psychology and institutional dynamics in real estate transactions; presents new theories of takings, and also surveys psychology/psychiatry studies (based on data from various countries) that confirm the harmful effects of mortgages, securitization, and foreclosures. Using elements of mechanism design, Michael Nwogugu develops new efficient financial products (Mortgage-Alternatives products), and presents a policy framework for a unified “Mortgage-Alternatives” market for the CEE/CIS region and China. He also explains why Asset Liability Matching hinders lending, capital formation and risk management, especially in developing countries.

This year, the NBER Macroeconomics Annual celebrates its thirtieth volume. The first two papers examine China’s macroeconomic development. “Trends and Cycles in China's Macroeconomy” by Chun Chang, Kaiji Chen, Daniel F. Waggoner, and Tao Zha outlines the key characteristics of growth and business cycles in China. “Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom” by Hanming Fang, Quanlin Gu, Wei Xiong, and Li-An Zhou constructs a new house price index, showing that Chinese house prices have grown by ten percent per year over the past decade. The third paper, “External and Public Debt Crises” by Cristina Arellano, Andrew Atkeson, and Mark Wright, asks why there appear to be large differences across countries and subnational jurisdictions in the effect of rising public debts on economic outcomes. The fourth, “Networks and the Macroeconomy: An Empirical Exploration” by Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, and William Kerr, explains how the network structure of the US economy propagates the effect of gross output productivity shocks across upstream and downstream sectors. The fifth and sixth papers investigate the usefulness of surveys of household’s beliefs for understanding economic phenomena. “Expectations and Investment,” by Nicola Gennaioli, Yueran Ma, and Andrei Shleifer, demonstrates that a chief financial officer's expectations of a firm's future earnings growth is related to both the planned and actual future investment of that firm. “Declining Desire to Work and Downward Trends in Unemployment and Participation” by Regis Barnichon and Andrew Figura shows that an increasing number of prime-age Americans who are not in the labor force report no desire to work and that this decline accelerated during the second half of the 1990s.