Created in 1997

Coordinators
Edwin Deutsch
Research group EOS
University of Technology
Argentinierstrasse 8
A-1040 Vienna
Austria
E-mail: edwin.deutsch@tuwien.ac.at

Michael Ball
Department of Real Estate & Planning
University of Reading Business School
P.O. Box 219
Whiteknights
GB-Reading RG6 6AW
Great Britain
E-mail: m.ball@reading.ac.uk

Central Theme
The main objectives of the working group remain unchanged. In principle, the target is to combine economic and econometric analysis in housing. However, following the recent surge of urban and regional economics issues, as well as spatial econometrics, contributors who combine these disciplines with housing economics are welcome. Since housing economics analysis requires a consistent theoretical framework together with testable hypotheses, it is important that the working group continues to welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions. The recent events have indeed provided a fruitful mix of model building and statistical analysis.

Recent activities and plans for the coming year
Edwin Deutsch and Michael Ball organised a meeting of the Housing Economics Group February 13-15, 2008 in Vienna, Austria. The venue is the same as in February 2004. The sponsor S-Bausparkasse is kindly offered the seminar-room together with catering. The issues were housing economics, housing finance and related econometrics.

Plans are on the way to hold a workshop in Housing Economics Haugesund, Norway. The format of the workshop will be the same as the successful workshops in Vienna, Edinburgh and Copenhagen. This time the workshop will take place on the 21-23 January 2009, in Haugesund on the West-coast of Norway. Eliv Osland and Viggo Nordvik, who are organising the workshop, expect to be able to run the workshop without any participation fee.

Activities over the Past Years
With the successful events in Vienna, February 2004, and Cambridge, July 2004 the Housing Economics Group gained new momentum. The WG organised a workshop at the Reykjavik conference. Nearly 20 papers were presented at the workshop, which as coordinated by Jens Lunde from the Department of Finance, Copenhagen Business School. The special meeting in Copenhagen, February 2006, with more than 30 participants, organised by Jens Lunde, was followed by the conference in Ljubljana, July 2006, which generously hosted our workshop, and by the last special meeting in Edinburgh, February 2007. We thank again Prof. Glen Bramley and Michael White, the two engaged organisers of the meeting in Edinburgh. The great meeting in Rotterdam June 2007 has demonstrated the continued interest into the Economics group. Several elaborated micro-econometric papers offered new avenues of research, which may attract a wider audience in the future.

Current issues
Currently the working group counts nearly 40 colleagues who attend regularly, and around 80 colleagues who attended occasionally or who are interested in our activities. Thus the housing economics group encompasses a variety of researchers in economics and econometrics who can be addressed in search for contact and cooperation.

There is probably some need to expand the scope to spatial economics and econometrics which were already addressed at the previous events. Problems of land use and allocation, spatial distribution of building and renting activities, returns from investing and letting and cross-country studies of financial frameworks are among the topics of growing interest. Moreover, some papers also stressed the importance of duration analysis and time-dependent choice of moving and purchasing. These fields combine housing economics, financial decisions and urban development in a time-depending framework.

The working group will likely continue as an open platform for discussion. Special editions of workshop papers have not yet been realized. The demand for such a venture could be discussed at the forthcoming event.