Housing, growth and crisis in Anglo-America
A considerable amount of literature has been published on the role of housing, particularly in Anglo-America, in facilitating and triggering the recent financial crisis. There is general agreement that housing, via mortgage lending, was the main vehicle for integrating households (or household sector) into a rapidly expanding financial markets. Whether the housing-finance nexus is part of a recognizable Anglo-liberal growth model or compares to other Varieties of Residential Capitalism, it generally understood that housing drove growth and was meant to serve a welfare function. Similarly, it is widely acknowledged that this system was inherently unsustainable because housing cannot simultaneously promote growth and provide welfare, which becomes evident only at the point at which the financial crisis begins. More