a b s t r a c tEmploying time series econometrics this study shows that there has been a significant two-way interaction between housing prices and housing loan stock in Finland since the financial liberalization in the late 1980s. Before the financial deregulation the interaction was substantially weaker. Furthermore, housing appreciation has a notable positive impact on the outstanding consumption loan stock. It appears that there is no similar relationship between stock prices and credit. Understanding the two-way interaction between housing prices and credit is of importance, since the interdependence is likely to augment boom-bust cycles in the economy and increase the fragility of the financial sector.

Empirical evidence from recent studies suggests that the price premium on energy-efficient buildings is potentially higher than the pure capitalisation of energy savings but the empirical evidence on the size of the non-savings components is scant. This study aims to fill this research gap by investigating whether the mandatory energy efficiency ratings for residential properties imply benefits that go beyond energy savings. Using a sample of several thousand apartment transactions from Helsinki, Finland, we first test if higher ratings were significantly associated with higher prices. In addition to a large number of property and neighbourhood characteristics, this dataset contains information on building-level energy usage which allows us to distinguish between the cost savings effect of energy consumption and the value of more intangible factors associated with the energy label. The hedonic model yields a statistically significant 3.3% price premium for apartments in the top three energy-efficiency categories and 1.5% when a set of detailed neighbourhood characteristics are included. When maintenance costs containing energy usage costs are added, a robust and significant price premium of 1.3% persists whereas no differentiation is found for the medium and lower rating categories. These findings may be indicative of energy-efficient buildings having signalling valueand therefore an additional incentive to invest in such buildings-for 'green' consumers. However, a favourable energy rating did not appear to speed up the sales process in the analysed market.

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Using data for 70 U.S. metropolitan areas, this study explores spatial heterogeneity in house price dynamics. We use recent advances in panel econometrics that allow for spatial heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence, and non-stationary but cointegrated data. We test for spatial differences and analyze the relationship between the price elasticity of housing supply and the income elasticity of prices, as well as bubble size and duration. The long-term elasticity of house prices with respect to aggregate personal income averages 0.81, but varies considerably across metropolitan areas. The long-term income elasticity generally is greater in the more supplyinelastic metropolitan areas, and we show that bubble size and duration are inversely related to supply elasticity. Also short-term momentum and reversion dynamics show substantial spatial heterogeneity.