Purpose – This paper aims to test two hypotheses related to the supposedly negative impact of rent controlon residential mobility: the mobility of renters is, first, negatively related to how attractive their residentialareas are and, second, relatively high for renters living in properties built after 2005.Design/methodology/approach – This paper estimates logit and multinomial logit regressions andmodels household moves. The multinomial logit regressions separate between short- and long-distance movesand between moves to rentals and to owned dwellings. This paper uses the “relative income” of the tenants’residential areas to proxy area attractiveness. This paper estimates regressions for entire Sweden and thethree largest “commuting” regions and municipalities, respectively.Findings – The full sample provides support of both hypotheses in all regressions. Hypothesis one getsstronger support for moves to other rentals than moves to owned dwellings but about equally strong supportfor short- and long-distance moves. Hypothesis one obtains strongest support in Gothenburg municipalitywhile hypothesis two obtains strongest support in the Malmö region. Also, hypothesis two obtains strongersupport for short-distance moves than long-distance moves and slightly stronger support for moves to owneddwellings than those to rented dwellings.Research limitations/implications – This paper does not estimate “how much” rent control affectsmobility, and results cannot be used to design specific rent setting policies. Results may be sensitive to howdifferent types of moves are defined.Practical implications – Efforts to reform rent setting policies in Sweden are encouraged.Originality/value – To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper’s two hypotheses are not testedbefore in Sweden and can be tested without control groups

Purpose – The authors investigate how prices of condominiums are affected by the size of the tenant-owner associations that they belong to.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors use data of sold apartments in the Swedish municipality Malmö 2013–2018 and estimate hedonic price regressions. The authors also perform semi-structured interviews with three senior professionals in real estate companies.

Findings – The authors find significantly negative relationships between the prices of condominiums and the size of tenant-owner associations. Also, regression results indicate that associations should be no smaller than 6–10 apartments. The interviews support that associations should not be too small or too big. The lower and upper limit was suggested by the respondents to 40–50 and 80–150 apartments, respectively. In these ranges, economies of scale can be achieved, and residents will not lose the sense of community and responsibility.

Research limitations/implications – The authors do not prove causality. Smaller associations may have relatively exclusive common amenities, about which we lack data. The same relationships may not exist in different market conditions.

Originality/value – The authors are not aware of previous studies with the same research question. The size of tenant-owner associations may affect the price through different channels. First, several of the banks in Sweden do not always grant mortgages for condominiums that belong to small associations. Second, larger associations may have better economies of scale and more efficient property management. Third, homeowners may prefer smaller tenant-owned associations, because they may feel less anonymous and provide more influence on common amenities.

Det finns ett mansöverskott på landet och ett kvinnoöverskott i staden. Det behövs insatser för att jämna ut dessa skillnader, skriver Peter Gladoić Håkansson och Peter Karpestam som gjort en studie i ämnet.

In Sweden, there have been a surplus of men in rural areas and a surplus of women in urban areas for decades. However, the relative difference between rural and urban areas have decreased for about 70 years between the 1930s and the new millennium. We use two approaches to understand the decreasing regional gender gaps: 1. we decompose regional gender balance changes into the main components of population growth/decline i.e international net migration, internal net migration and net births. 2. We employ individual register data, estimate multinomial regressions every year 1991–2016 and analyse how the relationship between gender and the probability of moving from rural areas develops over time. We estimate separate regressions for Swedish-born and foreign-born. After controlling for traditional explanatory variables, we interpret the dichotomous gender variable as a measure of “gender norms”. The question is if we can spot gender norm trends that can help explain the decreasing regional gender gaps over time. We find that the development of net birth rates in rural areas explains the decreased gender gap between rural and urban areas since 1968 while net immigration and net internal migration have rather contributed to increasing regional gender gaps. Despite this, the multinomial regressions do not support changing relationships between gender and the probability to out-migrate from rural areas after 1990 for the Swedish-born. For foreign-born, we find evidence of decreased gender differences regarding the probability to leave rural areas. This contributes to an increased surplus of rural men because foreign-born men have an increased probability to stay in rural municipalities in comparison to women. In sum, we do not find that changing gender norms, for Swedish-born or foreign-born, can explain the decreasing gender gaps between rural and urban areas. In fact, for the foreign-born, we find the opposite.

The economic literature on migration has a strong focus on labor migration. It typically distinguishes between migration within countries and between countries and it focuses on the determinants of migration rather than their consequences. Motives and consequences of migration are difficult to separate. We explore the policy implications and empirical support of six common theories. We distinguish between theories of (1) the initiating causes of migration and (2) the self-perpetuating causes of migration, i.e. how current migration flows can cause future migration flows. Our discussion reveals the complexity of motives to migrate, which highlights the necessity of viewing different theories as complementary rather than contradictory. For instance, the new economics of labor migration complements neoclassical theories by emphasizing that households rather than individuals often make migration decisions and by dropping the assumption that individuals are risk-neutral. Further, macroeconomic theories complement microeconomic theories by highlighting that basic structural characteristics of the economy, such as segmented labor markets and scarcity of land, can induce migration flows. Finally, we show that when evaluating different theories empirically, there is support for different theories at different time horizons (the short run, medium run and long run), a supposition commonly ignored in the empirical literature.

Low repayment rates on mortgages have probably contributed to increased macroeconomic imbalances for several countries in recent years. The objective of this paper is to analyze how the introduction of interest-only-mortgages in 2003 affected the Danish housing market. Using quarterly data between 2001 and 2013, we analyze the long- and short-run relationships between mortgage repayments and three dependent variables: real house prices; the number of property sales; and mortgage debts in relation to disposable income. We find that including mortgage repayments in nominal housing payments improves the econometric fit when predicting house prices and mortgages in relation to disposable incomes in both the long run and the short run, but not when modeling sales. Also, the conventional user cost variable either turn out insignificant or with the “wrong” (i.e. positive) sign, while nominal housing payment, including mortgage repayments, are significantly negative. However, some regression results are sensitive to specification and there are some indications of reversed causality issues. We therefore perform complementary event studies. The results of the event studies suggest that real house prices and the mortgage debt ratio increased considerably faster than otherwise expected between the introduction of interest-only-mortgages and the start of the financial crisis in 2007. Results are similar when using the results from our long- and short-run regressions to simulate the effects of introducing interest-only-mortgages. Our most conservative estimates suggest that the introduction of interest-only-mortgages raised real house prices and the mortgage debt ratio by about twenty and ten percent between 2003 and 2013, respectively. Our results raise questions of whether households base their decisions on real or nominal variables, actual costs, or cash flows, and if interest-only-mortgages have promoted housing affordability or have rather contributed to increased house prices and household debts.

Transaction costs, responsive housing supply, rent controls, tenant protection, and access to credit affect residential mobility these different parts of housing policy are included in what has been defined as housing regimes, which embrace regulations, laws, norms, and ideology as well as economic factors. In this chapter, we investigate how these regimes change by using institutional theories of path dependence. We use Sweden as an example and study three Swedish housing market reforms during the past decades that may have affected residential mobility, each related to one of the main institutional pillars of housing provision: tenure legislation, taxation, and finance. More precisely, we study the development of the rental regulation since the late 1960s, the tax reform in 1991, and the new reforms on mortgages since 2010. What caused these reforms? What were the main mechanisms behind them, and why did they occur at the time they did? We argue, besides affecting residential mobility, these reforms have the common feature of including interesting elements of path dependence and forming critical junctures that have led the development on to a new path. Institutions of tenure legislation, housing finance, and taxation are often claimed to have effects on residential mobility. Although they are seldom designed with the explicit aim of supporting (or counteracting) residential mobility, they may sometimes do so as more or less unintended consequences.

Although Swedish housing standards are high and young adults leave the parental home relatively early, there are indications that for certain groups housing has, in recent years, become less accessible. We analyse how housing characteristics affect intermunicipal mobility for different age cohorts and estimate a panel data gravity model that models migration as a function of origin and destination characteristics. The results suggest that new construction in the past two decades has negatively affected migration within commuting regions more than migration between commuting regions. For metropolitan areas, there are considerable negative effects on net migration from other commuter regions because new construction has not kept pace with population growth. The effects are stronger for young adults (20-44) compared to older adults (45-74). Further, we find that, while new construction stimulates mobility for all age cohorts, the estimated relationship is weaker for the youngest adults; indicating a need for more variation in new construction to satisfy different needs. Also, we find that the decreased share of rentals since 1992 have negatively affected the short-distance mobility of the youngest adults while the effect is weaker or even positive for the remaining age cohorts.