Housing Investment: Long Run International Trends and Volatility

Using long-run data for today's advanced economies, the pattern of housing investment is examined from the 19th century to the present day. Housing investment is shown to be subject to long cycles, the most pronounced of which were in the post-1945 era. Since 1970 the trend of housing investment has been flat for most countries considered, and falling as shares of national income. Fluctuations in housing investment demand may have helped to stabilise the world economy during the 1950s and 1960s but since then have switched to become a destabilising factor.