Last week, INET Oxford Senior Research Fellow Professor John Muellbauer joined an expert panel to discuss key takeaways from the OECD’s Housing Toolkit Report Brick by Brick: Building Better Housing Policies.
Because housing interacts with so much of the economy and society, better policies could improve the outlook for the climate, for economic efficiency and sustainable growth, for lower intergenerational inequality and social exclusion, and for financial stability.
At the SUERF/OECD event, Professor Muellbauer discussed the importance of the report’s holistic approach to housing policy – an approach which closely aligns to the four-part recommendations for the UK of his 2018 article, Housing, Debt and the Economy: A Tale of Two Countries.
At the event, Professor Muellbauer also flagged certain hurdles that the report’s recommended policy package is likely to face, and highlighted some important gaps in the work – especially around the challenge of the climate emergency and the urgent need to transition to net-zero.
