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The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, the authors construct a country-specific time-varying private rental regulation index for 18 developed economies starting from 1973 to 2014. Second, the authors analyze the effects of their index on the housing rental markets across 18 countries and states.

The authors’ index not only covers 18 developed economies over 42 years but also combines both tenure security and rent laws. The authors’ empirical framework is that of panel regressions with time and country fixed effects.

The authors’ index sheds further insights on the extent to which rent and tenure security laws have converged over the past 40 years for each economy. Moreover, the authors show three empirical results. First, stringent rent control regimes do lead to lower real rent growth rates than regimes with free rents. Second, soft rent control regimes with time-limited tenure security and minimum duration periods, however, may cause higher rent growth rates than free rent regimes. Third, rent-free regimes do not show significant high real rent appreciation rates.

The authors’ rental regulation index is the first time-varying index that covers more than 18 economies over 40 years.

Here Marx's philosophy is dissected from the angle of bourgeois capitalism which he, Marx, sought to overcome. His social, political and economic ideas are criticised. Although it is noted that Marx wanted to ameliorate human suffering, the result turned out to be Utopian, contrary to his own intentions. Contrary to Marx, it is individualism that makes the best sense and capitalism that holds out the best hope for coping with most of the problems he sought to solve. Marx's philosophy is alluring but flawed at a very basic level, namely, where it denies the individuality of each person and treats humanity as “an organic body”. Capitalism, while by no means out to guarantee a perfect society, is the best setting for the realisation of the diverse but often equally noble human goals of its membership.

In Ghana, the practice of landlords demanding that renters pay rent advance (RA) of between six months and five years is well noted. Surprisingly, renters appear divided into the benefits and drawbacks of the rent advance payment. Ahead of the 2020 general elections, the two leading political parties in Ghana promised to establish a rent assistance scheme to help renters working in the formal and informal sectors and earning regular incomes to pay their RA. This paper aims to scrutinize the differences in the demographic, employment and housing characteristics between the critics and non-critics of the RA payment in Ghana and the factors that predict the likelihood of being a critic of the RA system.

The study is exploratory and draws empirical data from surveys administered to 327 graduate renters from 13 regions in Ghana. It uses non-parametric and parametric tests, namely, Chi-square goodness-of-fit and T-test to explore these differences between both critics and non-critics of the RA.

There are statistically significant differences between critics and non-critics in terms of the association between their educational attainment on the one hand and their marital status, employment status and employment sector on the other hand. The research also reveals that monthly expenditures, number of bedrooms and RA period significantly predict the likelihood of being a critic of the RA payment or otherwise.

The study provides evidence which policymakers can draw upon to inform housing policy.

The study is the first to study the housing characteristics of graduate renters and to quantitatively distinguish between critics and non-critics of RA payment in Ghana.

Explores the question of whether protectionist policies must always violate someone’s rights, or whether it is possible to have a protectionist policy that does not violate rights. Discusses the weaknesses of a utilitarian approach to trade theory, then goes on to examine the major forms of protectionism, including tariffs, quotas, anti‐dumping laws, and the deliberate manipulation of exchange rates. Discusses rights and makes a distinction between positive and negative rights. Applies rights theory to trade policy and concludes that protectionism necessarily violates someone’s rights to property, contract or association ‐ unless it is done on a voluntary basis.

The aim of this paper is to use rent and price dynamics in the future cash flows in order to improve real estate portfolio valuation.

Monte Carlo simulation methods are employed for the measurement of complex cash generating assets such as real estate assets return distribution. Important simulation inputs, such as the physical real estate price volatility estimator, are provided by results on real estate indices for Paris, derived in an article by Baroni et al..

Based on a residential real estate portfolio example, simulated cash flows: provide more robust valuations than traditional DCF valuations; permit the user to estimate the portfolio's price distribution for any time horizon; and permit easy values‐at‐risk (VaR) computations.

The terminal value estimation is a core issue in real estate valuation. To estimate it, the proposed method is not based on an anticipated growth rate of cash flows but on the estimation of the trend and the volatility of real estate prices.

Homelessness has many causes and also is stigmatized in the United States, leading to much misunderstanding of its causes and what policy solutions may ameliorate the problem. The problem is of course getting worse and impacting many communities far removed from the West Coast cities the authors examine in this study. This analysis examines the socioeconomic variables influencing homelessness on the West Coast in recent years. The authors utilize a panel fixed effects model that explicitly includes measures of healthcare access and availability to account for the additional health risks faced by individuals who lack shelter. The authors estimate a spatial error model (SEM) in order to better understand the impacts that systemic shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have on a variety of factors that directly influence productivity and other measures of welfare such as income inequality, housing supply, healthcare investment, and homelessness.

Anti‐dumping laws have been around for decades. They have increased in importance in recent years and will become even more important in the future as a result of the Uruguay Round and the creation of the World Trade Organization. Yet anti‐dumping laws are inherently protectionist because they protect domestic producers at the expense of consumers. They have a chilling effect on price competition and cause the prices on a wide range of products to be higher than would otherwise be the case. Examines the anti‐dumping laws in theory and practice, from both a utilitarian and human rights context, and concludes that these laws cannot be justified on any reasonable grounds. Calls for their repeal, the sooner the better.

Explores the question of whether initiating an anti‐dumping action constitutes unethical conduct. Suggests that it is generally accepted that stealing and destroying the property of others are wrong, and that hiring someone to do the stealing or destruction for you is also wrong. Concludes that initiating an anti‐dumping action constitutes unethical conduct, since anti‐dumping actions involve theft and the destruction of property, not to mention the violation of contract and property rights and the freedom of association.

This paper aims to examine the socio-spatial transformation of earthquake-affected neighbourhoods as a setting for understanding post-disaster recovery trajectories of people, their opportunities for achieving housing recovery and their housing recovery outcomes.

Adopting a case study approach, this paper focuses on two neighbourhoods located in old urban areas of the city of Bhuj, India. The authors map the transformation of the built environment from before the earthquake, immediately after the earthquake and 10 years after the earthquake. While explaining the morphological changes of the built environment, the authors examine the associated changes in the social fabric of the neighbourhoods by explaining who stayed in their neighbourhoods, who moved out or moved in and who were displaced after the earthquake.

The authors explore the role of post-disaster public policies, including urban planning, in these changes and in shaping the opportunities of households and individuals for achieving recovery. These policies are compared and contrasted with other urban disaster responses to provide a better understanding of the possibilities of achieving more just recovery outcomes.

This paper contributes to the scant literature on post-disaster planning in cities of developing countries.

As civilisations become more advanced and complex from an economic perspective, the need to integrate and co‐ordinate human behaviour and institutions becomes more acute. The chief co‐ordinating devices are not government laws or regulations enacted to compel conformity and dependability in socio‐economic relationships, but the standards sometimes embodied in laws, more often outside the legal framework of government and properly so. Such standards, arrived at by voluntary consensus or common consent, are far too numerous, too complex, too widely and diversely applied to be amenable to codification into statute law or centralised systems of administration.