`This is a significant contribution to the Real Estate Issues series To make housing the central theme is welcome, since the role of the housing market in economic instability is crucial. The focus on East Asia will be valuable, given that most literature on real estate cycles has tended to concentrate on Europe and the US. The behavioural and institutional perspective that the authors favour should also provide useful insights.' Richard Barras, Property Market AnalysisThe US subprime housing meltdown has been at the epicenter of the massive global financial crisis and the Great Recession of 2009 whose ripple effects continue to be felt around the world. The US experience demonstrates with impressive power the importance of real estate, and primarily of housing, for the stability of fully urbanized, high-Income economies. What do we know about the price and output dynamics of real estate cycles In the East Asian context! What is the evidence about the interactions between housing and the wider economy across East Asia? Do East Asia experiences with housing volatility differ from Western experiences?Dynamics of Housing in East Asia provides a comparative analysis, focussing on the Interactions between housing and the economy in China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, whose economies represent almost 25% of the global GDPThe book is structured in four parts. Part I (Chapters 1, 2 and 3) shows how organized, large urban housing systems emerged in East Asian economies during their economic growth take offs, which were also their decades of most rapid urbanization. Part II (Chapters 4, 5 and 6) describes the contrasting housing systems of four of the five high-income economies of East Asia today. These systems are now considerably larger, richer and much more differentiated than they were three decades ago. Part III (Chapters 7 and 8) presents a quantitative analysis of housing volatility and cycles across East Asia and Part IV (Chapters 9 and 10) complements and extends the understanding gained in this econometric analysis with a different analysis of housing cycles in China and Korea that centres on the incentives and behaviour of the six groups of actors active In any housing cycle. The concluding Chapter II has two parts. First it sums up what we have learned about the distinctive characteristics of East Asian housing systems; and then it outlines five major factors that are profoundly changing the outlook for East Asian housing systems that are at new inflexion points: population aging; worsening income and wealth inequality; rising household debt levels; slower GDP growth rates as the new normal; and climate change and environmental sustainability in high density East Asian citiesThis is the first book to evaluate the organization, behaviour and performance of six major East Asian real estate markets. It draws on the best available theoretical and empirical literature on the analysis of housing cycles and helps understand factors affecting resilience and stability in real estate markets, as well as the different vulnerabilities in each housing system Read Less