Econometric models have produced contradictory results and have failed to provide warning of housing market crashes. The article aims to illustrate how econometrics was unable to reliably predict the recent housing price bubble and detect the disequilibrium in the housing markets. The authors will demonstrate that two distinct but well specified econometric models, using the same data, can lead to different outcomes. The authors argue that the demand for housing is influenced by social constructs, social norms, ideologies, unrealistic expectations, symbolic patterns, and that the actual choice of housing is the outcome of complex social interactions with reference groups. Consequently, it is necessary to analyse the potential instability of social constructs, norms, expectations and the changing character of social interactions to better understand purchasing behaviour and, then, housing price volatility.
The goal of this paper is (1) to describe the history and the most recent development of social housing system in the Czech Republic and (2) critically assess earlier and recent attempts to solve missing social housing strategy in this country. In general, the paper intends to contribute to literature on housing policy formulation in countries in transition from planning to market economy and thus provide insight into main factors that may explain unsustainability and weakness of housing strategies in post-socialist environment. Lack of competence, constrained discussion during programme/strategy preparation and the dominance of ideology over rational argument are found to be critical factors for the past and possibly future social housing policy failures in the Czech Republic.
The article focuses on the results of analyses of sociological research on how housing conditions affect the intended labour migration in the Czech Republic. The aim of the article is mainly to show, in reference to studies published in advanced countries, the effect of a housing tenure on the internal labour migration in the Czech environment. For this purpose the authors use a combination of quantitative and qualitative sociological methods (questionnaire surveys, focus groups). The results of the multi-dimensional logit models and the conclusions drawn from focus groups records indicate that housing tenure has a very significant effect on potential internal labour migration, even after controlling for the effect of other factors related to labour migration. This finding should be of substantial significance for the future direction of housing policy in the Czech Republic.