Urban Housing Policy Considerations: Perspectives from the Finnish Housing Market

It is very difficult to study phenomena in housing markets using conventional so-called neoclassical economics. The core problem stems from the highly unrealistic assumptions of neoclassical economics, such as homogeneous products, equilibrium markets, ceteris paribus clauses, deterministic and linear systems, rationality of economic agents, and the utility maximization principle. New Keynesian economics appears to be a more fruitful approach to housing markets since it presumes that products are differentiated, markets are in disequilibrium state and there exists imperfect competition in a marketplace. Furthermore, new Keynesian economics utilizes the concept of bounded rationality, which is a more realistic description of the actual behavior of economic agents than the theoretical notion of rationality in neoclassical economics.