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222 Publications
Pragmatic Socioeconomics: A Way Towards New Findings on Sources of (Housing) Market Instability
In this paper, we aim to define basic principles of pragmatic socioeconomics that may create a more solid interdisciplinary bridge between sociology and mainstream economics in the study of economic behaviour. The merit of this new concept demonstrates itself in the results of our research on the impact of social norms on home-buying behaviour and the consequences that such behaviour has for the operation of the housing market and housing price trends. That research demonstrates that interdisciplinary economic…
Topics: Housing
Housing wealth inequality, intergenerational transfers and young households in the super-homeownership system
This article focuses on the problem of housing wealth inequality as an increasingly important dimension of social inequality in post-socialist super-home-ownership countries and uses the Czech Republic as a case study. The article shows that housing wealth inequality is higher than income inequality and that it tends to grow in time, especially due to the spatially uneven appreciation of house prices. However, intergenerational housing-related within-family resource transfers have a mitigating effect on growin…
Mortgage debt versus intergenerational transfers: implications for welfare attitudes in the Czech Republic
There has been a noticeable delay in the emergence of a sociology of debt, and of mortgage debt in particular. This paper seeks to fill this gap by testing whether and how the form of home financing influences welfare attitudes regarding the role of the state in housing provision and, consequently, the type of housing (welfare) policy. Specifically, we hypothesise that there are significant differences in attitudes toward the role of the state/municipalities in housing provision between homeowners who financed…
Homeownership, mobility, and unemployment: Evidence from housing privatization.
Homeownership is believed to cause higher unemployment. This is because homeowners face higher mobility costs that limit their job search to local labor markets. Empirical tests of this prediction have yielded mixed results so far, possibly due to the endogeneity of homeownership. This paper proposes that the privatization of public housing in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain was a substantial policy shock that generated largely exogenous assignment of homeownership to individual h…
Intergenerational financial transfers and indirect reciprocity: determinants of the reproduction of homeownership in the post-socialist Czech Republic.
Using a representative survey of the Czech population, we demonstrate that intergenerational within-family financial (wealth) transfers represent the main mechanism in the reproduction of homeownership in Czech post-socialist society. The provision of a transfer or the lack of one largely determines the housing tenure of Czech young adults. Without transfers, the children of homeowners are significantly less likely to also become homeowners. We also show that the probability of an adult child receiving a trans…
Bridging Economics and Sociology: Responses to a Critique of Pragmatic Socioeconomics.
In our Focus article we introduced pragmatic socioeconomics, a methodological and theoretical approach that we believe may create a more solid interdisciplinary bridge between sociology and mainstream economics. This paper reacts on the critical review of our approach by six academics recognised in the field. We devoted the most space to those comments that uncovered the blank spots in our approach or areas that we had poorly addressed. We better defined the position of pragmatic socioeconomic towards 'grand n…
Komparace kupních a odhadních cen bytů v ČR za rok 2019
Význam správného stanovení odhadních cen je akcentován v české i zahraniční literatuře. Provedli jsme porovnání kupních cen (cenových údajů Českého úřadu zeměměřičského a katastrálního) a odhadních cen (České spořitelny, a.s.) bytů. Párování bytů bylo provedeno primárně na základně geografické polohy (s využitím GPS souřadnic), dále podle plochy bytu, typu konstrukce a data zplatnění záznamu, resp. provedení odhadu. Výsledkem je zjištění, že u 60 % bytů b…
Why so moderate? Understanding millennials’ views on the urban housing affordability crisis in the post-socialist context of the Czech Republic.
The housing affordability crisis is one of the most pressing issues in urban centres around the globe, affecting especially young adults. Some theorists have in response begun calling for the provision of more public housing or less housing financialisation (free market). The goal of our article is to demonstrate the housing attitudes of Czech millennials towards state interventions that are designed to address the decline in housing affordability, using a quantitative attitude survey and a series of qualitati…
Topics: Housing
The Impact of Within-family Housing Assistance on the Certainty of Young People’s (Housing) Aspirations in the Czech Republic.
The article presents the results of research on the factors that determine how certain Czech millennials are about their housing and some other life aspirations. We did not primarily look at the content of life aspirations and instead, we examined how certain, confident and concrete young people are about their plans. Using qualitative interviews and an attitude survey we found that intergenerational housing-related within-family resource transfers had a significant impact on how certain young Czechs are about…
Families and the Reproduction of Homeownership in a Post-socialist Context
Post-socialist countries introduced significant reforms in their housing systems and these included property restitution, privatisation, and housing subsidy cuts. Housing privatisation served as the main catalyst for the sharp increase in the outright homeownership rate that became a characteristic feature of post-socialist countries. The retreat of the state was not offset by the development of the institutions or cultures that fully financialised housing markets require. Debt-free homeownership created a gap…
Topics: Housing, Intergenerational Relations
Dilemmas of housing-asset-based welfare in the post-socialist context: the case of the Czech Republic.
In the Czech Republic, buying housing is regarded as a way of attaining financial security in old age. People are, however, wary about using Housing-Asset-Based Welfare instruments that would allow them to withdraw housing equity. This article explains the contradictions surrounding housing-equity release in the post-socialist context and the barriers and catalyst behind the wider use of two specific instruments – reverse mortgages and reverse schemes. The paper focuses on the generation of Czechs in their f…
Protect or punish debtors? Policymaker discourse on the state’s role in personal debt governance
Personal debt is a device increasing one’s agency but embedded within moral and legal frameworks that constructs people as individualised financial subjects. This article aims to enrich research on the state role in (subject) financialisation through a focus on personal debt governance modes as constructed in policymaker discourse on the state role in personal debt regulation. Our argument is contextualised in the Czech Republic, where, in 2021, 10 per cent of the adult population faced legal debt enforcemen…
Topics: Debts
Financialisation and contested citizenship of ‘failed’ debtors: how overindebted people negotiate their status and rights
Centring in attention on overindebted people, the article examines ‘practices of claim-making’ from the perspective of ‘failed citizens’, insiders who lose their rights within constitutional democracies because they are perceived as failing to live up to its norms. We examined these practices in the context of the Czech debt collection system, which gives excessive power to lending institutions and bailiffs and severely limits debtors’ social, labour and privacy rights. We show how the processes of f…
‘I’m not going to feed the bailiffs’: personal bankruptcy and debtor agency in narrative accounts of struggling debtors
The article uses the formal instrument of personal bankruptcy proceedings as an illuminating context to contribute to the scholarship on the lived experience of overindebtedness. Through the analysis of 29 in-depth interviews with heavy debtors living in Czechia, we provide a focus on debtor agency, exploring how bankruptcy interrelates with how struggling debtors narratively approach debt and construct their capacity to act. We show that first-hand accounts of (planned) participation in a bankruptcy proceedin…
Consumption loans consuming homes: intersections of housing precarity and personal overindebtedness
Housing precarity as a condition referring to housing insecurity and unaffordability has been on the rise over the last decade across Europe and beyond. While various studies discuss the character of housing precarity and its links to (subprime) mortgage loans, the role of specific moral economies of debt in enacting housing policies which reinforce housing precarity is less developed in relation to other kinds of loans or the experience of debt enforcement. This article analyses fifty narrative interviews—t…
Jak v české společnosti osobní dluhy formují životy zadlužených a společenské hierarchie?
This setting of personal debt in the Czech Republic is characterized by the punitive system of foreclosures and debt enforcement, which enabled to multiplied fees for debt enforcement starting the so-called "debt traps" and "debt spirals", on the one side and on the other by the rather stable system of mortgage debts with low number of arrears. The punitive debt enforcement system has been thus related to the segment of predatory consumption loans which were until 2016 highly deregulated and which enabled…
Manuál participativního bydlení
Nedostupnost bydlení se dotýká stále více obyvatel. Receptem na řešení není jedna konkrétní cesta, ale kombinace různých opatření a vytváření nových forem bydlení. Mezi taková řešení patří i participativní bydlení, v němž obyvatelé spolupracují s dalšími domácnostmi a zapojují se do přípravy a provozu bydlení. Sousedská spolupráce a sdílení některých aspektů bydlení může přinést ekonomické, sociální i ekologické benefity. Participativní bydlení ale není…
Topics: Housing
Metodická příručka participativního bydlení
Participativní bydlení znamená, že na přípravě projektu bydlení nebo jeho části, na investici, případně na správě bydlení spolupracují obyvatelé. Existuje řada důvodů, proč obyvatelé vstupují do projektů participativního bydlení: reakce na snižující se dostupnost bydlení, snaha zlepšovat kvalitu bydlení a jeho architektonickou podobu, zvyšování odolnosti vůči klimatické krizi či snaha zkvalitnit sousedské vztahy. Spoluprací a koordinací domácností se proměňují vz…
Topics: Housing
Dual responsibilization for housing in a housing crisis: young adults in the Czech Republic
Young adults in various countries are experiencing deteriorating access to homeownership and affordable rental housing. Whereas many studies have focused on the shift of responsibility for housing from the state to individuals related to a meritocratic ideology, only recently have certain studies identified the ambiguity and incoherence as a significant principle in housing discourses. Responding to these, we analysed 31 narrative interviews and survey data on Czech young adults (aged 18–35), providing uniqu…
Topics: Housing, Intergenerational Relations, Social Inequalities
Faktory nadhodnocení odhadních cen: analýza rozdílů mezi kupními a odhadními cenami bytů v roce 2019
Obsahem druhé části dvoudílné studie, která je jedním z výstupů projektu „Zvýšení transparentnosti hypotečního trhu v ČR rozšířením datové základny pro sledování a odhad cen nemovitostí“ podpořeného Technologickou agenturou ČR (TAČR) pod číslem TL03000212, je porovnání výše kupních a odhadních cen bytů v roce 2019 a analýza hlavních faktorů vysvětlujících případné rozdíly mezi nimi. Kupní ceny byly získány z evidence Českého úřadu zeměměřičského a …
Topics: Housing, Economy
Datové zdroje pro srovnání kupních a odhadních cen nemovitostí
Obsahem první části dvoudílné studie, která je výstupem z projektu „Zvýšení transparentnosti hypotečního trhu v ČR rozšířením datové základny pro sledování a odhad cen nemovitostí“ podpořeného Technologickou agenturou ČR (TAČR) pod číslem TL03000212, je popis a definice dat o nemovitostech (včetně odhadních cen) sbíraných jedním z hlavních poskytovatelů hypotečních úvěrů v ČR, Českou spořitelnou, a.s., a popis a definice dat o nemovitostech (včetně kupních cen…
Topics: Housing, Economy
Bydlení mladých v době krize
Jednou z řady krizí, které v současnosti čelí – nejen česká – společnost, je i krize bydlení. Ceny bytů a domů, ale i nájmů raketově rostou a bydlení se stává stále hůře dostupným. Možnost pořídit či zajistit si bydlení se přidává k řadě dalších omezení, jež se propisují do již existujících společenských nerovností a dále je prohlubují. Zároveň se nedostupnost bydlení stává palčivým problémem zejména, i když nikoli výhradně pro mladé lidi, kteří s…
Topics: Housing, Intergenerational Relations, Family
Using Path Dependence Theory to Explain Housing Regime Change: The Traps of Super-Homeownership
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate the usefulness of path dependence theory to explain the convergence of housing regimes among post-socialist countries, both at the beginning and in the later phases of housing-regime transformation. We especially seek to show the selected common traps that were recently created by the legacy of giveaway privatisation and the super-homeownership regime, traps that increase intergenerational inequality, which to now has been effectively mitigated by within-family financia…
Topics: Housing
Social housing in the Czech Republic: change of trend?
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-soc…
Topics: Housing
Simulating trends in housing wealth inequality in post-socialist Czech society
The goal of this paper is to predict, by using microsimulation modelling under alternative market scenarios, housing wealth inequality in Czech society up to the year 2050. These predictions can be useful for assessing the rationale for attempts to use housing assets as a way of supplementing state pensions and thus add to existing studies on asset-based welfare (ABW) that focused only on the recent and past situation. The models predicted small increase in housing wealth inequality among the future elderly bu…
Topics: Housing
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