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Abstract

The Keynesian demand regime that existed until the 1970s was characterised by governments steering demand and employment through housing and infrastructure investments. By the 1980s, Western countries began to retreat from these capital-intensive subsidies and turned to the stimulation of homeownership-spreading private mortgage markets, but with three different ideal-typical trajectories until 2008. In construction-repressive countries, like Germany, growing exports were to fill the void of the withdrawing construction engine; in countries with construction booms, like Spain, the mortgage credit expansion temporarily generated another long construction cycle. Conversely, in countries with mortgage booms only, like the UK, mortgages exploded and generated more consumption, but no proportional construction output. We explain the divergence into different trajectories through a policy feedback mechanism: parties in construction (export) economies tend to favour construction (export) policies. While exports, construction and mortgages became alternative drivers of growth, all three trajectories have their downsides which surfaced post-2008 and make them inherently unstable.