Housing Shortage in Malmö : Implications of Shaikh’s Theory of Relative Prices for Residential Built Environments
(2025) The Nordic Urban Political Economy Meeting p.7-8- Abstract
- This paper analyses structural economic forces contributing to the current undersupply of affordable housing in Sweden’s third-largest city, Malmö. It operationalizes Anwar Shaikh’s theory of relative prices to analyze the political economy of housing shortage. The paper argues that existing policy recommendations at the municipal level are primarily informed by a microeconomic approach to price formation that focuses solely on supply and demand dynamics. Furthermore, it contends that much of the literature criticizing these policy recommendations fundamentally shares the core assumptions of the microeconomic perspective, treating the housing shortage merely as a distributional issue. In contrast, this paper asserts that the problem is... (More)
- This paper analyses structural economic forces contributing to the current undersupply of affordable housing in Sweden’s third-largest city, Malmö. It operationalizes Anwar Shaikh’s theory of relative prices to analyze the political economy of housing shortage. The paper argues that existing policy recommendations at the municipal level are primarily informed by a microeconomic approach to price formation that focuses solely on supply and demand dynamics. Furthermore, it contends that much of the literature criticizing these policy recommendations fundamentally shares the core assumptions of the microeconomic perspective, treating the housing shortage merely as a distributional issue. In contrast, this paper asserts that the problem is rooted in how housing is produced. Drawing on Shaikh’s theory of relative prices, the paper differentiates between various types of investments and their associated profit formations that determine the final cost-price of housing as a commodity in market economies. These investment types connect macro-level land and construction dynamics to micro-level housing consumption and inequalities. Finally, the paper presents empirical observations and explores the practical and strategic implications of Shaikh’s theory of relative prices for understanding the current housing shortage and inequality in Malmö, as well as the conflicts of interest between public and private actors involved in housing production. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/b6af2aee-864b-448c-874d-11b0fa1cfebe
- author
- Farahani, Ilia LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-06-12
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- pages
- 7 - 8
- conference name
- The Nordic Urban Political Economy Meeting
- conference location
- Uppsala, Sweden
- conference dates
- 2025-06-11 - 2025-06-12
- project
- From economic structures to local dynamics: low-income communities and the post-pandemic volatility of housing markets
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- b6af2aee-864b-448c-874d-11b0fa1cfebe
- date added to LUP
- 2025-10-08 13:30:24
- date last changed
- 2025-10-09 10:57:21
@misc{b6af2aee-864b-448c-874d-11b0fa1cfebe,
abstract = {{This paper analyses structural economic forces contributing to the current undersupply of affordable housing in Sweden’s third-largest city, Malmö. It operationalizes Anwar Shaikh’s theory of relative prices to analyze the political economy of housing shortage. The paper argues that existing policy recommendations at the municipal level are primarily informed by a microeconomic approach to price formation that focuses solely on supply and demand dynamics. Furthermore, it contends that much of the literature criticizing these policy recommendations fundamentally shares the core assumptions of the microeconomic perspective, treating the housing shortage merely as a distributional issue. In contrast, this paper asserts that the problem is rooted in how housing is produced. Drawing on Shaikh’s theory of relative prices, the paper differentiates between various types of investments and their associated profit formations that determine the final cost-price of housing as a commodity in market economies. These investment types connect macro-level land and construction dynamics to micro-level housing consumption and inequalities. Finally, the paper presents empirical observations and explores the practical and strategic implications of Shaikh’s theory of relative prices for understanding the current housing shortage and inequality in Malmö, as well as the conflicts of interest between public and private actors involved in housing production.}},
author = {{Farahani, Ilia}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{06}},
pages = {{7--8}},
title = {{Housing Shortage in Malmö : Implications of Shaikh’s Theory of Relative Prices for Residential Built Environments}},
year = {{2025}},
}