IE Business School Researchers Receive Think Forward Grant

IE Business School Finance Professor Pedro Gete and doctoral candidate Athena Tsouderou received a grant from the Think Forward Initiative for their research on the relationship between housing prices and homeownership.

The IE team was one of 12 recipients from top U.S. and European universities and research organizations awarded the funds by the purpose-driven partnership between ING Global, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Deloitte, Amazon Web Services, and Dell Technologies. The Think Forward Initiative aims to gain a deeper understanding of the behavior behind financial decision-making and empower people to make better financial decisions.

Gete and Tsouderou received this grant for a systematic study of new patterns in homeownership and the demand for mortgages, across demographic groups and for geographical factors.

"These are important variables from an economic policy perspective and for the banking industry in particular," Gete said. “We’ll be exploring in depth the potential causes of the recent drop in homeownership rate and analyzing its impact on households and the banking industry.”

“First we need to understand what households are doing and why. What are households’ needs.”

The researchers will look at a range of possible causes for drops in homeownership, including difficulty of access to credit by households, changes in preferences for homeownership versus rentals, and the transformation of real estate as a new global asset class.

“To improve people’s financial well-being we need good economic policies and suitable financial products from the financial industry. But, to design such policies and products, first we need to understand what households are doing and why. What are households’ needs,” Gete said.