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The purpose of this paper is to consider one test of a well-functioning housing system – its impact on wellbeing. Exploring one indicator of this, this study aims to track changes in mental and general health across a mix of tenure transitions and financial transactions in three jurisdictions: Australia, the UK and the USA.

Using matched variables from three national panel surveys (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia, British Household Panel Survey/Understanding Society and Panel Study of Income Dynamics) over 17 years (2000–2017) to capture the sweep of the most recent housing cycle, this study adopts a difference-in-difference random-effects model specification to estimate the mental and general health effects of tenure change and borrowing behaviours.

There is an enduring health premium associated with unmortgaged owner-occupation. Mortgage debt detracts from this, as does the prospect of dropping out of ownership and into renting. A previously observed post-exit recovery in mental health – a debt-relief effect – is not present in the longer run. In fact, in some circumstances, both mental and general health deficits are amplified, even among those who eventually regain homeownership. Though there are cross-country differences, the similarities across these financialised housing systems are more striking.

The well-being premium traditionally associated with owner occupation is under threat at the edges of the sector in all three jurisdictions. In this, there is cross-national convergence. There may therefore be scope to introduce policies to better support households at the edges of ownership that work across the board for debt-funded ownership-centred housing systems.

This paper extends the duration of a previous analysis of the impact of tenure transitions and financial transactions on well-being at the edges of ownership in the UK and Australia. The authors now track households over nearly two decades from the start of the millennium into a lengthy (post-global financial crisis) era of declining housing affordability. This study adds to the reach of the earlier study by adding a general health variable and a third jurisdiction, the USA.

This paper aims to study to what extent an insurance based on a house price index provides equity protection for homeowners.

The paper uses a novel dataset of all housing market transactions in the metropolitan area of Melbourne 1990‐2006, to construct repeated sales indices of various temporal spatial aggregation. These indices are used to discuss the efficiency of index‐based insurance schemes. The paper also considers efficiency under different specifications of legitimate claims.

It is found that the payout efficiency is surprisingly stable (around 50 percent) for all temporal spatial aggregations. A neighborhood index outperforms the metropolitan index with respect to target efficiency (the probability of payout given a loss). The introduction of maturity times, say legitimate claim five years after purchase, does improve efficiency somewhat. However, the idiosyncratic component of housing market transactions remains high, and the insurance probably unattractive from a homeowner perspective.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time an index‐based insurance scheme is analyzed using real‐market transactions.

This paper reviews the extant research on Web3.0 published between 2003 and 2022.

This study uses a topic modeling procedure latent Dirichlet allocation to uncover the research themes and the key phrases associated with each theme.

This study uncovers seven research themes that have been featured in the existing research. In particular, the study highlights the interaction among the research themes that contribute to the understanding of a number of solutions, applications and use cases, such as metaverse and non-fungible tokens.

Despite the relatively small data size of the study, the results remain significant as they contribute to a more profound comprehension of the relevant field and offer guidance for future research directions. The previous analysis revealed that the current Web3.0 technology is still encountering several challenges. Building upon the pioneering research in the field of blockchain, decentralized networks, smart contracts and algorithms, the study proposes an exploratory agenda for future research from an ecosystem approach, targeting to enhance the current state of affairs.

Although topics around Web3.0 have been discussed intensively among the crypto community and technological enthusiasts, there is limited research that provides a comprehensive description of all the related issues and an in-depth analysis of their real-world implications from an ecosystem perspective.

The American Dream and homeownership are sometimes thought of as one and the same. A belief that homeownership is vital to the fabric of a vibrant society has led to government policies that encourage homeownership. This suggests that homeownership and societal well‐being are positively related. However, empirical analysis does not support this positive relationship either within the USA or across countries. This has important policy implications given the research in this special issue that discusses the macro and micro economic consequences of government programs that promote homeownership. Moving forward, we must consider both the private and public benefits of homeownership and also realize that the very concept of what a house is will likely change. This paper aims to discuss these issues.

The analysis examines the relation between the incidence of homeownership and the well‐being (happiness) of a community. The analysis is first performed across the 50 states and then is done on a cross‐section of 26 countries.

The correlation coefficient between home ownership rates and well‐being are negative for both the US and international data. The evidence does not support the belief that homeownership is either necessary or sufficient for societal well‐being.

The paper presents some of the first empirical analysis to examine the relationship between homeownership and societal well‐being. Other studies in this special issue document both public and price costs to owning a home. Taken together, the special issue has important implications for government policies that encourage homeownership.

The Retail Consortium has recently signed a £500,000 contract with the Open Tech Unit of the Manpower Services Commission to finance the design and launch of an open learning programme for first line managers/supervisors in the Distributive Industry. It runs until March 1987, after which the scheme has to be self‐financing. The contract is the culmination of months of work by representatives from a number of firms, trade associations, colleges and private agencies from whom the Consortium has now appointed a Board of Management to oversee the programme, assisted by an advisory group.

The correct pronunciation of English can sometimes present difficulties both to those who acquire it as a mother‐tongue and to those who learn it as a second language. A recorded reading of some of the trickier words can provide a valuable resource for the learner or enquirer, giving a spoken model complementing the printed word of a pronouncing dictionary. The Recordiction English Pronunciation guide, spoken by Carleton Hobbs, was compiled after a thorough study of the spoken word and its uses, and is designed to help with the correct pronunciation of nearly 2,000 words. Some of these are in common use, others are more out‐of‐the‐way, and with the help of a good dictionary may be used to enlarge the vocabulary. We would, however, question the rendering of chamois as shamwa; window cleaners have been using a shammy leather for as long as we can remember.

Britain's tourist industry offers one of the most hopeful prospects for new job creation, but cannot be exploited until it is freed from the many restrictions and negative attitudes which are hampering its natural development says a major report New Jobs from Pleasure produced by Robert Banks MP, Vice Chairman of the All‐Party Tourism Group. It recommends that the Prime Minister should appoint the Minister without portfolio, Lord Young, to integrate the relevant responsibilities of the eleven government departments concerned with Britain's tourist industry, so as to take full advantage of its expansion potential to create new jobs. It also calls for a Development of Tourism Bill which would include changes to the Youth Training Scheme, the establishment of a College of Tourism, the introduction of flexible licensing hours, the abolition of restrictions on Sunday trading, changes to planning procedures, amendments to regional policy, and the possible merger of the English Tourist Board and British Tourist Authority.

A blockchain is a shared distributed ledger technology that stores the information of every transaction in the network. The blockchain has emerged with a huge diversity of applications not only in the economic but in the non-economical domain as well. Blockchain technology promises to provide a wide range of solutions to the problems faced during implementation of smart cities. It has the potential to build smart contracts more secure, thus eliminating the need for centralized authority.

This paper presents a proof-of-concept for a use case that uses an Ethereum platform to build a blockchain network to buy, sell or rent a property.

The findings of this study provide an opportunity to create novel decentralized scalable solutions to develop smart cities by enabling paperless transactions. There are enormous opportunities in this distributed ledger technology which will bring a revolutionary change in upcoming years.

The concept of blockchain along with smart contracts can be used as a promising technology for sharing services which is a common requirement in smart cities. All the blockchain transactions are stored in decentralized shared database. The transaction recorded in decentralized system is immutable, it cannot be altered and hence chance of forgery is negligible.