Housing is the defining issue of our time, driving a persistent affordability crisis, financial instability, and economic inequality. Through the Roof examines the crucial role of the state in shaping the housing markets of two economic powerhouses-the United States and Germany. The book starts with a puzzle: laissez-faire America has vigorously supported homeownership markets with generous government programs, while social democratic Germany has slashed policy support for both homeownership and rental markets. The book explains why both nations have adopted such radically different and unexpected housing policy approaches. Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews with policymakers, it argues that contrasting forms of capitalism-demand-led in the United States and export-oriented in Germany-resulted in divergent housing policies. In both countries, these policies have subsequently transformed capitalism itself.

‘Alexander Reisenbichler was among the first political economists who studied how the policies to promote homeownership sank rich North Atlantic economies in the 2000s. He has now distilled his research into a fascinating account of Germany and the U.S. that effectively defies stereotypes about the Germanobsession with savings and the American obsession with free markets.’

Waltraud Schelkle - Professor, European University Institute

‘Reisenbichler’s exquisitely detailed argument surfaces and explains the paradox that allegedly free-market America has, as Bourdieu would expect, a housing market nearly totally shaped by the state, while corporatist Germany has seen the state retreat from the housing market in the past twenty years.’

Mark Schwartz - Professor of Politics, University of Virginia

‘The U.S. created a housing crisis by turning housing into an asset class. Germany did not make that mistake and yet ended up with a similar crisis. Reisenbichler deftly explains both cases by reference to each country’s underlying growth regime. A masterful political economy account that shows us how growth, housing, and inequality are all interlinked.’

Mark Blyth - William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics, Brown University