SMU Professor of Economics Phang Sock Yong said that resilient housing finance systems are crucial for global economic stability and to solve housing affordability problems in both developed and emerging economies. Prof Phang, who has researched and written on housing economics extensively for more than two decades, is the author of the new book Housing Finance Systems: Market Failures and Government Failures. She says that state intervention is necessary to channel resources into housing and cope with the challenges brought by market failures, cross border capital flows, misaligned incentives and, paradoxically, regulatory failures.