Job creation and housing construction: Constraints on metropolitan area employment growth

Differences in the supply of housing generate substantial variation in house prices across the United States. Because house prices influence migration, the elasticity of housing supply also has an important impact on local labor markets. I assemble evidence on housing supply regulations and examine their effect on metropolitan area housing and labor market dynamics. Locations with relatively few barriers to construction experience more residential construction and smaller increases in house prices in response to an increase in housing demand. Furthermore, housing supply constraints alter local employment and wage dynamics in locations where the degree of regulation is most severe.     

Urban economic base as a catalyst for movements in real estate prices

We examine the relation between housing prices in an MSA and its urban economic base. We create and employ new forward-looking employment growth indices that measure the urban economic strength of an MSA and find that it accounts for a significant and sizeable portion of the house price movements in that MSA. We argue that the forward looking measure is an indicator of future agglomeration growth for the MSAs. We further partition the urban economic growth into growth by various industries and track the attribution of their growth to housing prices over time. We find that for some MSAs, home prices are driven by the same set of industries over time, whereas for others, home prices are driven by a totally new set of industries in the later quarters, due to the birth of new industries. We also analyze the impact of the diversification of an urban economic base on home price volatility and observe that diversification decreases home price volatility. The result has larger implications for urban policymakers in selecting the appropriate type of industries relative to their existing mix of industries.     

House price convergence in the euro zone: A pairwise approach

The adoption of the euro common currency was expected to lead to convergence for a number of economic and financial variables across national borders, including house prices. We apply a probabilistic pairwise approach to the question of whether home values converge across eight euro zone housing markets. Contrary to previous studies, we find only marginal evidence that euro housing markets converge. Moreover, for what convergence there appears to be, there is no evidence that the adoption of the euro itself played a role in creating such convergence. Finally, Germany, the largest and most dominant economy of the currency union, is rarely found to be convergent with other nations.     

Price dynamics in public and private housing markets in Singapore

In down-payment constrained housing consumption models, increases in house prices could trigger household mobility decisions in housing markets. This study empirically tests house price dynamics associated with the mobility of households in the public resale and private housing markets in Singapore. The results show that stochastic permanent breaks were found in the public housing resale prices and private housing prices. The relative prices drift apart occasionally, but mean-revert to a long-run fundamental equilibrium. Error correction mechanisms and lagged public housing prices were also found to have significant explanatory effects for price changes in the private housing markets. The results support the hypothesis that household mobility creates co-movements of prices in public and private housing submarkets in the long run.     

House price convergence in euro zone and non-euro zone countries

This study investigates whether single currency use increased house price convergence among various countries. First, the panel unit root test results indicate that the house prices in euro zone countries were more correlated than the house prices in non-euro zone countries. Second, the house prices in various European countries converged towards the house prices in Germany, which uses the single currency, rather than towards those in the United Kingdom, indicating that single currency use increased the influence of the German housing market on other markets. Finally, the log t regression model, a new convergence test, was employed and determined that the house prices in various European countries were not converging before 1992 but began to do so after that year. After the euro was implemented as an official currency, the house prices in various countries converged towards a consistent level. On the basis of the relative transition paths, this study determines that the differences among housing markets in various countries have continuously decreased since 1992. The empirical results indicate that the law of one price is applicable to tradable goods and that single currency use can integrate housing markets, which include non-tradable goods.     

Bubble trouble ‐ are British house prices significantly overvalued?

The OECD last December said British house prices were overvalued by 30% or more. There has been much talk, including in a 2005 speech by Gordon Brown, of a house price bubble. This article, by Gavin Cameron, John Muellbauer and Anthony Murphy of Oxford University, finds no significant evidence for a bubble from a dynamic panel data model of British regional house prices between 1972 and 2003. The model consists of a system of inverted housing demand equations, incorporating spatial interactions and lags and relevant spatial parameter heterogeneity. The results are data consistent, with plausible long-run solutions and include a full range of explanatory variables. Novel features of the model include transaction cost effects influencing the speed of adjustment and housing market flows, as well as stocks, driving prices. Furthermore, the model allows for shifts in real and nominal interest rate effects as credit markets liberalised.     

Local Housing Markets and Segregation in England

In this article, Geoff Meen discusses patterns of economic segregation in England. Despite the emphasis that the government places on reducing segregation, patterns have, in fact, remained remarkably constant over, at least, the last twenty years. Dynamic changes in housing markets and migration over time help to explain these patterns, and evidence is presented on the extent to which house prices in certain local authorities have been under- or over-valued. The analysis also shows that, at the local level, housing markets exhibit non-linear behaviour, which hinders the effectiveness of housing policy in the most deprived areas and adds to economic segregation.     

Do house price developments spillover across euro area countries? Evidence from a global VAR

This paper empirically assesses the prospects for house price spillovers in the euro area, where co-movement in house prices across countries may be particularly relevant given a general trend with monetary union toward increasing linkages in trade, financial markets, and general economic conditions. A global VAR is estimated for three housing demand variables (real house prices, real per capita income, and the cost of borrowing, captured by a real long-term interest rate) on the basis of quarterly data for 7 euro area countries (Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands), which together comprise nearly 90% of euro area GDP, over the period 1971–2009. The results suggest limited house price spillovers in the euro area, albeit with evidence of some overshooting in the first year after the shock, followed by a long run aggregate euro area impact of country-specific changes in real house prices related in part to the country’s economic weight. This contrasts with the impacts of a shock to domestic long-term interest rates, causing a permanent shift in house prices after 2–3 years. Underlying this aggregate development are rather heterogeneous house price spillovers at the country level, with a strong importance for weights – either economic or geographic – in governing their general magnitude. More generally, the impact of financing costs on house prices appears to have grown though time.     

The down-payment constraint and UK housing market: Does the theory fit the facts?

This paper considers empirical implications of the down-payment constraint for the UK housing market. It shows that, at the aggregate-level, models of the housing market with this constraint are consistent with a number of stylized facts. The paper then exploits variation across local housing markets and considers how leverage affects the response of house price inflation to shocks. The evidence, based on data for 147 district-level housing markets for the period 1993–2002, suggests that a large incidence of households with high leverage (loan-to-value ratios) raises the sensitivity of house prices to a shock. This is also consistent with the down-payment constraint model.     

A spatio-temporal model of house prices in the USA

This paper provides an empirical analysis of changes in real house prices in the USA using State level data. It examines the extent to which real house prices at the State level are driven by fundamentals such as real per capita disposable income, as well as by common shocks, and determines the speed of adjustment of real house prices to macroeconomic and local disturbances. We take explicit account of both cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity. This allows us to find a cointegrating relationship between real house prices and real per capita incomes with coefficients (1,−1)$(1,-1)$, as predicted by the theory. We are also able to identify a significant negative effect for a net borrowing cost variable, and a significant positive effect for the State level population growth on changes in real house prices. Using this model we then examine the role of spatial factors, in particular, the effect of contiguous states by use of a weighting matrix. We are able to identify a significant spatial effect, even after controlling for State specific real incomes, and allowing for a number of unobserved common factors. We do, however, find evidence of departures from long run equilibrium in the housing markets in a number of States notably California, New York, Massachusetts, and to a lesser extent Connecticut, Rhode Island, Oregon and Washington State.     

Role of credit and monetary policy in determining asset prices: Evidence from emerging market economies

We examine the relative dominance of credit and monetary policy shocks in influencing asset prices in emerging markets. Estimates from panel VAR models for 22 EMEs provide evidence of a significant impact of bank credit on house prices in contrast to trivial impact on stock prices, possibly due to prudential regulations on banks’ exposure to stock markets. Contractionary monetary policy triggers sizeable and persistent decline in stock than housing prices as higher interest rates may render the funding of leverage costlier. Global shocks play an important role in explaining fluctuations in domestic stock prices rather than house prices since the latter class of asset is largely non-tradable across countries.     

The price responsiveness of housing supply in OECD countries

The responsiveness of housing supply to changes in prices bears important implications for the evolution of housing prices and the speed of adjustment of housing markets. Based on a stock-flow model of the housing market estimated within an error correction framework, this paper estimates the long-run price elasticity of new housing supply in 21 OECD countries. Estimates suggest that the responsiveness of housing supply to price changes varies substantially across countries. It is relatively more flexible in North America and some Nordic countries, while it is more rigid in continental European countries and in the United Kingdom. The responsiveness of housing supply depends not only on national geographical and urban characteristics but also on policies, such as land use and planning regulations.     

House prices, wealth effects, and the Singapore macroeconomy

This paper examines the effect housing wealth has upon aggregate consumption in Singapore. While past research has focused only on changes in private housing wealth, the residential market in Singapore is dominated by the public housing sector. The massive public housing segment can generate potentially different wealth effects from standard private housing markets given the former’s unique institutional features. In particular, public housing owners who sell their units at market rates can repurchase a public flat at subsidized prices whereas private homeowners typically cannot. We estimate the link between consumption expenditure and both private and public housing wealth using a VARX approach for the Q1:1990–Q4:2002 period. We find that changes in private house prices have no significant effect on aggregate consumption. In contrast, public housing wealth effects are larger and more persistent.     

浅析国内商品房价格的持续上涨

近年来,国内商品房价格持续上涨,究其原因,笔者认为房价持续上涨是诸多因素共同作用的结果,本文将从中国城市化进程的加快、商品房固有的非替代性等方面进行论述。就商品房价格上涨这一现象结合城市与区域经济课程以及城市管理、经济地理学等其他专业课及经济学的相关课程的有关内容展开分析,并提出建议。     

Slow but stable(ish) house price growth lies ahead

• ? UK house price growth is running out of steam. And with household incomes squeezed and the affordability of housing stretched, we think a prolonged period of very modest growth lies ahead. But the prospect of a crash is remote.
• ? At 2.6% in Q2 2017, annual house price growth is presently running at a four‐year low. This is a step change down from the recent peak of nearly 10% in mid‐2014 and average growth of 4% over the current economic expansion.
• ? Three developments are likely to lie behind this slowdown. The first is weak growth in households' real income, cutting the ability to save for a deposit or finance a move up the housing ladder. That said, past periods of sluggish income growth have not always been associated with low house price inflation.
• ? The second is the consequence of recent tax hikes imposed on buy‐to‐let investors and second‐home owners, which theory suggests should be capitalised in lower property prices.
• ? The third and perhaps most important reason is the increasing unaffordability of housing to an ever‐widening sub‐set of the population. The ratio of house prices to earnings is almost back at its pre‐crisis record. And the income of the average mortgage borrower is close to £60,000, more than double the average annual wage.
• ? This third factor has implications beyond price growth, suggesting both a permanently lower level of transactions and a further decline in the number of households with mortgages, continuing a trend which began at the beginning of the century.
• ? But set against these headwinds is the cushion provided by record lows for both mortgage rates and mortgage affordability. Overall, house prices are caught between a lack of traditional drivers of accelerating growth, but equally an absence of forces which have typically caused prices to fall. Hence, our expectation of a period of sluggish, but relatively stable, growth.

     

Do house prices reflect fundamentals? Aggregate and panel data evidence

We investigate whether recently high and consequently rapidly decreasing U.S. house prices have been justified by fundamental factors such as personal income, population, house rent, stock market wealth, building costs, and mortgage rate. We first conduct the standard unit root and cointegration tests with aggregate data. Nationwide analysis potentially suffers from problems of the low power of stationarity tests and the ignorance of dependence among regional house markets. Therefore, we also employ panel data stationarity tests which are robust to cross-sectional dependence. Contrary to previous panel studies of the U.S. housing market, we consider several, not just one, fundamental factors. Our results confirm that panel data unit root tests have greater power as compared with univariate tests. However, the overall conclusions are the same for both methodologies. The house price does not align with the fundamentals in sub-samples prior to 1996 and from 1997 to 2006. It appears that the real estate prices take long swings from their fundamental value and it can take decades before they revert to it. The most recent correction (a collapsed bubble) occurred around 2006.     

Hedonic house prices and spatial quantile regression

Despite its long history, hedonic pricing for housing valuation remains an active research area, and applications of new estimation methods continually push research frontiers. However, housing studies regarding Chinese cities are limited because of the short history of China’s free housing market. Such studies may, nonetheless, provide new insights given the nation’s current transitional stage of economic development. Therefore, this research makes use of publicly accessible sources to construct a new micro-dataset for an emerging Chinese city, Changsha, and it incorporates quantile regression with spatial econometric modeling to examine how implicit prices of housing characteristics may vary across the conditional distribution of house prices. Substantial variations are found, and the intuitions and implications are discussed. Additionally, the spatial dependence exhibits a U-shape pattern. The dependence is strong in the upper and lower parts of the response distribution, but it is little in the medium range.     

寻找中国房价的领头羊——基于20个大城市数据的实证分析

城市房价存在明显的时空关联性。本文通过构建一个简单的消费者均衡模型,并利用全局和局部Moran指数,论证了35个大中城市的房价在空间上的相关性,进一步利用交叉谱技术分析了18个大中城市房价变动周期的关联性和领先滞后关系。结果发现：1．我国35个大中城市的房价存在显著的空间自相关。2．采用Fisher’s Kapper统计量和Kolmogorov-Smirnov统计量检验发现20个城市中除重庆和厦门外,房价波动都具有显著的周期性。3．在18个大中城市中,并不存在完全同步的房价周期。同一区域不同城市之间房价周期的关联性强度存在显著差异。即使在具有较强相关性的城市之间,房价变动也并不同步而是存在多种领先滞后关系。     

Business,housing, and credit cycles

We use multivariate unobserved components models to estimate trend and cyclical components in gross domestic product (GDP), credit volumes, and house prices for the USA and the five largest European economies. With the exception of Germany, we find large and long cycles in credit and house prices, which are highly correlated with a medium‐term component in GDP cycles. Differences across countries in the length and size of cycles appear to be related to the properties of national housing markets. The precision of pseudo real‐time estimates of credit and house price cycles is roughly comparable to that of GDP cycles.     

Raising the bar (6)

Raising the bar (6). Spatial Economic Analysis. This editorial summarizes and comments on the papers published in issue 12(4) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper addresses the question of whether ‘jobs follow people’ or ‘people follow jobs’. The second paper develops a new methodology to determine functional regions. The third paper is a major contribution to the growing literature on new modelling approaches and applications of disaster impact models. The fourth paper focuses on the costs and benefits of higher education. The fifth paper develops a two-step procedure to identify endogenously spatial regimes in the first step using geographically weighted regression, and to account for spatial dependence in the second step. Finally, the sixth paper estimates a dynamic spatial panel data model to explain house prices and to show that restricted housing supply in the city of Cambridge, UK, has some undesirable labour market effects.