House prices, consumption, and monetary policy: a financial accelerator approach

We consider a general equilibrium model with frictions in credit markets used by households. In our economy, houses provide housing services to consumers and serve as collateral to lower borrowing cost. We show that this amplifies and propagates the effect of monetary policy shocks on housing investment, house prices and consumption. We also consider the effect of a structural change in credit markets that lowers the transaction costs of additional borrowing against housing equity. We show that such a change would increase the effect of monetary policy shocks on consumption, but would decrease the effect on house prices and housing investment.     

流动性约束视角下我国房价财富效应与最优利率规则研究

后危机时代中国房价的波动引起了广泛关注,如何利用以货币政策为代表的宏观调控抑制高房价透支未来经济发展的程度,成为当前管理层高度关注的焦点。本文建立了新凯恩斯模型框架分析房价波动如何通过流动性约束影响消费,从而揭示了中央银行货币政策与房价的财富效应之间的关系,得出最优利率规则中房价的最优权重随预期通胀、产出缺口、房价和名义利率而变动的结论。通过实证分析本文进而认为,利率规则比货币供应量更能迅速调控房价的增长和居民消费的扩张。中国房价上涨的财富效应虽然比较明显,但流动性约束的作用机制需要一个过程才能显现,利率调控的效果也有一个量变到质变的过程,从而在理论上为中央银行制定应对房价的利率政策提供了一定启示。     

Optimal Monetary Policy Rules and House Prices: The Role of Financial Frictions

We probe the scope for reacting to house prices in simple and implementable monetary policy rules, using a New Keynesian model with a housing sector and financial frictions on the household side. We show that the social‐welfare‐maximizing monetary policy rule features a reaction to house price variations, when the latter are generated by housing demand or financial shocks. The sign and size of the reaction crucially depend on the degree of financial frictions in the economy. When the share of constrained agents is relatively small, the optimal reaction is negative, implying that the central bank must move the policy rate in the opposite direction with respect to house prices. However, when the economy is characterized by a sufficiently high average loan‐to‐value ratio, then it becomes optimal to counter house price increases by raising the policy rate.     

房地产价格对我国城镇居民消费的长短期影响研究

考虑居民收入等级不同,对住房属性偏重不同,将居民分为不受到流动性约束型、不完全受到流动性约束型、完全受到流动性约束型三类.基于各自目标函数及约束条件,确定动态面板模型检验房价与消费的协整关系,并构建动态面板误差修正模型,结果显示:全国层面,收入是影响消费的核心因素,房价上涨、预期房价上涨影响消费为挤出效应,且存在长期均衡关系;居民层面:不受到流动性约束的居民,收入不是消费的重要因素,而其余两类居民的消费受收入、习惯强度影响较大,且流动性约束越强,影响更为明显;不受到流动性约束的居民,在短期及长期内,房价上涨、预期房价上涨影响消费为财富效应;而其余两类居民,影响为挤出效应,强度大于前者的财富效应,且流动性约束越强,抑制作用更为显著.     

住房价格、金融稳定与宏观审慎政策

本文通过建立包含异质性家庭、异质性厂商和金融机构的DSGE模型,分析对预期房价作出反应的货币政策和宏观审慎政策的传导机制和政策效果,研究不同政策的选择和协调问题。研究发现,首先,由于政策的作用范围不同,不同政策会对金融稳定和经济稳定产生不同影响。对预期房价作出反应的货币政策能够抑制住房需求和信贷供给,但也会抑制消费需求和产出;而对预期房价作出反应的逆周期LTV政策和逆周期资本充足率政策在应对房价波动导致的金融稳定问题时更加有的放矢。其次,外生冲击的来源会影响政策的选择和协调——当经济波动来源于需求冲击时,固定LTV政策搭配逆周期资本充足率的宏观审慎政策、不对预期房价作出反应的货币政策表现最优;当经济波动来源于供给冲击时,固定LTV政策搭配逆周期资本充足率的宏观审慎政策、对预期房价作出反应的货币政策表现最优。     

Housing markets and the financial crisis of 2007–2009: Lessons for the future

An unsustainable weakening of credit standards induced a US mortgage lending and housing bubble, whose consumption impact was amplified by innovations altering the collateral role of housing. In countries with more stable credit standards, any overshooting of construction and house prices owed more to traditional housing supply and demand factors. Housing collateral effects on consumption also varied, depending on the liquidity of housing wealth. Lessons for the future include recognizing the importance of financial innovation, regulation, housing policies, and global financial imbalances for fueling credit, construction, house price and consumption cycles that vary across countries.     

Monetary Policy and Asset Prices: A Mechanism Design Approach

We investigate the effects of monetary policy on asset prices in economies where assets are traded periodically in bilateral meetings. The trading mechanism is designed to maximize social welfare taking as given the frictions in the environment and monetary policy. We show that asset price “bubbles” emerge in a constrained‐efficient monetary equilibrium only if liquidity is abundant and the first‐best allocation is implementable. In contrast, if liquidity is scarce, assets are priced at their fundamental value in any constrained‐efficient monetary equilibrium, in which case an increase in inflation has no effect on asset prices, but it reduces output and welfare.     

The role of house prices in the monetary policy transmission mechanism in small open economies

We analyse the role of house prices in the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Norway, Sweden and the UK, using structural VARs. A solution is proposed to the endogeneity problem of identifying shocks to interest rates and house prices by using a combination of short-run and long-run (neutrality) restrictions. By allowing the interest rate and house prices to react simultaneously to news, we find the role of house prices in the monetary transmission mechanism to increase considerably. In particular, house prices react immediately and strongly to a monetary policy shock. Furthermore, the fall in house prices enhances the negative response in output and consumer price inflation that has traditionally been found in the conventional literature. Moreover, we find that the interest rate responds systematically to a change in house prices. However, the strength and timing of response varies between the countries, suggesting that housing may play a different role in the monetary policy setting.     

Monetary policy and distribution

A segmented markets model of monetary policy is constructed, in which a novel feature is goods market segmentation, and its relationship to conventional asset market segmentation. The implications of the model for the response of prices, interest rates, consumption, labor supply, and output to monetary policy are determined. As well, optimal monetary policy is studied, as are the costs of inflation. The model features persistent nonneutralities of money, relative price effects of increases in the money supply, persistent liquidity effects, and a negative Fisher effect from a money supply increase. A Friedman rule is in general suboptimal.     

Changing Supply Elasticities and Regional Housing Booms

Developments in U.S. house prices over the past decade mirror those of the 1996–2006 boom. Construction activity has, however, been weak. Using data for 254 U.S. metropolitan areas, we show that housing supply elasticities have fallen markedly in recent years. We find that housing supply elasticities have declined more in areas in which land-use regulation has tightened the most, and in areas that experienced the sharpest housing busts. Consistent with the declining housing supply elasticities, we find that monetary policy shocks have had a stronger effect on house prices during the past decade than during the previous boom. At the same time, building permits respond less.     

住房财富对中国城镇家庭消费的影响

在构建以国内大循环为主体,国内国际双循环相互促进的新发展格局下,把握扩大内需这一战略基点,激发居民消费潜力,是推动经济高质量发展的关键之一。住房已经成为中国家庭财富的重要组成部分,一方面可通过财富效应促进家庭消费,另一方面也可能由于“房奴效应”降低家庭消费。因此,住房财富对家庭消费的影响方向并不确定。本文基于2013-2019年中国家庭金融调查数据,研究了住房财富对家庭消费的影响,并检验了住房财富影响家庭消费的可能渠道。研究发现,住房财富对城镇家庭消费有显著促进作用,并显著改善了家庭消费结构,住房资产具有财富效应。进一步研究发现,住房财富能够缓解流动性约束,从而提高家庭消费水平。异质性分析表明,住房财富对不同类型的消费具有不同的促进作用,不同地区和拥有住房数量的差别均会对住房财富产生不同影响。根据本文研究,在控制风险的前提下,可发挥既有住房财富对平滑家庭消费的积极作用,促进家庭消费增长,改善家庭消费结构,进一步推进家庭消费升级。     

Does global liquidity drive commodity prices?

This paper tackles the question of whether a cross-sectional perspective on monetary policy is capable of explaining movements in global commodity prices. In this vein, we contribute to the rich literature on global liquidity in two different ways: on the one hand, to achieve a global series in terms of common monetary policy shocks, we propose a distinction between common and idiosyncratic factors across economies, as proposed by Bai and Ng (2004). Our second innovation stems from the consideration of a Markov-switching vector error correction model when analyzing time-varying short-run dynamics. Having identified the long-run structure which includes a proportional relationship between commodity prices and global liquidity in the first step, our results indeed show that the impact of a global liquidity measure on different commodity prices is significant and varies over time. One regime approximately accounts for times where commodity prices significantly adjust to disequilibria, while the second regime is characterized by either a weak or no commodity price adjustment. The fact that global liquidity also reacts to disequilibria in a specific regime demonstrates the two-way causality between monetary policy and commodity prices.     

通货膨胀、货币供给与房地产市场关系的实证研究——基于后危机时代数据的考察

我国在2009年底推出的经济政策导致房价和物价不断攀升,央行虽然采取紧缩措施进行应对,但物价和房价仍处高位。对我国货币供给、通货膨胀及房地产之间关系进行理论和实证分析的结果显示:货币供给增加能引起物价和房价上涨;房价上涨能引起物价上涨等。因此,为了更好地应对物价波动,货币政策需关注资产价格,同时应谨慎使用货币政策应对资产泡沫,并密切注意货币流动结构,维持货币供给流向与实体经济发展相适应。     

How does house price influence monetary policy transmission?

The literature has focused on house price growth to explain the inefficiency of monetary policy. From the perspective of substitution, this paper explains the relationship between house prices and monetary policy considering not only house price growth but also house price uncertainty. By constructing a theoretical model including both financial-asset and fixed-asset investment, we find that expansionary monetary policy not only promotes total investment but simultaneously also leads to substitution towards financial assets. However, a rise in house price growth or house price uncertainty will mitigate the substitution effect generated by monetary policy. These propositions are supported by empirical data on China's nonfinancial listed firms from 2009 Q1 to 2018 Q3 and the results are robust to a variety of model specifications and empirical approaches. Our findings imply that real estate regulatory policy should coordinate with monetary policy in maximizing fixed-asset investment.     

Risk premia,asset price bubbles,and monetary policy

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium asset pricing model with heterogeneous beliefs to study the effects of monetary policy on prices, risk premia, asset price bubbles, and financial stability. We propose a new framework for monetary policy with respect to bubbles. Because bubble risk premia arise from an interaction between disagreements among investors and dynamic trading constraints, under a non-accommodative monetary policy, liquidity adjusted risk and bubble risk premia increase. What matters for policy is the trading constrained fraction/mass of agents that disagree about fundamentals (i.e. optimists/pessimists). Accommodative policy can lead to a larger fraction of trading constrained agents that disagree, larger bubbles, and increased systemic risk. An implication of our results is that accommodative monetary policy in response to the Covid-19 crisis does not increase systemic risk due to asset price bubbles, as long as the policy keeps inflation under control.     

Global Liquidity,House Prices,and the Macroeconomy: Evidence from Advanced and Emerging Economies

In this paper, we first compare house price cycles in advanced and emerging economies using a new quarterly house price data set covering the period 1990–2012. We find that house prices in emerging economies grow faster, are more volatile, less persistent, and less synchronized across countries than in advanced economies (AEs). We also find that they correlate with capital flows more closely than in AEs. We then condition the analysis on an exogenous change to a particular component of capital flows: global liquidity, broadly understood as a proxy for the international supply of credit. We identify this shock by aggregating bank‐to‐bank cross‐border credit and by using the external instrumental variable approach introduced by Stock and Watson (2012) and Mertens and Ravn (2013). We find that in emerging markets (EMs) a global liquidity shock has a much stronger impact on house prices and consumption than in AEs. We finally show that holding house prices constant in response to this shock tends to dampen its effects on consumption in both AEs and EMs, but possibly through different channels: in AEs by boosting the value of housing collateral and hence supporting domestic borrowing; in EMs, by appreciating the exchange rate and hence supporting the international borrowing capacity of the economy.     

货币传导异质性与实体经济流动性配置的“马太效应”

货币政策支持实体经济高质量发展的关键在于疏通货币政策传导机制,引导流动性进入重点领域和薄弱环节,因此货币资金的配置效率至关重要。本文基于交互效应面板分位数回归,测度货币政策对实体企业流动性的异质性效应。研究发现:在样本期内,实体经济流动性配置陷入了资金越充裕的企业越易于获得融资,越易于获得融资的企业资金越充裕的窘境。这种流动性配置的“马太效应”具体表现为,货币政策对尾部企业的支持力度不及头部企业的一半;虚拟经济对尾部企业的“分流效应”高达头部企业的3倍,从而强化了流动性配置的失衡。因此,当前密集出台的一系列普惠政策有助于提升流动性配置效率,进一步完善调控模式的关键在于健全现代化金融体系,增强货币政策的靶向性和针对性。     

住房价格、住房投资、消费与货币政策——基于金融加速器效应的DSGE模型研究

以BGG模型为基础建立包含金融加速器机制的DSGE模型,采用数值模拟方法研究中国货币政策冲击对住房价格与住房投资及消费的影响,结果表明金融加速器机制明显放大了货币政策冲击对三者的影响;与不带金融加速器模型相比,使用带有金融加速器效应模型分析时,中国货币政策冲击对房价、投资和消费的影响程度更大,并且更符合现实数据特征。模拟结果还显示货币政策对消费的影响与已有文献的结论存在差异,即货币政策冲击对消费短期影响较大,且影响持续时间也较长。     

How do house prices affect consumption? Evidence from micro data

Housing is a major component of wealth. Since house prices fluctuate considerably over time, it is important to understand how these fluctuations affect households’ consumption decisions. Rising house prices may stimulate consumption by increasing households’ perceived wealth, or by relaxing borrowing constraints. This paper investigates the response of household consumption to house prices using UK micro data. We estimate the largest effect of house prices on consumption for older homeowners, and the smallest effect, insignificantly different from zero, for younger renters. This finding is consistent with heterogeneity in the wealth effect across these groups. In addition, we find that regional house prices affect regional consumption growth. Predictable changes in house prices are correlated with predictable changes in consumption, particularly for households that are more likely to be borrowing constrained, but this effect is driven by national rather than regional house prices and is important for renters as well as homeowners, suggesting that UK house prices are correlated with aggregate financial market conditions.     

Housing, consumption and monetary policy: How different are the US and the euro area?

This paper provides a systematic empirical analysis of the role of the housing market in the macroeconomy in the US and the euro area. First, it establishes some stylised facts concerning key variables in the housing market on the two sides of the Atlantic, such as real house prices, residential investment and mortgage debt. It then presents evidence from Structural Vector Autoregressions (SVAR) by focusing on the effects of monetary policy, credit supply and housing demand shocks on the housing market and the broader economy. The analysis shows that similarities outweigh differences as far as the housing market is concerned. The empirical evidence suggests a stronger role for housing in the transmission of monetary policy shocks in the US. The evidence is less clear-cut for housing demand shocks. Finally, credit supply shocks seem to matter more in the euro area.