The Effect of House Prices on Household Consumption in Italy

This paper studies the effect of a change in real estate wealth on the consumption behaviour of Italian households, using the Bank of Italy’s Survey of Household Income and Wealth dataset. We relate annual household consumption to capital gains in housing, controlling for characteristics such as age. In line with the empirical predictions of our model, we find the oldest households—which are less affected by the higher costs of future rent—to be the most affected by increases in real net housing wealth. Younger households, on the other hand, are not significantly affected in their consumption decisions by house price increases. We also take into account the fact that benefiting from capital gains is conditional on owning housing wealth and estimate the different impacts of house price changes on the savings behaviours of both homeowners and renters. Our estimates suggest that house price increases raise consumption not only for homeowners but also for renters.     

House prices and risk sharing

Homeowners in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics are able to maintain a high level of consumption following job loss (or disability) in periods of rising local house prices while the consumption drop for homeowners who lose their job in times of lower house prices is substantial. These results are consistent with homeowners being able to access wealth gains when housing appreciates as witnessed by their ability to smooth consumption more than renters. A calibrated model of endogenous homeownership and consumption is able to reproduce the patterns in the data quite well and provides an interpretation of the empirical results.     

Borrowing Constraints,Home Ownership and Housing Choice: Evidence from Intra‐Family Wealth Transfers

We study the impact of borrowing constraints on home ownership and housing demand by comparing the tenure choice and housing quality of consumers who receive intra‐family wealth transfers to those that do not. Our analysis is based on household‐level panel data providing information on the receipt of wealth transfers, changes in tenure status as well as changes in the size and quality of housing. On average we find that the receipt of a wealth transfer increases the propensity of consumers to transition from renters to home‐owners by 6–8 percentage points (35% of the sample mean). Additional analyses suggest that this effect is unlikely to be driven by wealth effects and can thus be attributed to the relaxation of borrowing constraints. By contrast, wealth transfers do not increase the likelihood that existing homeowners “trade‐up” to larger homes in better locations.     

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。     

House prices,consumption and the role of non-Mortgage debt

This paper evaluates the strength of the relationship between house prices and consumption, through the use of debt. Whereas the existing literature has largely studied the effects of house prices on homeowner total or mortgage debt, we focus on the non-mortgage component of household borrowing, using Canadian household-level data for 1999–2007. We rely on variation in regional house prices, homeownership status and age to establish the relationship between house prices and non-mortgage debt. Then, using direct information on debt uses, we determine that house price growth was associated with a non-trivial fraction of concurrent aggregate non-housing consumption growth.     

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.     

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.     

House Prices and Economic Growth

Using quarterly data for all 379 metropolitan statistic areas (MSAs) in the U.S. from 1980:1 to 2008:2, this paper empirically studies the effect of house prices on local Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP). We compare the effects of predictable and unpredictable house price changes, which we use to capture the collateral and wealth effects of house prices respectively. We further analyze the relationship between the effects and household borrowing constraints, as well as the temporal pattern of the effects. Our analysis provides the following findings. First, house price changes have significant effects on GMP growth, and the effect of predictable changes (the collateral effect) is about three times stronger than the effect of unpredictable changes (the wealth effect). Second, the persistent component of predictable changes has a stronger collateral effect than the novel component. Third, when households are more financially constrained, the collateral effect is stronger, the wealth effect is weaker, and the total effect remains unchanged. Finally, the effects last for eight quarters, and peak on the fourth quarter after house price changes take place.     

The role of liquidity constraints in the response of monetary policy to house prices

We analyse the optimal response of monetary policy to house prices in a New Keynesian framework. A positive wealth effect from housing is derived from liquidity constrained consumers. Housing equity withdrawal allows them to convert an increase in housing value into consumption and we show that monetary policy should react to house prices due to their effect on consumption by constrained agents. Moreover, we allow the share of liquidity constrained consumers to vary with house prices. Consequently, the optimal weights on expected inflation, the output gap and house prices in the optimal interest rate rule vary over time too.     

Households’ foreign currency borrowing in Central and Eastern Europe

Foreign currency loans represent an important feature of recent financial developments in CEECs. This might pose a serious challenge for macroeconomic stability. Against this background, we study the determinants of foreign currency loans of households, using data on the behavior of households in nine CEECs. Our results reveal that foreign currency loans are driven by households’ lack of trust in the stability of the local currency and in domestic financial institutions. Moreover, special factors including remittances and expectations of euro adoption play an important role in selected regions. The financial crisis reduced foreign currency borrowing, but there is some indication this effect might be only temporary.