Short Holds,the Distributions of First and Second Sales,and Bias in the Repeat-Sales Price Index

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics -     

Aggregation Bias in Repeat-Sales Indices

The repeat-sales methodology has become a standard approach for estimating real estate price indices. This article examines the underlying assumptions inherent in the repeat sales model and provides an empirical test for both included and omitted variables as sources of aggregation bias. The results indicate that virtually all price indices may be biased, the degree of bias being dependent upon the number of variables examined and the instability of their parameters over time.     

Bias and Precision of Estimates of Housing Investment Risk Based on Repeat-Sales Indices:A Simulation Analysis

A simulation analysis is reported which examines the bias and precision of estimates of housing investment risk based on small sample indices of housing returns. The trade-off between smoothing bias (due to temporal aggregation in the index) and noise bias (induced by random estimation error) is examined in the housing return total volatility, beta, and autocorrelation statistics of the index returns. The study compares the performance of three different specifications of the repeat-sales index, under assumptions of either an informationally efficient or inefficient housing market, and at two levels of estimation data availability. Findings suggest that regression-based repeated-measures indices may be useful at a more micro-level (e.g., at the neighborhood level or for specific housing types) than has hitherto been employed.     

The Construction of Residential Housing Price Indices: A Comparison of Repeat-Sales,Hedonic-Regression,and Hybrid Approaches

This article examines a number of hypotheses that underpin the repeat-sales and hedonic approaches to the construction of housing price indices, as well as the practical problems associated with the implementation of either approach. We also examine a hybrid procedure that combines elements of both the repeat-sales and hedonic-regression techniques. For our sample of individual home sales in Oakland and Fremont California over an 18-year period, repeat-sales methods are subject to sample selection bias; the maintained assumption of time constancy of implicit prices of housing attributes is violated; the repeat-sales estimator is extremely sensitive to influential observations; and the usual method used to correct for heteroskedasticity in repeat-sale housing returns is inappropriate in our sample. Hedonic techniques are better suited to contend with index number problems per se, as they can accommodate changing attribute prices over time. They also appear to give rise to more reliable estimates of price indices, as unusual observations have less effect on estimated price indices. Drawbacks of the hedonic approach include the usual concern with omitted attributes, and their effect on the estimated price index.     

Spatial Dependence and House Price Index Construction

Accurate estimation of prevailing metropolitan housing prices is important for both business and research investigations of housing and mortgage markets. This is typically done by constructing quality-adjusted house price indices from hedonic price regressions for given metropolitan areas. A major limitation of currently available indices is their insensitivity to the geographic location of dwellings within the metropolitan area. Indices are constructed based on models that do not incorporate the underlying spatial structure in housing data sets. In this article, we argue that spatial structure, especially spatial dependence latent in housing data sets, will affect the precision and accuracy of resulting price estimates. We illustrate the importance of spatial dependence in both the specification and estimation of hedonic price models. Assessments are made on the importance of spatial dependence both on parameter estimates and on the accuracy of resulting indices.     

Neighborhood Diversity and House-Price Appreciation

This study examines changes in house prices relative to the level of and change in percent racial/ethnic composition for certain counties in Tampa and Orlando, Florida. Repeat-sales transactions between 1971 and 1997 are used to create a constant quality price index for each city. The index for Tampa shows that the average annual house price appreciation was 5.89 percent over the period 1970 through 1997. The index for Orlando shows that the average annual house price appreciation was 5.25 percent over the 1970 through 1997 period. When the Tampa index model is expanded to account for race/ethnicity, household factors, and economic factors, the level of African American population has no significant effect on house-price appreciation; however, the change in percent African American has a negative effect. The level of percent Hispanic population has a positive effect, and the change in percent Hispanic has a positive effect. The expanded Orlando model shows that the level of percent African American population has no significant effect on price appreciation, while the change in percent African American has a negative effect. The level of Hispanic population has a positive effect, while the change in percent in Hispanic has a negative effect.     

股指期货交易场所选择分析

股指期货是在证券交易所上市还是在期货交易所上市,国际上没有统一的惯例.本文根据我国目前证券市场发展状况,从股指期货全球的发展趋势、风险控制、运行成本、长远发展等几方面,分析我国推出股指期货交易地点的选择问题,认为我国证券交易所推出股指期货要优于期货交易所推出股指期货.     

住房公积金政策对我国房地产市场的影响--基于SVAR模型的实证研究

本文利用1999年二季度至2010年一季度的数据,选取个人住房公积金贷款利率、全国房屋销售价格和全国房屋租赁价格作为分析变量,构建结构向量自回归模型,运用脉冲响应和方差分解方法,就住房公积金贷款利率对我国房价和房租的影响进行实证分析。结果显示,住房公积金政策对我国房价和房租的影响主要侧重于中长期效应,短期效应并不明显,基于此,提出政策建议。     

A Real Estate Price Index for Thin Markets

This article examines a time-series-based method for estimating real estate price indexes for markets that have few transactions. The proposed method is more parsimonious than the conventional repeat sale or hedonic methods. Also, it is potentially more accurate and less prone to outliers. It achieves this by linking current transactions to preceding transactions, thereby increasing the set of comparable transactions on which to base the index. My experiments confirm that the time-series price index fares much better in thin markets than a benchmark hedonic index. It remains close to the true index when there are few transactions and it does not have the volatility of the benchmark index. While the time-series-based index developed in this article does better than the benchmark hedonic index, one surprise result is that the hedonic index is itself quite robust in small samples.     

Creating Financial Cycles in China and Interaction with Business Cycles on the Chinese Economy

This study creates a Chinese financial cycle index to examine the lead-and-lag relations between business and financial cycles. We examine the macroeconomic performance when these cycles are in boom, bust, and other combinations. We have four interesting results. First, financial cycles occur less frequently than business cycles. Second, the upturn phase of a financial cycle is significantly longer than the downturn phase. Third, gross domestic product growth rates are at their lowest when the two cycles are in troughs and the highest when they reach their peaks. We find similar results for employment, inflation, and consumption rates. Fourth, financial cycles lead business cycles but not vice versa. Hence, policymakers should consider the financial system before bailing out the real economy, which alone is insufficient for the recovery of the macro economy.     

Hedging Housing Risk*

An unusually rich source of data on housing prices in Stockholm is used to analyze the investment implications of housing choices. This empirical analysis derives market-wide price and return series for housing investment during a 13-year period, and it also provides estimates of the individual-specific, idiosyncratic, variation in housing returns. Because the idiosyncratic component follows an autocorrelated process, the analysis of portfolio choice is dependent upon the holding period. We analyze the composition of household investment portfolios containing housing, common stocks, stocks in real estate holding companies, bonds, and t-bills. For short holding periods, the efficient portfolio contains essentially no housing. For longer periods, low-risk portfolios contain 15 to 50 percent housing. These results suggest that there are large potential gains from policies or institutions that would permit households to hedge their lumpy investments in housing. We estimate the potential value of hedges in reducing risk to households, yet yielding the same investment returns. The value is surprisingly large, especially to poorer homeowners.     

Hedging Housing Risk in London

This paper investigates the benefits of allowing households to compensate the portfolio distortion due to their housing consumption through investments in housing price derivatives. Focusing on the London market, we show that a major loss from over-investment in housing is that households are forced to hold a very risky portfolio. However, the strong performance of the London housing market means that little is lost in terms of expected returns. Even households with limited wealth are better off owning their home rather than renting and investing in financial assets, as long as they are willing to face the financial risk involved. In this context, access to housing price derivatives would benefit most poor homeowners looking to limit their risk exposure. It would also benefit wealthier investors looking for the high returns provided by housing investments without the costs of direct ownership of properties. Comparisons with French, Swedish and U.S. data provide a broader perspective on our findings.     

美国牲畜价格指数保险的经验及局限性

美国的牲畜价格指数保险是世界上最早产生且保险方案相对比较完善的农产品价格保险,它是美国将作物收入保险的经验向畜牧业延伸的结果。通过保险方案的设计和再保险安排,美国牲畜价格指数保险在解决农业价格保险可行性问题上取得了一定效果。相对于期货与期权工具,美国牲畜价格指数保险具有准入门槛和交易成本更低等优势,但也存在操作不够灵活等劣势,总体而言,更适合美国的中小规模生产者,而对大规模生产者吸引力较弱;且与期货与期权工具类似,美国牲畜价格指数保险只能提供年度内的价格风险保障,无法如美国的农产品计划项目那样提供跨年度的价格风险保障。从运行结果来看,美国的牲畜价格指数保险的承保规模较小,且没有发展成为美国占主导地位的价格风险管理工具的趋势。美国牲畜价格指数保险的经验及局限性对中国具有如下启示:错开农产品价格保险的承保期间;建立农产品价格保险再保险制度;探索多种政策可能性管理农产品价格风险。     

蔬菜价格指数保险的有效性研究--金乡大蒜价格指数保险案例

近年来大蒜价格大幅波动,蒜农面临种植风险,政府面临调控难题。在此困局下,山东省金乡县出台的大蒜价格指数保险,具备了突出的产业规模基础、价格信息透明度高、政府补贴以及政保农合作共赢的要素,实现了有效运作,为稳定价格、保证供给、化解价格风险和保障蒜农收益发挥了一定的作用,具有较为广阔的推广前景。     

A Sample Selection Model of Consumer Adoption of Computer Banking

We develop a bivariate probit selection model of consumer access and adoption that accounts for the cross equation correlations of the errors. The Survey of Consumers, collected by the University of Michigan, is the database used to estimate the model. We find a significant cross equation correlation between consumers perceived access and their use of computer banking. Based on our results, the bivariate selection model provides asymptotically more efficient estimates than does a single equation model because the bivariate selection model accounts for the sample selection bias associated with access. In addition, the bivariate selection model has a higher percentage of correctly predicted adopters than does the corresponding single equation (univariate) model.     

Prices and returns on paintings: An exercise on how to price the priceless

Art is priceless, but paintings, and other objects, have been sold on markets since the time of the Roman Empire. In this paper, we describe a method for constructing a price index for paintings and compare this index to the indices of various financial markets. In particular, we discuss whether the price of art is related to financial markets, whether the art market is weakly efficient, and whether it is more or less risky than financial markets.     

The Relationship Between Energy Commodity Prices and Electricity and Market Index Performances: Evidence from an Emerging Market

We investigate the effect of energy commodity price movements on market and electricity index returns in Turkey for the periods before, during, and after the year 2008. Although the Turkish economy is highly reliant on oil, we find that oil price does not lead either electricity or market indexes. This might be attributable to sluggish integration of financial markets in Turkey compared to developed markets. Natural gas price leads electricity index in the pre-2008 period. Its significance is reduced following the decline in natural gas usage in electricity production. This suggests that commodity dependence may be driving the link between commodity and asset prices in related sectors.     

Taxation and House-Price Uncertainty: Some Empirical Estimates

Purchasing a home involves a large and localized investment that leaves many families exposed to volatile house prices and at risk of losing their home equity. Price movements are typically not synchronized across cities, suggesting the potential for efficiency gains through risk sharing across households. In this paper, we consider the possibility of risk sharing through capital gains taxation. When full loss offset is permitted, potential gains and losses are reduced at the household level by taxation and distributed nationally, thereby allowing the tax authority to diversify away the local risks associated with owner-occupied housing. We simulate the effect of a capital gains tax with full loss offset on tenure choice and housing demand using micro-level data from the American Housing Survey, spanning ten years, from 1985 to 1995, and measures of time varying risk and return.     

Residential property values in a multinodal urban area: New evidence on the implicit price of location

The monocentric model predicts a housing price gradient from the central business district, and it follows that the extension of this model to account for modern multinodal metropolitan areas would predict housing price gradients from multiple employment centers. Empirical analysis using hedonic regression techniques for the estimation of price gradients in a multinodal context is limited. This study extends prior work by exploring nonlinear housing price gradients in a multinodal urban area with an unusually robust database of housing sales transactions, and using a geographic information system for spatial analysis. The results confirm the importance of non-CBD employment centers, a strong if asymmetric CBD price gradient, and significant nonlinear gradients from such other urban amenities as major retail sites and highways.     

住房投机与政策调控对房价波动的影响——基于中国40个重点城市的数据

构建住房需求结构、政策调控和价格的动态系统模型,依据2007-2021年40个重点城市季度数据,考量政策调控对于住房投机和房价波动实施效果。结果显示：住房投机推动了房价上涨,政府住房调控政策对房价波动影响差异显著;异质性分析显示,不同地区政策调控实施效果存在差异。鉴于此,应因城施策、分类指导,同时积极畅通房地产调控政策传导机制,提高传导效率,促进房地产市场平稳健康发展。