Selective housing policy in local housing markets and the supply of housing

Selective programs and subsidies have an impact on both the financial position and the housing conditions of the household to whom they are allocated. They also affect the equilibrium outcome in housing markets. This study analyzes how the housing stock in Norwegian municipalities is affected by selective targeted interventions on the supply and demand-sides of the market. The empirical analysis shows that additions to the stock of public housing increases the total housing stock. For every 100 new public units built, 60 units are added to the total housing stock. Demand-side subsidies are also shown to increase the size of the housing stock. Using a linear spline it is shown that the magnitude of the marginal effect on the total size of the housing stock is strongly decreasing in program size.     

Segmentation in urban housing markets

This study tests the hypothesis that urban housing markets are segmented in the sense of significantly different prices per unit of housing services existing contemporaneously in spatially or structurally defined submarkets. Using an unusually rich data set for single-family, suburban Boston homes, significant differences in the prices of individual housing attributes are found; but these differences result in negligible differences in the overall price per unit of services. A main conclusion is that the market is working fairly efficiently to eliminate price premiums and discounts, at least in the portion of the market analyzed.     

Contract equilibria in housing markets

The paper provides a contractual equilibrium model of differentiated housing markets. Within a competitive framework the existence of a contract equilibrium, respecting certain enforceability conditions, is shown. The allocation, induced by these contract equilibria in the housing markets, is possibly characterized by demand rationing, even under the assumption of free contract markets.     

Public policy toward low income housing and filtering in housing markets

The article presents a model of a housing market in which dwelling units are constructed for relatively high income families and then gradually become available to lower income groups as they depreciate in quality and price. Assumptions are made concerning values for the parameters of the model, and the model is then solved using numerical methods. Alternative possible policies for increasing the housing consumption of the poor are simulated in the model.     

Depreciation,adverse selection and housing markets

Implications of incomplete buyer and seller information on product quality are considered for the durable goods market. Hypotheses on price paths over a working life for durables of a given vintage are formulated. Some empirical results for single-family dwellings are used to test the hypotheses.     

欧元对我国金融市场的影响分析

欧元从最初构想到进入正式流通历经坎坷,终于成功统一了欧洲多国的货币。在过去半个世纪中,国内、外学者提出并发展了关于最优货币区、国际货币体系改革和金融市场一体化等方面的多项理论,欧元的出现为这些理论提供了一个绝佳的验证机会。文章旨在研究欧元诞生后对国际金融市场以及对我国金融市场的影响。     

Efficiency of markets for heterogeneous,indivisible housing

A rental housing market with a finite number of traders is presented. Tenants trade money to landlords for the use of an indivisible, heterogeneous house. Equilibrium is defined as the outcome of a competitive bidding arrangement among agents, the bid rent approach. Using this bidding arrangement, the two fundamental welfare theorems are shown to apply to this market. The second welfare theorem is verified via an algorithm which constructs equilibrium prices for Pareto-efficient allocations.     

Implicit markets and the demand for housing characteristics

Important methodological problems in applying Rosen's (1974) model of implicit markets to housing characteristics are inadequately addressed in the literature. This paper summarizes these methodological issues and discusses advantages and disadvantages of various means of coping with these problems in empirical applications. Structural housing characteristics demand estimates are presented, along with an assessment of their accuracy. The results generally are insensitive to specification choices, suggesting the findings are plausible.     

Hedonic prices, price indices and housing markets

This paper extends hedonic price analysis to the formation of housing price indices measuring variation within a metropolitan area. In forming these indices fifteen submarkets, heterogeneous across time and space, are described within a short-run equilibrium model. Linear functional forms are generally rejected using a method proposed by Box and Cox. Aggregation of hedonic price coefficients into standardized units yields significantly higher housing prices in the central city than in its suburbs, as well as differential effects of structural and neighborhood improvements among submarkets.     

Monetary policy implications of housing shift-contagion across regional markets

This paper extends the shift-contagion concept to housing price returns in order to examine co-movements between pairs of regional housing markets in the US. It associates nonlinearities of housing prices with the monetary policy criteria at disaggregate levels. The framework with Markov-switching volatility in Gravelle et al. (Journal of International Economics 68:409–423, 2006) is utilized to investigate housing contagion phenomena which are defined as the switches in the structural transmission of common shocks across regional housing markets. The empirical results suggest that interactions between regional and nationwide housing markets switch across low-volatility and high-volatility regimes of common shocks for the Northeast and the West whose housing price returns are nonlinear. In addition, there is the significantly time-varying interdependence between the West and each of the other three regional housing markets. The estimated indicator of the monetary policy effectiveness implies that monetary policies can be effective in the Northeast and the West because they are more closely linked with other regional housing markets in volatile phases which are subject to housing crises. Noticeably, the broken interrelationships between regional housing markets and real economies in the 2001 recession imply high vulnerability to housing bubbles for regional markets, while short-term monetary policies can be effective in stabilizing the housing market turmoil around 2007.     

Currency news and international bond markets

We use a sample of 27 countries and 63 currency news announcements in an event study framework to examine the impact of currency news on international government bond markets. Our findings reveal a significant spillover of currency news into bond markets. Specifically, the evidence shows significant negative abnormal bond returns, whether measured in dollar terms or local currency terms, implying that currency news plays a role in changing the performance of international government bond markets. We also show that abnormal bond returns remain significantly negative even after controlling for macroeconomic variables. Our results are robust to using alternative risk model specifications, country-level data, and corporate bond data. Our evidence of the significant impact of currency news on bond markets provides essential insights to professional traders, policymakers, and academic researchers.     

The spatial impact of employment centres on housing markets

The spatial impact of employment centres on housing markets. Spatial Economic Analysis. Local economic growth tends to affect neighbourhood house prices unevenly. It has been observed that prime locations experience price hikes far in excess of the surrounding local area. Yet, this phenomenon is not well captured by existing economic models. This research provides a model of spatial and temporal interactions between housing and employment markets. The results show that rapid growth of employment centres increases house prices in neighbouring locations even after adjusting for fundamentals. It is concluded that spatial clustering of companies creates an option value for existing and potential employees that goes beyond ease of access for commuting purposes.     

Estimating household demand for housing attributes in rent-controlled markets

We estimate the household’s marginal willingness to pay for housing attributes in the rent-controlled sector, so where rents are not freely market determined. The application of hedonic price approaches to obtain estimates of the household’s value of housing characteristics is then invalid. We apply an alternative estimation approach based on residential mobility. In our application, we focus on the households’ willingness to pay for number of rooms as well as the willingness to pay to avoid a long commuting distance. Our estimates appear plausible. For example, for households in the rent-controlled sector are willing to pay about 7% of their household income for an additional room. The implied marginal costs of commuting are about €0.17–€0.23 per (one-way) kilometre.     

An alternative test of the hedonic theory of housing markets

In this paper the hedonic theory of housing markets is used to generate a multinomial logit model of household behavior in an urban housing market. Application of hedonic theory to housing markets is by now fairly familiar and a link to multinomial logit has also been established. However, by emphasizing more heavily the bid price interpretation of hedonic theory, this paper develops a new connection to econometric estimation that essentially involves running the usual logit equations in reverse. One advantage of this approach is that the link between the logit equations and hedonic theory involves bid price rather than utility functions, and this in turn permits the empirical results to be given an extremely clear interpretation. Furthermore, in contrast to the standard logit model, the extreme value distribution required to justify the estimation technique emerges endogenously as part of the analysis.     

A probabilistic approach to the structure of rental housing markets

A probabilistic view of the structure of urban housing markets is developed. The demand side is based on aggregate probabilistic demand functions derived from microbehavioral random utility theory. The supply side examines the short-run pricing of the housing stock by developing “asking rent theory,” which explains how a housing supplier must find the optimal rent that maximizes expected revenue. Next, concepts of aggregate market clearing and market equilibrium are defined. Finally, a two-submarket model with specific assumptions regarding the representation of demand and the nature of market signaling is examined in detail and is given a graphical illustration. In closing, directions for extending the probabilistic approach both within and beyond urban analysis are pointed out. All analysis in this paper is for a stationary urban economy, with the housing stock assumed fixed.