A Cross-Section Analysis of the Income Elasticity of Housing Demand in Spain: Is There a Real Estate Bubble?

Much attention has been given to claims that real estate prices in Spain are overvalued in relation to income and how plummeting house prices can jeopardize the economy (The Economist, 2003 and IMF, 2004). The measure of income elasticity on housing expenditure is often of considerable interest to applied researchers and policy makers in real estate economics, but the problem of omitted variables in some estimation techniques can lead to severe biases. In this paper we estimate the income elasticity of the demand for housing in Spain based on the cross-section of prices and income in fifty Spanish provinces from 1996 to 2002. In comparison to long-run equilibrium models fitted with time-series data, our results show a much weaker role of income growth as a vehicle for house price increases in the long run. According to our estimates, the rate of growth of house prices in Spain between 1998 and 2003 points to a real estate bubble with prices above the long-term equilibrium level.     

Residential Construction Costs and the Supply of New Housing: Endogeneity and Bias in Construction Cost Indexes

Change in the level of residential construction affects macroeconomic conditions and is an important determinant of movements in house prices. Theory teaches us that increases in the cost of construction should reduce the supply of new housing. Yet empirical research has failed to find a consistent relationship between these costs and housing starts. This article introduces an entirely new set of micro-data on housing construction costs to study this issue. We develop quality-controlled, hedonic construction cost series from these data. Using this series, we estimate housing supply and construction cost functions for new single-family residences. This research demonstrates that bias in the commercial cost indexes used in existing housing supply studies is a likely cause of their poor performance in existing estimates of the supply of new single-family housing. The bias appears to be caused by an incorrect measure of labor costs and a failure to address the endogeneity of construction costs and construction activity. In contrast, starts regressions using the hedonic cost series generate much more sensible results. We find that housing starts are quite cost elastic; construction costs are endogenous in the new housing supply function, and the cost shares of material and labor in the structure of new residences are approximately 65 and 35%, respectively.     

住房耐用品、土地市场分割与货币失踪之谜

2008年国际金融危机后,我国M2供给增幅远高于CPI上涨幅度,这一现象被学界称为“货币失踪之谜”。本文构建了一个两部门新凯恩斯货币模型来研究这一问题。当外部需求下降后,央行降低利率以提振经济,房地产部门和非房地产部门同时扩张。由于住房属于耐用消费品,具有一定的金融属性,其需求对利率变化更敏感。利率下降后,住房需求相对普通消费品需求上升更多。因为存在土地市场分割,商住用地供给弹性较小,住房需求上升导致商住用地价格上升较多,地价上涨提升了房地产企业的抵押融资能力,房地产部门进一步扩张。普通消费品需求对利率反应小,需求较弱导致工业用地价格上升幅度较小,非房地产部门抵押融资能力小幅提升。因此,非房地产部门产出和CPI只温和扩张。Ramsey最优货币政策模拟表明,只有实现了房地产部门与非房地产部门均衡发展,才能实现社会福利最大化。     

中国城镇居民住房的需求与供给

本文研究了自1980年代后期中国城镇住房商品化以来城镇居民住房的需求与供给。我们从耐用消费品需求与供给的标准理论出发,在联立方程框架下估计城镇住房的需求与供给方程,得到了需求的收入与价格弹性及供给的价格弹性的估计值。通过对1987～2006年全国城镇总体水平年度数据的分析,我们发现城镇住房价格的快速上涨主要可由需求与供给的作用解释,即人均收入和建筑成本的变化决定了房价的整体趋势。城镇住房需求的(长期)收入弹性约为1,需求的价格弹性在0.5到0.6之间。住房存量总供给的价格弹性约为0.83。     

Price spreads and residential housing market liquidity

Most studies of housing market liquidity have measured liquidity in terms of time on the market (TOM), and have sought to explain TOM in terms of property characteristics and measures of market conditions. This paper departs from past studies of housing market liquidity by examining the spread between the listing and contract prices.We develop theory to explain the price spreads in the residential housing market. The model includes the list price of the home, the cost of the search, the standard deviation of offer prices, and TOM. Empirical tests using 3,597 sales for 25 months show a robust relationship of housing market spreads and these variables. Listing price and cost of search have the predicted positive coefficients, and the standard deviation of price offers is found to be negatively related to the price spread.     

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.     

Findings from a Cross-Sectional Housing Risk-Factor Model

Housing data from the last 25 years show that returns to residential real estate in the U.S. can be volatile and vary significantly among locations. The variations in returns are driven by economically as well as geographically and psychologically motivated factors, but so far, no asset pricing model that adequately explains systematic risks in cross-sectional housing returns is widely accepted. This paper proposes an asset pricing model for housing returns that includes a market-wide return factor, an economically motivated factor derived from income growth, a geographically based factor derived from land supply elasticity and a momentum factor, which is psychological in nature. The model explains well the systematic risks in housing returns and is robust to different portfolio segmentations. Moreover, the model illustrates that local risk factors indirectly capture the risk previously attributed to market-wide price changes. While housing is not actively traded when compared to other financial assets, understanding the risk-factors that explain housing return in cross-section provides important insight for real estate investors, builders, real estate future traders, homeowners, banks and other mortgage lenders.     

Import Tariff and Exchange Rate Transmission in a Small Open Economy

ABSTRACT

We present a small open economy DSGE model with internal and external sticky prices in an incomplete exchange rate pass-through environment. Import tariff is included as another variable that affects the law of one price. The model is calibrated for the Brazilian economy, and the responses of endogenous variables to shocks in import tariff, aggregate supply, monetary policy, and foreign interest are analyzed. The long-run effect of the first shock is deterioration in the terms of trade because the exchange rate appreciation following this shock offsets the initial effect of the increase in import tariff.     

Property-Value Impacts of an Environmental Disamenity: The Case of Landfills

The purpose of this article is to quantify the property-value impacts of a change in environmental quality by using the hedonic price model. In particular, we focus on the impact of the presence of landfills on nearby residential real estate prices. We combine elements of an urban location choice and hedonic pricing model to estimate the effects of the presence of multiple environmental disamenities on residential real estate prices. We explicitly account for temporal effects by including housing transactions in areas with both open and closed landfills and control for information effects. In addition, we treat property taxes and prices as being simultaneously determined. Our analysis suggests that closing landfills will not necessarily mitigate property-value impacts.     

Housing booms and bank growth

The rapid increase in U.S. house prices during the 2001–2006 period was accompanied by a historically rapid expansion of bank assets. We exploit cross-regional variation in local housing booms to study how housing demand shocks affected the growth of the banking sector. We estimate the effect of housing demand shocks that are orthogonal to observed non-housing demand shocks and credit supply shocks in each bank’s market area. We employ several instrumental variables that plausibly identify variation in local housing demand that is exogenous to local banks. We find that the housing boom had a large effect on bank asset growth—the cross-regional elasticity of bank growth with respect to housing demand shocks is around 0.6. The regional elasticity estimate suggests that housing demand shocks can potentially account for a large fraction of the growth of the banking sector during this period.     

中国一线城市房租形成机理和调控对策

房租是由房屋租赁市场的需求和供给两个方面决定的,而房屋租赁市场的需求和供给都受到房屋交易市场所形成的房价的影响。房价对房屋租赁市场需求的影响主要是由于房屋租赁市场和房屋交易市场的替代效应所导致,房价对房屋租赁市场供给的影响主要由房屋租售比和房价的上涨幅度决定。我国一线城市房价近十年的平均年上涨率为10%左右,这导致了我国一线城市的房屋租售比维持在极低的水平。随着房价的平稳,房租必然大幅上涨,故必须采取措施增加一线城市房屋租赁市场的供给,以供给量的大幅增加稳定房租。     

Spatial Variation in the Determinants of House Prices and Apartment Rents in China

This paper provides an examination of China??s residential real estate market at the county level using data from that country??s 2000 census. The market is a new one, having only been fully established in 1998. The analysis in the paper is in the form of an aggregate (county-level) hedonic model specified in two versions. Global parameters results are estimated using spatial error model specifications while more local effects are estimated by geographically weighted regression. Global results are typical in that structural characteristics such as floor space and contextual characteristics such as level of in-migration are important in residential prices. Local results, however, indicate significant spatial variation in the effect of both structural amenities and locational context on housing prices. In a simpler specification, rents are shown to respond positively to both median house prices levels and the supply of apartments available at market prices, but also with significant spatial variation across China.     

土地价格、土地财政与宏观经济波动

本文在一个包含金融加速器的新凯恩斯动态一般均衡模型中引入土地财政和政府隐性担保融资机制,借此考察在土地财政体制下土地价格的波动特征、驱动因素和对宏观经济的影响机制,同时使用2004Q1到2016Q1的中国宏观经济数据对模型进行贝叶斯估计。方差分解的结果表明,在样本期间,土地需求冲击、土地供给冲击和货币政策冲击是驱动中国土地价格变动的主要因素,货币政策冲击和土地供给冲击是引起短期土地价格波动的主要因素,土地需求冲击在长期中驱动了土地价格波动。数值模拟结果发现,土地财政对宏观经济波动具有放大效应,正向的土地需求冲击将推高土地价格,并通过抵押约束机制引起宏观经济波动,地方政府对土地财政的依赖将放大该效应,并进一步对土地价格形成正向反馈,从而引起宏观经济更大的波动;在土地财政体制下,正向的土地供给冲击有助于抑制土地价格上涨,并减少宏观经济波动。     

Speculation and price bubbles in the Korean and Japanese real estate markets

This article investigates the possibility of speculation having caused the prices of land and housing to deviate from their given long-run equilibrium levels in Korea and Japan. We modeled speculation by incorporating the expected future price into the demand equation. The existence of growing rational bubbles was tested on Korean and Japanese data using the standard econometric technique for estimating linear rational expectations models. Our analysis of the Korean annual data suggests that a growing rationale bubble existed during the 1974–1989 period, nominal or real. Estimation results of the same model using Japanese annual data also confirmed the existence of a bubble in land price. Contrary to our analysis of land price data, the evidence of the bubble was much less obvious in Korean annual housing price data. We therefore estimated the model using quarterly data and found that the existence of a bubble could not be established in housing prices. This finding was also consistent with the trend of the rent-to-value ratio series in apartment units. Our results need to be taken with caution because our approach suffers from the common econometric problem of possible mis-specification of the model and because of the small size of the sample.     

Fundamental Real Estate Prices: An Empirical Estimation with International Data

We propose two alternative models to estimate fundamental prices on real estate markets. The first model is based on a no-arbitrage condition between renting and buying. The second model interprets the period costs as the result of market equilibrium between housing demand and supply. We estimate both models for the USA, the UK, Japan, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. We find that observed prices deviate substantially and for long periods from their estimated fundamental values. However, we find some evidence that, in the long-run, actual prices tend to return to their fundamental values progressively. This result is due to both impulse–response functions and forecast analyses. In particular, we find that using the fundamental price significantly increases the accuracy of out-of-sample long-term forecasts of the price.

The Housing Market in the United Kingdom: Effects of House Price Volatility on Households

This paper describes the economics of the housing market and explains why house prices are likely to be more volatile than prices in other markets. It illustrates the volatility of house prices relative to some other key economic variables in the UK. The paper then considers the implications of variability in house prices for household behaviour, surveying a number of studies for the UK and elsewhere on the effects of house price volatility on consumption spending, indebtedness, labour supply, and entry to and exit from the homeownership market.     

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.     

OPEC in world financial markets: Oil prices and interest rates

This article examines the relationship between the real rate of interest in world financial markets and the price of oil. If OPEC cannot be viewed as a ‘small’ participant in world financial markets, and should its savings and portfolio behavior differ from that of the rest of the world, then wealth shifts to or from OPEC would affect world interest rates. Subsequently, this paper examines the magnitude of oil price changes required to elicit a significant interest rate change. Our empirical results shed light on OPEC's behavior, which at times may differ from a pure profit maximizing cartel. The short-run price elasticity of the world demand for oil is -0.04 and the long-run elasticity is -0.10. OPEC itself, as expected, faces higher elasticities of -0.08 and -0.36, respectively. The demand elasticity of oil with respect to ‘world’ GNP is 0.8. A major objective of this paper has been to determine the effect of changes in oil prices on world interest rates, and vice versa. Our results imply that only very large oil price increases will have a significant impact on world interest rates. However, oil prices show a non-negligible sensitivity to changes in world interest rates.     

人口年龄结构与住宅价格调控

在人12老龄化背景下．当人12总量和年龄结构发生质的变化时,将对住宅价格产生深远影响。本文在人口学研究基础上。有效结合住宅销售价格指数．通过逐步回归的方法获得购房适龄人口数量与住宅价格的关系模型,同时创新性地纳入莱宾斯坦人口发展五阶段理论,通过Logarithmic曲线模型进行量化分析。结论显示,在假定条件下．随着未来适龄购房人口的减少,国内住房价格将在2018年出现拐点并逐步回落,并在2030年前后降至2000年水平（剔除通胀因素）,之后将处于长期低迷状态。因此当前在遏制住房价格过快上涨的同时,应从更长远的视角构建调控思路。     

欧洲中央银行货币政策绩效评价:1999～2005

欧洲中央银行(ECB)围绕价格稳定目标确立起其货币政策战略。自1999年EMU正式建立以来,ECB的这一战略是否取得了成功呢?本文采用1999￣2005年数据,首先借助HICP通胀率、通胀预期等指标分析ECB货币政策在控制短期和中长期通胀方面的成效;然后进一步分阶段描述ECB货币政策行为和通胀率等主要宏观指标的内在联系。本文认为欧元区近些年来的通胀率超标主要是负向供给冲击尤其是能源价格冲击的结果;从主要指标看,ECB的货币政策战略已经取得初步成功;但是欧元区未来经济走势将对ECB的货币政策提出更严峻的挑战。