The Unassuming Economist

A new paper “assess the spillovers from the oil sector to the housing market cycle using quarterly data for 20 net oil-exporting and -importing industrial countries, and employing continuous- and discrete-time duration models. [The paper does] not uncover a statistically significant difference in the average duration of booms and normal times in the housing markets of those net oil-importers and net oil-exporters. Similarly, the degree of exposure to commodity price fluctuations does not seem to significantly affect the housing market cycle. However, [the authors] find that housing booms are shorter when oil prices increase than housing busts when oil prices decrease. We also show that the net oil-importers are more vulnerable to protracted housing slump episodes than the net-oil exporters.”

Also see another related work on housing and oil prices.