The Unassuming Economist

On international house pricing:

• Measuring House Prices in the Long Run: Insights from Dublin, 1900-2015 – AEA
• A Tale of Two Countries: Comparing Booms, Busts and Bubbles in the United States and Chinese Housing Markets – Paper
• Analyzing the Changes in the Distribution of House Prices in Beijing – AEA
• Locally Weighted Quantile House Price Indices and Distribution in Japanese Cities, 1986 – AEA
• Do Airbnb Properties Affect House Prices? – Paper
• The Sharing Economy and Housing Affordability: Evidence from Airbnb – Paper
• Think Globally, Aggregate Locally: Index Consistency in the Presence Asymmetric Appreciation – Paper
• S. Metropolitan House Price Dynamics – Paper
• Did Investors Price Regional Housing Bubbles? A Tale of Two Markets – Paper
• Monetary Policy and the Housing Market – Paper
• Teardowns, Popups and Bump-outs: What Do Building Permits Say About Housing Supply? – Paper
• House Price Beliefs and Leverage Choice – Paper
• Do Gasoline Prices Affect Residential Property Values? – Paper
• Bank Risk-taking and the Real Economy: Evidence From the Housing Boom and its Aftermath – AEA
• Do Financial Constraints Cool a Housing Boom? Theory and Evidence From a Macroprudential Policy on Million Dollar Homes – Paper
• Housing Appreciation and Marginal Land Supply in Monocentric Cities with Topography – Paper
• Prospect Theory, Reverse Disposition Effect and the Housing Market – Paper
• How Do Households Discount Over Centuries? Evidence From Singapore’s Private Housing Market – Paper
• Property Right Restriction and House Prices – Paper and Presentation
• Cyclical Housing Prices in Flatland – Paper and Presentation
• House Prices, Mortgage Debt and Labor Mobility – AEA
• Model-Free Estimation of the Hedonic Price for Housing Space – Paper

On household finance:

• Household Finance and Consumer Behavior – Paper
• The Housing Crisis and the Rise in Student Loans – Paper
• Home Equity and the Timing of Claiming Social Security Retirement Income – AEA
• The Effect of Debt on Default and Consumption: Evidence From Housing Policy in the Great Recession – Paper
• Housing Wealth Effects: The Long View – Paper

On mortgages:

• Time to Homeownership and Mortgage Design: Income Sharing and Saving Incentive – Paper
• The Effect of Changing Mortgage Payments on Default and Prepayment: Evidence From HAMP Resets – Paper and Presentation
• The Effect of Interest Rates on Home Buying: Evidence From a Discontinuity in Mortgage Insurance Premiums – Paper and Presentation
• Liquidity Provision, Credit Risk and the Bond Spread: New Evidence From the Subprime Mortgage Market – Paper
• Collateral Damage: The Impact of Shale Gas on Mortgage Lending – Paper
• Are Mortgage Regulations Affecting Entrepreneurship? – Paper
• Eyes Wide Shut? Mortgage Insurance During the Housing Boom – AEA
• Effects of FHA Loan Limit Increases by ESA 2008: Housing Demand and Adverse Selection – AEA
• The Macroeconomic Effect of Government Asset Purchases: Evidence From Post-war United States Housing Credit Policy – Paper and Presentation
• How Much Are Car Purchases Driven by Home Equity Withdrawal? – Paper
• How Home Equity Extraction and Reverse Mortgages Affect the Credit Outcomes of Senior Households – AEA
• An Empirical Study of Termination Behavior of Reverse Mortgages – Paper
• Mortgage Default with Positive Equity – Paper
• Lending Competition and Non-Traditional Mortgages – Paper

On behavioral real estate:

• How Do the CEO Political Leanings Affect REIT Business Decisions? – Paper
• Outshine to Outbid: Weather-induced Sentiments on Housing Market – Paper and Presentation
• Contact High: The External Effects of Retail Marijuana Establishments on House Prices – AEA
• Relational Contracts, Reputational Concerns, and Appraiser Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market – Paper

On affordable housing:

• Neighbors and Networks: The Role of Social Interactions on the Residential Choices of Housing Choice Voucher Holders – Paper
• Neighborhood Choices, Neighborhood Effects and Housing Vouchers – AEA
• Waiting for Affordable Housing – Paper
• Long-Run Outcomes of HOPE VI Public Housing Demolitions for Children – AEA
• The Effects of Residential Evictions on Low-Income Adults – Paper

On property taxes:

• Greener on the Other Side? Spatial Discontinuities in Property Tax Rates and their Effects on Tax Morale – AEA
• The Hated Property Tax: Salience, Tax Rates, and Tax Revolts – AEA
• Measuring Both Direct and Spillover Effects of Taxation: Evidence From a Property Tax Break for First-Time Buyers – Paper
• Impact of Housing Tax Preferences on Home Values and Neighborhood Sorting – AEA
• Do Local Governments Tax Homeowner Communities Differently? – Paper

On agency and bargaining:

• Why Disclose Less Information? Toward Resolving a Disclosure Puzzle in the Housing Market – Paper
• Examining Both Sides of the Transaction: Bargaining in the Housing Market – Paper
• Investor Bargaining Power, Rental Externalities and Housing Prices – Paper
• When are Real Estate Flippers Smarter Than the Crowd? – Paper

On homeownership:

• African-American Mayors, Home Ownership and Mortgage Lending in US Cities – Paper
• Do Homeowners Save More Than Renters? Evidence From the Panel on Household Finances – Paper and Presentation
• Home Sweet Home: (Mis-)Beliefs About the Extent to Which Home Ownership Makes People Happy – Paper
• Job Separation Risk and Home Ownership: Evidence From Assistant Professors – AEA
• Identifying the Benefits from Home Ownership: A Swedish Experiment – Paper
• Owned Now Rented Later? Housing Stock Transitions and Market Dynamics – Paper
• Diverted Homeowners and Rental Affordability – AEA
• School Quality, Latent Demand, and Bidding Wars for Houses – AEA
• Wage Trickle Down vs. Rent Trickle Down: How Does Increase in College Graduates Affect Wages and Rents? – AEA

Photo by Aliis Sinisalu

From a new paper by Oscar Jorda, Katharina Knoll, Dmitry Kuvshinov, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor:

“This paper answers fundamental questions that have preoccupied modern economic thought since the 18th century. What is the aggregate real rate of return in the economy? Is it higher than the growth rate of the economy and, if so, by how much? Is there a tendency for returns to fall in the long-run? Which particular assets have the highest long-run returns? We answer these questions on the basis of a new and comprehensive dataset for all major asset classes, including—for the first time—total returns to the largest, but often ignored, component of household wealth, housing. The annual data on total returns for equity, housing, bonds, and bills cover 16 advanced economies from 1870 to 2015, and our new evidence reveals many new insights and puzzles.”

“This paper, perhaps for the first time, investigates the long history of asset returns for all the major categories of an economy’s investable wealth portfolio. Our investigation has confirmed many of the broad patterns that have occupied much research in economics and finance. The returns to risky assets, and risk premiums, have been high and stable over the past 150 years, and substantial diversification opportunities exist between risky asset classes, and across countries. Arguably the most surprising result of our study is that long run returns on housing and equity look remarkably similar. Yet while returns are comparable, residential real estate is less volatile on a national level, opening up new and interesting risk premium puzzles.”

On cross-country:

• Demographic Patterns of Reurbanisation and Housing in Metropolitan Regions in the US and Germany – Comparative Population Studies

On the US:

• A Shared Future: Data Democratization and Spatial Heterogeneity in the Housing Market – The Joint Center for Housing Studies
• LTV vs. LTI Constraints: When Did They Bind, and How Do They Interact? – University of Copenhagen
• Asymmetric effects of monetary policy in regional housing markets – Norges Bank
• Fannie and Freddie Continue in Limbo while Congress Looks for a Permanent Fix for the Housing Finance Market – Cato Institute
• Housing Disease and Public School Finances – NBER
• Investors Pile Into Suburban Rental Housing – Wall Street Journal

On other countries:

• [Singapore] Singapore authorities’ housing market warning may fall on deaf ears – Reuters

Photo by Aliis Sinisalu

The IMF’s latest report on Bolivia says that:

“The FSL [Financial Services Law] has resulted in rapid credit growth directed to specific sectors and social housing (…) Housing lending should be closely monitored and the authorities should finalize and publish a housing price index. (…) More market-oriented mechanisms to improve financial access should be considered and the housing loan portfolio monitored closely.”

On cross-country:

• Institutional settings and urban sprawl: evidence from Europe – Journal of Housing Economics
• Bubbles and crashes: A vicious cycle of self- fulfilling investor sentiment – London School of Economics
• Houses, up and down: An international comparison of house price movement – Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
• Integrating national policies to deliver compact, connected cities: an overview of transport and housing – Coalition for Urban Transitions
• Space matters: Understanding the real effects of macroeconomic variations in cross-country housing price movements – Economic Letters
• The Crisis in Affordable Housing Is a Problem for Cities Everywhere – World Resources Institute

On the US:

• The Long View of Housing Wealth Effects – Columbia University
• Why Housing Supply Matters – Oregon Office of Economic Analysis
• Reactions to the tax plan: Curbed, New York Times, Reuters, Seattle Times, Seeking Alpha
• Owned Now Rented Later? Housing Stock Transitions and Market Dynamics – Syracuse University
• BuildZoom Research: A Year in Review – BuildZoom
• Measuring population estimates of housing insecurity in the United States: A comprehensive approach – Equitable Growth
• What “affordable housing” really means – Vox
• What Would it Take to Make Neighborhoods More Equitable and Integrated? – Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
• The Libertarian: How Housing Got So Expensive – Hoover Institution
• A Decline in Multifamily Housing Permits Offsets a Gain in Single-Family Permits – American Institute for Economic Research
• The Best Housing Market in a Decade, Now What? – Freddie Mac

On other countries:

• [Australia] Does Population Growth Cause Rising Dwelling Prices? – LF Economics
• [Canada] Non-residents focus on new condos in Vancouver, Toronto – Reuters
• [China] Smaller cities drive China’s new home prices in Nov, defying curbs – Reuters
• [Czech Republic] Czech central bank acts to cool buoyant property market – Financial Times
• [Germany] Germany a hot destination for overseas buyers – Global Property Guide
• [Peru] Rapid Rural-to-Urban Migration to Lima: A Need for a Sustainable Housing Reform – Lehigh University
• [Spain] A Decade After Bubble, Spanish Real Estate a Hot Buy Again – Bloomberg
• [United Arab Emirates] Mortgages: Catch me if you can – Reidin
• [United Arab Emirates] Dubai / Abu Dhabi Residential Property Price Indices: November 2017 Results – Reidin
• [United Kingdom] Is owning a house cheaper than renting it? – Medium

Photo by Aliis Sinisalu