Housing Wealth and Consumption: Evidence from Geographically Linked Microdata

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (11) ◽  
pp. 3415-3446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aditya Aladangady
Keyword(s):  
Causal Effect ◽  
House Price ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
Borrowing Constraints ◽  
Housing Wealth ◽  
Home Equity ◽  
Regional Heterogeneity ◽  
Primary Driver ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Home Values

Rising home values also raise the cost of living, offsetting their impact on consumption. However, additional home equity collateral can loosen borrowing constraints, increasing spending for households that value their current endowment of housing highly. I use geographically linked microdata to exploit regional heterogeneity in housing markets and identify the causal effect of house price fluctuations on consumer spending. A $1 increase in home values leads to a $0.047 increase in spending for homeowners, but a negligible response for renters. Results reflect large responses among credit constrained households, suggesting looser borrowing constraints are a primary driver of the MPC out of housing wealth. (JEL D12, D14, E21, R31)

scholarly journals Housing Wealth or Collateral: How Home Value Shocks Drive Home Equity Extraction and Spending

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Yde Andersen ◽  
Søren Leth-Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Interest Rates ◽  
Mortgage Market ◽  
Housing Wealth ◽  
Home Equity ◽  
Fixed Rate ◽  
Mortgage Loans ◽  
Mortgage Debt ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Home Value ◽  
Home Values

Abstract We examine whether unanticipated changes in home values drive spending and mortgage-based equity extraction. To do this, we use longitudinal survey data with subjective information about current and expected future home values to calculate unanticipated home value changes. We link this information at the individual level to high quality administrative records containing information about mortgage borrowing as well as savings in various financial instruments. We find that the marginal propensity to increase mortgage debt is 3%–5% of unanticipated home value gains. We find no adjustment to other components of the portfolio, and we find that mortgage extraction leads to an increase in spending. The effect is driven by young households with high loan-to-value ratios, which is consistent with the effect being driven by collateral constraints. Further, we find that the effect is driven by home owners who actively take out a new mortgage. The price effect is magnified among fixed rate mortgage (FRM) borrowers who have an incentive to refinance their loans to lock in a lower market rate. These results point to the importance of the mortgage market in transforming price increases into spending and suggest that monetary policy can play an important role in transforming housing wealth gains into spending by affecting interest rates on mortgage loans.

scholarly journals Modigliani Meets Minsky: Inequality, Debt, and Financial Fragility in America, 1950-2016

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-77
Author(s):  
Alina K. Bartscher ◽  
Moritz Kuhn ◽  
Moritz Schularick ◽  
Ulrike I. Steins
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
House Price ◽  
The United States ◽  
Financial Fragility ◽  
Income Growth ◽  
Household Debt ◽  
Housing Wealth ◽  
Home Equity ◽  
Middle Class Families

This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level dataset that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in the United States over the past seven decades. The data show that increased borrowing by middle-class families with low income growth played a central role in rising indebtedness. Debt-to-income ratios have risen most dramatically for households between the 50th and 90th percentiles of the income distribution. While their income growth was low, middle-class families borrowed against the sizable housing wealth gains from rising home prices. Home equity borrowing accounts for about half of the increase in U.S. household debt between the 1970s and 2007. The resulting debt increase made balance sheets more sensitive to income and house price fluctuations and turned the American middle class into the epicenter of growing financial fragility.

The Causal Effect of Bankruptcy Law on the Cost of Finance

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Andre Benigno Serrano-Velarde ◽  
Giacomo Rodano ◽  
Emanuele Tarantino
Keyword(s):  
Causal Effect ◽  
Bankruptcy Law ◽  
The Cost

scholarly journals Speculative housing markets and rent control: insights from nonlinear economic dynamics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noemi Schmitt ◽  
Frank Westerhoff
Keyword(s):  
Housing Market ◽  
Housing Stock ◽  
House Price ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
Market Model ◽  
Market Dynamics ◽  
Rent Control ◽  
Forecasting Accuracy ◽  
Expectation Formation ◽  
Rent Level

AbstractWe propose a novel housing market model to explore the effectiveness of rent control. Our model reveals that the expectation formation and learning behavior of boundedly rational homebuyers, switching between extrapolative and regressive expectation rules subject to their past forecasting accuracy, may create endogenous housing market dynamics. We show that policymakers may use rent control to reduce the rent level, although such policies may have undesirable effects on the house price and the housing stock. However, we are also able to prove that well-designed rent control may help policymakers to stabilize housing market dynamics, even without creating housing market distortions.

scholarly journals Housing wealth, mortgages and Australians’ labour force participation in later life

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110265
Author(s):  
Rachel Ong ◽  
Gavin A Wood ◽  
Melek Cigdem
Keyword(s):  
Household Income ◽  
House Prices ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Labour Force Participation ◽  
Urban Housing ◽  
Housing Wealth ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Imputed Rent

In the life cycle model of consumption and saving, homeownership is an important vehicle for horizontal redistribution. Households accumulate wealth in owner-occupied housing during working lives before benefiting from imputed rent streams in retirement. But in some countries housing wealth’s welfare role has broadened as owners increasingly use flexible mortgages to smooth consumption during working lives. One consequence is higher outstanding mortgages later in life, a burden exacerbated by high real house prices that compel home buyers to demand mortgages that are a growing multiple of their incomes. We investigate whether these developments are prompting longer working lives, an idea that is especially relevant in countries offering relatively low government pensions. Australia is one such country. We use the 2001–2017 panels of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to estimate hazard models of exits from the Australian labour force as workers approach pensionable age. We find that those with high outstanding mortgage debts are more likely to postpone retirement, as are those with relatively low amounts of private pension wealth. These results are stronger in urban housing markets, and especially among males.

scholarly journals Saving Behavior and Housing Wealth Evidence from German Micro Data

2018 ◽  
Vol 238 (6) ◽  
pp. 501-539
Author(s):  
Sören Gröbel ◽  
Dorothee Ihle
Keyword(s):  
House Prices ◽  
House Price ◽  
Wealth Effect ◽  
Housing Wealth ◽  
Price Shocks ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
Saving Behavior ◽  
Housing Wealth Effect ◽  
Important Position

Abstract Housing property is the most important position in a household’s wealth portfolio. Even though there is strong evidence that house price cycles and saving patterns behave synchronously, the underlying causes remain controversial. The present paper examines if there is a wealth effect of house prices on savings using household-level panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the period 1996-2012. We find that young homeowners decrease their savings in response to unanticipated house price shocks, whereas old households hardly respond to house price changes. Although effects are relatively low in magnitude, we interpret this as evidence of a housing wealth effect.

Housing market networks in China's major cities: a conditional causality approach

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Yang ◽  
Nannan Yuan ◽  
Shichao Hu
Keyword(s):  
Housing Market ◽  
Granger Causality ◽  
House Price ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
Second Tier ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Secondary Housing Market ◽  
Market Networks

PurposeTo explore the state of this conditional Granger causality when other cities are not factors, we investigate housing market networks in China's major cities by using a combination of conditional Granger causality and network analysis.Design/methodology/approachAlthough housing market networks have been well discussed for different countries, the question of housing market networks in China's major cities based on the conditional causality perspective has yet to be answered.FindingsWe discover that second-tier cities are more influential than first-tier cities. Although the connectivity of the primary housing market is more complex than the diversified connectivity observed in the secondary housing market, both markets are scale-free networks that exhibit high stability. Moreover, we reveal that geographic conditions and economic development jointly determine the housing market's modular hierarchical structure. Our results provide meaningful information for both Chinese policymakers and investors.Originality/valueBy excluding the influence of other cities, our conditional Granger causality identifies the true casual relation between cities' housing markets. Moreover, it is the first paper to consider the primary housing market and secondary housing market separately. Specifically, Chinese prefer new house rather than second-hand house from both speculative and self-housing. Generally speaking, the new house price is lower than the second-hand house price since the new house is off-plan property. Therefore, understanding the difference between primary and secondary housing markets will provide useful information for both policymakers and speculators.

Housing markets and housing policy in the Nordics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Páll Tómas Finnsson
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Housing Prices ◽  
House Price ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
Ethnic Segregation ◽  
Price Bubbles ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
Cost Of Construction ◽  
Policy Mechanisms

The Nordic Economic Policy Review (NEPR) is an annual publication presenting some of the latest and cutting-edge research into selected topics of economic policy. This year’s edition dives into the Nordic housing markets, examining some of the key policy mechanisms behind the rapidly rising housing prices, as well as the impacts on social welfare and social and ethnic segregation. The theme is selected by the NEPR steering group, which consists of representatives from the Nordic Ministries of Finance, Nordregio, and the NEPR editor. This publication provides a short summary of the five NEPR 2021 articles, which seek to answer the following questions: André Anundsen: What is the prevalence of house price bubbles in the Nordics? Erlend Eide Bø: Do buy-to-let investments lead to higher housing prices? Mats Bergman and Sten Nyberg: What explains the large increase in the relative cost of construction? Niku Määttänen: How can housing taxation improve social welfare? Essi Eerola: How do Nordic housing policies affect affordability and integration?

The Impact of Military Spending on Economic Development

2018 ◽  
pp. 182-191
Author(s):  
Saptarshi Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
Military Spending ◽  
Military Expenditure ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
External Threats ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact

Some countries spend a relatively large percentage of GDP on their militaries in order to preserve or secure their status as global powers. Others do so because they are ruled by military governments or aggressive regimes that pose a military threat to their neighbors or their own populations. It is debatable whether there is a causal relationship between military spending and economic growth in the economy. It is again a policy debate how much to allocate funds for civilian and how much for military expenditure. Under these puzzling results of the impact of military expenditure on economic growth which is frequently found to be non-significant or negative, yet most countries spend a large fraction of their GDP on defense and the military. The chapter tries to investigate the relationship between military spending and economic growth in India. It also sees whether external threats, corruption, and other relevant controls have any causal effect. This chapter obtains that additional expenditure on Indian military in the presence of additional threat is significantly detrimental to growth implying that India cannot afford to fight or demonstrate power at the cost of its development.

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