Developments and convergence of real housing prices in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic: focus on voivodeship capitals

The paper aims to present and assess the changes in real housing prices in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyse transaction prices of residential premises in a multi-family housing (apartments) in the primary and secondary markets within 16 administrative capitals of voivodeships. We use quarterly data on House Prices Database collected by the National Bank of Poland and data on quarterly price indices of consumer goods and services from Statistics Poland. The research period covers the period 2018-2021, with distinction into COVID-19- and pre-COVID-19 periods. We observe the highest housing prices in Warszawa, Gdańsk, Kraków, and Wrocław, while the lowest in Zielona Góra and Kielce. Surprisingly, the growth rate in real housing prices in the pandemic sub-period is lower than in corresponding pre-COVID-19 period. In the COVID-19 sub-period, we observe the most significant increases in real estate prices in Zielona Góra and Szczecin in the primary market, and Kraków, Lublin, and Łódź in the secondary market. Additionally, we reveal the existence of regional price convergence in the housing market in analysed cities, both in primary and secondary markets. However, we do not observe a common price convergence, but only convergence clubs (city-groups) where the housing prices tend to converge in the COVID-19 sub-period.

Economic Growth as a Factor for Price Convergence in EU Countries

The article examines the impact of economic growth on the general price level in different countries and that in individual product groups. On this basis, it becomes possible to derive some features of the price convergence process in EU countries for the 1996-2019 period. Emphasis is placed on trends in price levels in Bulgaria, with a special place given to products with administratively set prices and those in which excise duties form a large share of the price. This aims to highlight the direct role of the state in the price convergence of these product groups. The theoretical basis of the study is the Balassa-Samuelson model. The empirical study of the relationship between economic growth and price levels is carried out through regression analysis and panel regressions, with the latter analyzing the change in the strength of the relationship over time and the country-specific characteristics of this relation.

Climate change, weather shocks, and price convergence in pre-industrial Germany

Market integration of European inland regions such as Germany caught up on North-Western Europe from the seventeenth century onwards. As many studies rely on grain prices and the pre-industrial era was a period of climate change, a relevant question is in how far changing weather shocks impact on the measurement of convergence trends. We create a new high-quality grain price dataset and apply four methodologies to quantify market integration robust to weather shocks and climate change. Population growth and river transport turn out as plausible explanations for price convergence rather than climate change.

European Goods Market Integration in the Very Long Run: From the Black Death to the First World War

This paper examines price convergence and changes in the efficiency of wheat markets, covering the period from the mid-fourteenth to the early twentieth century and most of Europe. The analysis is based on a new data set of prices from almost 600 markets. Unlike previous research, we find that convergence was a predominantly pre-modern phenomenon. It started in the late fifteenth century, advanced rapidly until the beginning of the seventeenth century when it temporarily stalled, resumed after the Thirty Years’ War, and accelerated after the Napoleonic Wars in response to trade liberalization. From the late 1840s, convergence petered out and turned into divergence after 1875 as policy decisions dominated technological change. Our results point to the ‘Little Divergence’ between North-Western Europe and the rest of the continent as starting about 1600. Long-term improvements in market efficiency began in the early sixteenth century, with advances over time being as uneven as in price convergence. We trace this to differential institutional change and the non-synchronous spread of modern media and systems of information transmission that affected the ability of merchants to react to news.