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Housing bubbles

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Author Info

  • Óscar J. Arce

    () (Banco de España)

  • J. David López-Salido

    () (Federal Reserve Board)

Abstract

In this paper we use the notion of a housing bubble as an equilibrium in which some investors hold houses only for resale purposes and not for the expectation of a dividend, either in the form of rents or utility. We provide a life-cycle model where households face collateral constraints that tie their credit capacity to the value of their houses and examine the conditions under which housing bubbles can emerge. In such equilibria, the total housing stock is held by owners that extract utility from their homes, landlords that obtain rents, and investors. We show that an economy with tighter collateral constraints is more prone to bubbles which, in turn, tend to have a larger size but are less fragile in face of funddraining shocks. Our environment also allows for pure bubbles on useless assets. We find that multiple equilibria in which the economy moves endogenously from a pure bubble to a housing bubble regime and vice versa are possible. This suggests that high asset price volatility may be a natural consequence of asset shortages (or excess funding) that depress interest rates sufficiently so as to sustain an initial bubble. We also examine some welfare implications of the two types of bubbles and discuss some mechanisms to rule out equilibria with housing bubbles.

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File URL: http://www.bde.es/webbde/SES/Secciones/Publicaciones/PublicacionesSeriadas/DocumentosTrabajo/08/Fic/dt0815e.pdf
File Function: First version, August 2008
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Banco de España in its series Banco de España Working Papers with number 0815.

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Length: 53 pages
Date of creation: Aug 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:bde:wpaper:0815

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Related research

Keywords: collateral constraints; buy-to-let investment; housing bubbles; switching bubbles; welfare;

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References

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  1. Ricardo Caballero & Emmanuel Farhi & Mohamad L. Hammour, 2004. "Speculative Growth: Hints from the US Economy," NBER Working Papers 10518, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Jaume Ventura, 2004. "Bubbles and capital flows," 2004 Meeting Papers 102, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  3. Ricardo J. Caballero & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2005. "Bubbles and Capital Flow Volatility: Causes and Risk Management," NBER Working Papers 11618, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Ricardo J. Caballero, 2006. "On the Macroeconomics of Asset Shortages," NBER Working Papers 12753, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Alberto Martin & Jaume Ventura, 2003. "Economic growth with bubbles," Economics Working Papers 848, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Sep 2011.
  6. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth Rogoff, 1981. "Speculative hyperinflations in a maximizing models: can we rule them out?," International Finance Discussion Papers 195, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  7. Donald R. Haurin & Patric H. Hendershott & Susan M. Wachter, 1996. "Borrowing Constraints and the Tenure Choice of Young Households," NBER Working Papers 5630, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Henderson, J Vernon & Ioannides, Yannis M, 1983. "A Model of Housing Tenure Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 98-113, March.
  9. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2007. " Winners and Losers in Housing Markets," CDMA Conference Paper Series 0705, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis.
  10. Tirole, Jean, 1985. "Asset Bubbles and Overlapping Generations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1499-1528, November.
  11. Ortalo-Magné, François & Rady, Sven, 2005. "Housing Market Dynamics: On the Contribution of Income Shocks and Credit Constraint," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 50, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
  12. Boyan Jovanovic, 2007. "Bubbles in Prices of Exhaustible Resources," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000001414, David K. Levine.
  13. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2010. "Winners and Losers in House Markets," Working Papers 2010-5, Central Bank of Cyprus.
  14. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2011. "Winners and Losers in Housing Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 255-296, 03.
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Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. How can housing bubbles happen?
    by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2008-08-18 14:16:00
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Cited by:
  1. Lambertini, Luisa & Mendicino, Caterina & Punzi, Maria Teresa, 2010. "Expectations-Driven Cycles in the Housing Market," MPRA Paper 26128, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Yu Zhu & Randall Wright & Chao He, 2012. "Housing and Liquidity," 2012 Meeting Papers 94, Society for Economic Dynamics.

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  1. Economic Logic blog

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