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The rental equivalence approach to nonrental housing in the consumer price index. evidence from Spain

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  • Arévalo, Raquel
  • Ruiz-Castillo, Javier

Abstract

This paper presents new evidence from Spain that challenges the usual objections to the possibility of applying the rental equivalent approach to determine the weight that non-rental housing services should have in the CPI. Data from the EPFs (Encuestas de Presupuestos Familiares) for 1980-81 and 1990-91 permit a satisfactory explanation of market rents in terms of an index of housing quality, two geographical variables and the year of occupancy. These regression results provide a way to impute a rental value to non-rental housing units that takes into account the possible selection bias induced by systematic differences in housing characteristics between the market rental sector and the non-rental stock. On average, such hedonic values are not that different from the self-imputations provided in the EPFs by the occupants of such dwellings. Therefore, the consequences for inflation of using either of the two alternatives to assess the importance of non-rental housing in the CPI system are small. Instead, if non-rental housing services are dropped from the CPI, then it is estimated that the bias in the measurement of inflation during the 1995-2000 period would be 0.35% per year. The lesson is that, given the alternatives, eliminating non-rental housing services from the CPI -as is done at present in Spain and several other European countries- is an unnecessarily crude form of dealing with a difficult problem

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  • Arévalo, Raquel & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2004. "The rental equivalence approach to nonrental housing in the consumer price index. evidence from Spain," UC3M Working papers. Economics we041704, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    • Handle: RePEc:cte:werepe:we041704
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Theodore M. Crone & Leonard I. Nakamura & Richard Voith, 1998. "Measuring housing services inflation," Working Papers 98-21, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    2. Richard Arnott, 1995. "Time for Revisionism on Rent Control?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 99-120, Winter.
    3. Richard Arnott, 1997. "Rent Control," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 391., Boston College Department of Economics.
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    1. Barrett, Alan & Kearney, Ide & O'Brien, Martin, 2007. "Quarterly Economic Commentary, Autumn 2007," Forecasting Report, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number QEC20073, June.
    2. Carlos Felipe Balcázar & Lidia Ceriani & Sergio Olivieri & Marco Ranzani, 2017. "Rent‐Imputation for Welfare Measurement: A Review of Methodologies and Empirical Findings," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(4), pages 881-898, December.
    3. McCarthy, Colm, 2007. "Owner-Occupied Housing Costs and Bias in the Consumer Price Index," Quarterly Economic Commentary: Special Articles, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), vol. 2007(3-Autumn), pages 83-88.
    4. Colm McCarthy, 2007. "Owner-Occupied Housing Costs and Bias in the Irish Consumer Price Index," Working Papers 200707, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    5. Raquel Arévalo Tomé & José María Chamorro Rivas, "undated". "Geographic Heterogeneity in Housing. Evidence from Spain," Studies on the Spanish Economy 203, FEDEA.
    6. Bellod Redondo, José Francisco, 2009. "El precio de la vivienda y la inflación en España," El Trimestre Económico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, vol. 0(302), pages 379-405, abril-jun.

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