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House Prices and Consumer Welfare

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Author Info
Bajari, Patrick (Stanford U)
Benkard, C. Lanier
Krainer, John (Federal Bank of San Francisco)

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Abstract

We develop a new approach to measuring changes in consumer welfare due to changes in the price of owner-occupied housing. In our approach, an agent's welfare adjustment is defined as the transfer required to keep expected discounted utility constant given a change in current house prices. We demonstrate that, up to a first-order approximation, there is no aggregate change in welfare due to price increases in the existing housing stock. This follows from a simple market clearing condition where capital gains experienced by sellers are exactly offset by welfare losses to buyers. We show that this result holds (approximately) even in a model that accounts for changes in consumption and investment plans prompted by current house price changes. There can, however, be changes in welfare due to additions to the stock of housing, or to changes in the price of renovating and upgrading the existing stock of housing. For the United States, we estimate the welfare cost of house price appreciation to be an average of $127 per household per year over the 1984-1998 period.

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Paper provided by Stanford University, Graduate School of Business in its series Research Papers with number 1840.

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Date of creation: Jan 2004
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Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:1840

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Kearl, J R, 1979. "Inflation, Mortgages, and Housing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 1115-38, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Poterba, James M, 1984. "Tax Subsidies to Owner-occupied Housing: An Asset-Market Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 99(4), pages 729-52, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Blackley, Dixie M. & Follain, James R., 1996. "In search of empirical evidence that links rent and user cost," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3-4), pages 409-431, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Glenn Canner & Karen Dynan & Wayne Passmore, 2002. "Mortgage refinancing in 2001 and early 2002," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), issue Dec, pages 469-481. [Downloadable!]
  5. Edward L. Glaeser & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2002. "The Benefits of the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction," NBER Working Papers 9284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. DiPasquale, Denise & Wheaton, William C., 1992. "The cost of capital, tax reform, and the future of the rental housing market," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 337-359, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Karl E. Case, John M. Quigley, Robert J. Shiller., 2001. "Comparing Wealth Effects: The Stock Market versus The Housing Market," Economics Working Papers E01-308, University of California at Berkeley. [Downloadable!]
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  8. Hilary W. Hoynes & Daniel L. McFadden, 1996. "The Impact of Demographics on Housing and Nonhousing Wealth in the United States," NBER Chapters, in: The Economic Effects of Aging in the United States and Japan, pages 153-194 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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  9. Diewert, W. E., 1976. "Exact and superlative index numbers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 115-145, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Dougherty, Ann & Van Order, Robert, 1982. "Inflation, Housing Costs, and the Consumer Price Index," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 154-64, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. DiPasquale Denise & Wheaton William C., 1994. "Housing Market Dynamics and the Future of Housing Prices," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 1-27, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. Robert J. Gordon & Todd vanGoethem, 2005. "A Century of Housing Shelter Prices: Is There a Downward Bias in the CPI?," NBER Working Papers 11776, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Ricardo M. Sousa, 2009. "Wealth Effetcs on Consumption: Evidence from the euro area," NIPE Working Papers 12/2009, NIPE - Universidade do Minho. [Downloadable!]
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  3. Antonia Diaz & Maria Jose Luengo Prado, 2008. "On the User Cost and Homeownership," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(3), pages 584-613, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. W. Erwin Diewert & Alice O. Nakamura, 2009. "Accounting for housing in a CPI," Working Papers 09-4, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Nikola Dvornak & Marion Kohler, 2003. "Housing Wealth, Stock Market Wealth and Consumption: A Panel Analysis for Australia," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2003-07, Reserve Bank of Australia. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Jan Rouwendal, 2009. "Housing Wealth and Household Portfolios in an Ageing Society," De Economist, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 1-48, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Todd Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2005. "Owner-occupied housing as a hedge against rent risk," Working Papers 05-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
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  8. Ricardo Reis, 2005. "A Dynamic Measure of Inflation," NBER Working Papers 11746, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Wenli Li & Rui Yao, 2005. "The life-cycle effects of house price changes," Working Papers 05-7, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
  10. Michael Boskin, 2005. "Causes and Consequences of Bias in the Consumer Price Index as a Measure of the Cost of Living," Atlantic Economic Journal, International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 33(1), pages 1-13, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Reis, Ricardo, 2005. "A cost-of-living dynamic price index, with an application to indexing retirement accounts," CEPR Discussion Papers 5394, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Davis, Morris & Heathcote, Jonathan, 2005. "The Price and Quantity of Residential Land in the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 5333, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Tuomas A. Peltonen & Ricardo M. Sousa & Isabel S. Vansteenkiste, 2009. "Wealth Effects in Emerging Market Economies," NIPE Working Papers 4/2009, NIPE - Universidade do Minho. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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