Theory predicts that the effects of search frictions on house prices from temporary movements in demand should be temporary, while the data suggests it is permanent. The latter implies that movements in demand coupled with search frictions create higher volatility in prices than theory would predict, amplifying price changes, leading to bubbles and depressions. To generate permanent price changes from temporary demand shocks, a textbook search model is combined with a behavioral assumption where house buyers and sellers ignore the effects of search frictions on past prices. The estimated model implies that over half of the real price growth from the housing bubble starting in 1998 is due to the behavioral assumption where households are ‘Fooled by Search.’ When trend growth of prices is removed, the behavioral assumption explains almost three-fourths of the housing bubble. The estimated model also provides several other results. (1) There is a large inefficiency in the search process of the housing market: buyers have very little bargaining power relative to their impact on creating sales, i.e. the Hosios condition is not met by an order of magnitude. (2) There is evidence of a rise in the fundamental value of houses from 1998 to 2005 that mirrors the loose monetary policy under the Greenspan Federal Reserve. (3) Analysis of the boom and bust of the housing market from 1975 to 1982 suggests that buyers who are choosing to not enter the housing market are rational. Using the last observation to make a back of the envelope projection for the current crisis, turnover will have to fall to its 1982 level and remain there until 2011 before a recovery can begin, driving house prices down to their real levels of 2002-2003
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Economics Department, Indiana University Bloomington in its series Caepr Working Papers with number
2009-004.
Cited by: (explanations, 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.)