IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rba/rbardp/rdp2015-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Housing Wealth Effects: Cross-sectional Evidence from New Vehicle Registrations

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Gillitzer

    (Reserve Bank of Australia)

  • Jin Cong Wang

    (Reserve Bank of Australia)

Abstract

Understanding the relationship between housing wealth and consumption is important, because it informs the extent to which fluctuations in house prices might affect the broader economy. We investigate the relationship between housing wealth and consumption using postcode-level variation in house prices and administrative data on new passenger vehicle registrations as a proxy for consumption. In our preferred specification, we estimate an elasticity of new passenger vehicle registrations with respect to gross housing wealth of 0.4–0.5, and an average marginal propensity to consume (MPC) for new passenger vehicles of about 0.06 cents per dollar change in gross housing wealth. Assuming new vehicle registrations and total consumption have the same sensitivity to changes in housing wealth implies an MPC for total consumption of 2 cents per dollar change in gross housing wealth. But US evidence indicates that new vehicle consumption is particularly sensitive to changes in housing wealth. Assuming the same is true for Australia, our estimates imply an MPC for total consumption of less than 0.25 cents. Notably, we find evidence that the relationship between house prices and new vehicle registrations is heterogenous in income, with low-income households having a higher propensity to purchase a new vehicle following a rise in housing wealth than high-income households. This implies that the distribution of changes in house prices is relevant for understanding its effect on aggregate consumption.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Gillitzer & Jin Cong Wang, 2015. "Housing Wealth Effects: Cross-sectional Evidence from New Vehicle Registrations," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2015-08, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:rba:rbardp:rdp2015-08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2015/pdf/rdp2015-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Case Karl E. & Quigley John M. & Shiller Robert J., 2005. "Comparing Wealth Effects: The Stock Market versus the Housing Market," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-34, May.
    2. Iacoviello, Matteo, 2004. "Consumption, house prices, and collateral constraints: a structural econometric analysis," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 304-320, December.
    3. Nikola Dvornak & Marion Kohler, 2007. "Housing Wealth, Stock Market Wealth and Consumption: A Panel Analysis for Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 83(261), pages 117-130, June.
    4. Fisher, Lance A. & Otto, Glenn & Voss, Graham M., 2010. "The response of Australian consumption to housing wealth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 284-299, March.
    5. Ralph Koijen & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Roine Vestman, 2014. "Judging the Quality of Survey Data by Comparison with "Truth" as Measured by Administrative Records: Evidence From Sweden," NBER Chapters, in: Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures, pages 308-346, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Martin Lettau & Sydney C. Ludvigson, 2004. "Understanding Trend and Cycle in Asset Values: Reevaluating the Wealth Effect on Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 276-299, March.
    7. Aoki, Kosuke & Proudman, James & Vlieghe, Gertjan, 2004. "House prices, consumption, and monetary policy: a financial accelerator approach," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 414-435, October.
    8. Mariano Kulish & Anthony Richards & Christian Gillitzer, 2012. "Urban Structure and Housing Prices: Some Evidence from Australian Cities," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(282), pages 303-322, September.
    9. Christopher D. Carroll, 2001. "A Theory of the Consumption Function, with and without Liquidity Constraints," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 23-45, Summer.
    10. Matthew Read & Chris Stewart & Gianni La Cava, 2014. "Mortgage-related Financial Difficulties: Evidence from Australian Micro-level Data," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2014-13, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    11. Callan Windsor & Jarkko Jääskelä & Richard Finlay, 2013. "Home Prices and Household Spending," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2013-04, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    12. Christopher D. Carroll & Thomas F. Crossley & John Sabelhaus, 2015. "Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number carr11-1, March.
    13. James Hansen, 2009. "Australian House Prices: A Comparison of Hedonic and Repeat‐Sales Measures," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 85(269), pages 132-145, June.
    14. Benjamin J. Keys & Tanmoy Mukherjee & Amit Seru & Vikrant Vig, 2010. "Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence from Subprime Loans," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 307-362.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christian Gillitzer & Jin Cong Wang, 2015. "Housing Wealth Effects: Evidence from New Vehicle Registrations," RBA Bulletin (Print copy discontinued), Reserve Bank of Australia, pages 13-20, September.
    2. Christopher G Gibbs & Jonathan Hambur & Gabriela Nodari, 2018. "DSGE Reno: Adding a Housing Block to a Small Open Economy Model," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2018-04, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    3. Fiona Price & Benjamin Beckers & Gianni La Cava, 2019. "The Effect of Mortgage Debt on Consumer Spending: Evidence from Household-level Data," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2019-06, Reserve Bank of Australia.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Frijters & Benno Torgler & Christian Gillitzer & Jin Cong Wang, 2016. "Housing Wealth Effects: Cross-sectional Evidence from New Vehicle Registrations," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 92, pages 30-51, June.
    2. Janine Aron & John Muellbauer, 2006. "Housing Wealth, Credit Conditions and Consumption," CSAE Working Paper Series 2006-08, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    3. John N. Muellbauer, 2007. "Housing, credit and consumer expenditure," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 267-334.
    4. Ersi Athanassiou & Ekaterini Tsouma, 2017. "Financial and Housing Wealth Effects on Private Consumption: The Case of Greece," South-Eastern Europe Journal of Economics, Association of Economic Universities of South and Eastern Europe and the Black Sea Region, vol. 15(1), pages 63-86.
    5. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    6. De Veirman Emmanuel & Dunstan Ashley, 2011. "Time-Varying Returns, Intertemporal Substitution and Cyclical Variation in Consumption," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-41, July.
    7. Beatrice Simo-Kengne & Stephen Miller & Rangan Gupta & Goodness Aye, 2015. "Time-Varying Effects of Housing and Stock Returns on U.S. Consumption," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 339-354, April.
    8. Beatrice D. Simo-Kengne & Stephen M. Miller & Rangan Gupta & Goodness C. Aye, 2013. "Time-Varying Effects of Housing and Stock Prices on U.S. Consumption," Working Papers 201325, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    9. Manuel Leon Navarro & Rafael Flores de Frutos, 2011. "Consumption and Housing Wealth Breakdown of the Effect of a Rise in Interest Rates," Post-Print hal-00687732, HAL.
    10. Vincent Labhard & Gabriel Sterne & Chris Young, 2005. "Wealth and consumption: an assessment of the international evidence," Bank of England working papers 275, Bank of England.
    11. Chen, Jie, 2006. "Re-evaluating the association between housing wealth and aggregate consumption: New evidence from Sweden," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 321-348, December.
    12. Yener Coskun & Burak Sencer Atasoy & Giacomo Morri & Esra Alp, 2018. "Wealth Effects on Household Final Consumption: Stock and Housing Market Channels," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-32, June.
    13. David M. Williams, 2010. "Consumption, wealth and credit liberalisation in Australia," Economics Series Working Papers 492, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    14. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2017. "Asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes: a survey," BIS Working Papers 676, Bank for International Settlements.
    15. Ebner, André, 2013. "A micro view on home equity withdrawal and its determinants: Evidence from Dutch households," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 321-337.
    16. Bostic, Raphael & Gabriel, Stuart & Painter, Gary, 2009. "Housing wealth, financial wealth, and consumption: New evidence from micro data," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 79-89, January.
    17. Kadir Atalay & Stephen Whelan & Judith Yates, 2016. "House Prices, Wealth and Consumption: New Evidence from Australia and Canada," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 62(1), pages 69-91, March.
    18. Yener Coskun & Christos Bouras & Rangan Gupta & Mark E. Wohar, 2021. "Multi-Horizon Financial and Housing Wealth Effects across the U.S. States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-20, January.
    19. Beatrice D. Simo-Kengne & Rangan Gupta & Manoel Bittencourt, 2013. "The Impact of House Prices on Consumption in South Africa: Evidence from Provincial-Level Panel VARs," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(8), pages 1133-1154, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    consumption; house prices;

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rba:rbardp:rdp2015-08. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Paula Drew (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rbagvau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.