IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/use/tkiwps/1917.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Online housing search and gravity models

Author

Listed:
  • J.W.A.M. Steegmans
  • Jonathan de Bruin

Abstract

In this paper we apply a gravity framework to user-generated data of a large housing market platform. We show that gravity describes the patterns of inflow and outflow of hits (mouse clicks, etc.) from one municipality to another, where the municipality of the user defines the origin and the municipality of the property that is viewed defines the destination. The estimates indicate that even the simplest gravity model explains close to 80 percent of the bilateral flows. By distinguishing serious searchers from recreational searchers we demonstrate that the gravity framework describes search patterns of both types of users. The results indicate that recreational search is centered more around the user's location than serious search. However, this finding is driven entirely by differences in border effects as there is no difference in the distance effect. As such we find no evidence of differences in information frictions between both groups of searchers.

Suggested Citation

  • J.W.A.M. Steegmans & Jonathan de Bruin, 2019. "Online housing search and gravity models," Working Papers 19-17, Utrecht School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:use:tkiwps:1917
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/387985/use_wp_2019_1917.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alasdair Rae, 2015. "Online Housing Search and the Geography of Submarkets," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 453-472, June.
    2. Avi Goldfarb & Catherine Tucker, 2019. "Digital Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(1), pages 3-43, March.
    3. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2003. "Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 170-192, March.
    4. Martijn Burger & Frank van Oort & Gert-Jan Linders, 2009. "On the Specification of the Gravity Model of Trade: Zeros, Excess Zeros and Zero-inflated Estimation," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 167-190.
    5. Thierry Mayer & Keith Head, 2002. "Illusory Border Effects: Distance Mismeasurement Inflates Estimates of Home Bias in Trade," Working Papers 2002-01, CEPII research center.
    6. Okawa, Yohei & van Wincoop, Eric, 2012. "Gravity in International Finance," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 205-215.
    7. Dasgupta, Kunal & Mondria, Jordi, 2018. "Inattentive importers," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 150-165.
    8. Santos Silva, J.M.C. & Tenreyro, Silvana, 2011. "Further simulation evidence on the performance of the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 220-222, August.
    9. van Bergeijk,Peter A. G. & Brakman,Steven (ed.), 2010. "The Gravity Model in International Trade," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521196154.
    10. Jean-François Brun & Céline Carrère & Patrick Guillaumont & Jaime de Melo, 2015. "Has Distance Died? Evidence from a Panel Gravity Model," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Developing Countries in the World Economy, chapter 13, pages 299-320, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. Blum, Bernardo S. & Goldfarb, Avi, 2006. "Does the internet defy the law of gravity?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 384-405, December.
    12. Ali Hortaçsu & F. Asís Martínez-Jerez & Jason Douglas, 2009. "The Geography of Trade in Online Transactions: Evidence from eBay and MercadoLibre," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 53-74, February.
    13. J. M. C. Santos Silva & Silvana Tenreyro, 2006. "The Log of Gravity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 641-658, November.
    14. Jean-François Arvis & Ben Shepherd, 2013. "The Poisson quasi-maximum likelihood estimator: a solution to the ‘adding up’ problem in gravity models," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(6), pages 515-519, April.
    15. Andreas Lendle & Marcelo Olarreaga & Simon Schropp & Pierre‐Louis Vézina, 2016. "There Goes Gravity: eBay and the Death of Distance," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(591), pages 406-441, March.
    16. Damiaan Persyn & Wouter Torfs, 2016. "A gravity equation for commuting with an application to estimating regional border effects in Belgium," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 155-175.
    17. Egger, Peter & Larch, Mario & Staub, Kevin E, 2012. "Trade Preferences and Bilateral Trade in Goods and Services: A Structural Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 9051, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Fally, Thibault, 2015. "Structural gravity and fixed effects," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 76-85.
    19. Rauch, James E., 1999. "Networks versus markets in international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 7-35, June.
    20. James E. Anderson, 2011. "The Gravity Model," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 133-160, September.
    21. Jonathan Eaton & Samuel Kortum, 2002. "Technology, Geography, and Trade," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1741-1779, September.
    22. Anderson, James E, 1979. "A Theoretical Foundation for the Gravity Equation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 106-116, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Joep Steegmans & Jonathan de Bruin, 2021. "Online housing search: A gravity model approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-31, March.
    2. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2014. "Gravity Equations: Workhorse,Toolkit, and Cookbook," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 131-195, Elsevier.
    3. Anderson, James E. & Borchert, Ingo & Mattoo, Aaditya & Yotov, Yoto V., 2018. "Dark costs, missing data: Shedding some light on services trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 193-214.
    4. Rebecca Freeman & Mario Larch & Angelos Theodorakopoulos & Yoto V. Yotov, 2021. "Unlocking New Methods to Estimate Country-Specific Trade Costs and Trade Elasticities," CESifo Working Paper Series 9432, CESifo.
    5. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Yotov, Yoto V., 2021. "From theory to policy with gravitas: A solution to the mystery of the excess trade balances," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    8. Anderson, James E. & Yotov, Yoto V., 2020. "Short run gravity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    9. Baier, Scott L. & Yotov, Yoto V. & Zylkin, Thomas, 2019. "On the widely differing effects of free trade agreements: Lessons from twenty years of trade integration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 206-226.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10187 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Tamaş Anca, 2020. "Why should the gravity model be taught in business education?," Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence, Sciendo, vol. 14(1), pages 422-433, July.
    12. de Sousa, José & Mayer, Thierry & Zignago, Soledad, 2012. "Market access in global and regional trade," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 1037-1052.
    13. Dimitrios Dadakas & Stavroula Tatsi, 2021. "Global agricultural trade impact of the 2011 triple disaster in Japan: A gravity approach," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 65(4), pages 937-972, October.
    14. Scott L. Baier & Amanda Kerr & Yoto V. Yotov, 2018. "Gravity, distance, and international trade," Chapters, in: Bruce A. Blonigen & Wesley W. Wilson (ed.), Handbook of International Trade and Transportation, chapter 2, pages 15-78, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Mario Larch & Yoto V. Yotov, 2016. "General Equilibrium Trade Policy Analysis with Structural Gravity," CESifo Working Paper Series 6020, CESifo.
    16. Mario Larch & Serge Shikher & Constantinos Syropoulos & Yoto V. Yotov, 2022. "Quantifying the impact of economic sanctions on international trade in the energy and mining sectors," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(3), pages 1038-1063, July.
    17. Thomas Steinwachs, 2019. "Geography Matters: Spatial Dimensions of Trade, Migration and Growth," ifo Beiträge zur Wirtschaftsforschung, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, number 81.
    18. Badi H. Baltagi & Peter Egger & Michael Pfaffermayr, 2014. "Panel Data Gravity Models of International Trade," CESifo Working Paper Series 4616, CESifo.
    19. James E. Anderson & Mario Larch & Yoto V. Yotov, 2018. "GEPPML: General equilibrium analysis with PPML," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(10), pages 2750-2782, October.
    20. (ed.), 0. "Research Handbook on Economic Diplomacy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 16053.
    21. Yoto V. Yotov, 2022. "On the role of domestic trade flows for estimating the gravity model of trade," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(3), pages 526-540, July.
    22. Agnosteva, Delina E. & Anderson, James E. & Yotov, Yoto V., 2019. "Intra-national trade costs: Assaying regional frictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 32-50.
    23. Carl Gaigné & Lota D. Tamini, 2021. "Environmental Taxation and Import Demand for Environmental Goods: Theory and Evidence from the European Union," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 78(2), pages 307-352, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    online search; gravity model; user-generated data;
    All these keywords.

    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:use:tkiwps:1917. 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: Marina Muilwijk (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eiruunl.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.