IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecorec/v94y2018is1p33-48.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Interest Rates, Local Housing Markets and House Price Over†reactions

Author

Listed:
  • G.C. Lim
  • Sarantis Tsiaplias

Abstract

Understanding the effects of interest rates on city†specific house price to household income ratios is important for managing local housing markets. In particular, there is concern that keeping interest rates at sufficiently low levels can distort the relationship between local house prices and fundamentals. We use house price to income ratios across capital cities in Australia to investigate this issue and show that there is a national interest rate ‘transition’ point below which housing dynamics can become unstable. This result lends support to the presence of a duration†dependent threshold effect (hitherto mainly explored in theoretical models).

Suggested Citation

  • G.C. Lim & Sarantis Tsiaplias, 2018. "Interest Rates, Local Housing Markets and House Price Over†reactions," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 94(S1), pages 33-48, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:94:y:2018:i:s1:p:33-48
    DOI: 10.1111/1475-4932.12402
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4932.12402
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1475-4932.12402?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2012. "Measuring the Output Responses to Fiscal Policy," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 1-27, May.
    2. Costello, Greg & Fraser, Patricia & Groenewold, Nicolaas, 2011. "House prices, non-fundamental components and interstate spillovers: The Australian experience," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 653-669, March.
    3. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    4. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Christian Julliard, 2008. "Money Illusion and Housing Frenzies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 135-180, January.
    5. Peter C. B. Phillips & Yangru Wu & Jun Yu, 2011. "EXPLOSIVE BEHAVIOR IN THE 1990s NASDAQ: WHEN DID EXUBERANCE ESCALATE ASSET VALUES?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(1), pages 201-226, February.
    6. James M. Poterba, 1991. "House Price Dynamics: The Role of Tax Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(2), pages 143-204.
    7. Robert J Shiller, 2008. "Historic Turning Points in Real Estate," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 1-13, Winter.
    8. Albert Saiz, 2010. "The Geographic Determinants of Housing Supply," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 1253-1296.
    9. David Berger & Joseph Vavra, 2014. "Measuring How Fiscal Shocks Affect Durable Spending in Recessions and Expansions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 112-115, May.
    10. Caggiano, Giovanni & Castelnuovo, Efrem & Groshenny, Nicolas, 2014. "Uncertainty shocks and unemployment dynamics in U.S. recessions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 78-92.
    11. Muellbauer, John & Murphy, Anthony, 1997. "Booms and Busts in the UK Housing Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(445), pages 1701-1727, November.
    12. Alessandro Calza & Tommaso Monacelli & Livio Stracca, 2013. "Housing Finance And Monetary Policy," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 101-122, January.
    13. Marek Jarocinski & Frank Smets, 2008. "House prices and the stance of monetary policy," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 90(Jul), pages 339-366.
    14. Edward L. Glaeser & Joshua D. Gottlieb & Joseph Gyourko, 2012. "Can Cheap Credit Explain the Housing Boom?," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and the Financial Crisis, pages 301-359, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Craig Burnside & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 2016. "Understanding Booms and Busts in Housing Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(4), pages 1088-1147.
    16. Gambacorta, Leonardo, 2008. "How do banks set interest rates?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 792-819, July.
    17. Robert J. Shiller, 2007. "Understanding recent trends in house prices and homeownership," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 89-123.
    18. Matteo Iacoviello & Stefano Neri, 2010. "Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from an Estimated DSGE Model," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 125-164, April.
    19. Evans, George W, 1991. "Pitfalls in Testing for Explosive Bubbles in Asset Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 922-930, September.
    20. Saks, Raven E., 2008. "Job creation and housing construction: Constraints on metropolitan area employment growth," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 178-195, July.
    21. Kenneth N. Kuttner, 2013. "Low Interest Rates and Housing Bubbles: Still No Smoking Gun," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Douglas D Evanoff & Cornelia Holthausen & George G Kaufman & Manfred Kremer (ed.), The Role of Central Banks in Financial Stability How Has It Changed?, chapter 8, pages 159-185, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    22. Froot, Kenneth A & Obstfeld, Maurice, 1991. "Intrinsic Bubbles: The Case of Stock Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1189-1214, December.
    23. Timo Teräsvirta & Yukai Yang, 2014. "Linearity and Misspecification Tests for Vector Smooth Transition Regression Models," CREATES Research Papers 2014-04, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    24. Guerrieri, Luca & Iacoviello, Matteo, 2017. "Collateral constraints and macroeconomic asymmetries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 28-49.
    25. Robert J. Shiller, 2007. "Understanding recent trends in house prices and homeownership," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 89-123.
    26. Jordà, Òscar & Schularick, Moritz & Taylor, Alan M., 2015. "Betting the house," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(S1), pages 2-18.
    27. John B. Taylor, 2007. "Housing and monetary policy," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 463-476.
    28. Ben S. Bernanke, 2010. "Monetary policy and the housing bubble: a speech at the Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, Atlanta, Georgia, January 3, 2010," Speech 499, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    29. Edward E. Leamer, 2015. "Housing Really Is the Business Cycle: What Survives the Lessons of 2008–09?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(S1), pages 43-50, March.
    30. John B. Taylor, 2009. "The Financial Crisis and the Policy Responses: An Empirical Analysis of What Went Wrong," NBER Working Papers 14631, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    31. Del Negro, Marco & Otrok, Christopher, 2007. "99 Luftballons: Monetary policy and the house price boom across U.S. states," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(7), pages 1962-1985, October.
    32. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko & Raven E. Saks, 2006. "Urban growth and housing supply," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 71-89, January.
    33. Charles Himmelberg & Christopher Mayer & Todd Sinai, 2005. "Assessing High House Prices: Bubbles, Fundamentals and Misperceptions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 67-92, Fall.
    34. Glaeser, Edward L. & Gyourko, Joseph & Saiz, Albert, 2008. "Housing supply and housing bubbles," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 198-217, September.
    35. Abbas Valadkhani & Russell Smyth, 2017. "Self-exciting effects of house prices on unit prices in Australian capital cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(10), pages 2376-2394, August.
    36. Charles Goodhart & Boris Hofmann, 2008. "House prices, money, credit, and the macroeconomy," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 24(1), pages 180-205, spring.
    37. John C. Williams, 2011. "Monetary Policy and Housing Booms," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 7(1), pages 345-355, March.
    38. Hyunseung Oh & Chamna Yoon, 2016. "Residential construction lags across the US and their implications for housing supply," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 16-00002, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    39. Alessandro Notarpietro & Stefano Siviero, 2015. "Optimal Monetary Policy Rules and House Prices: The Role of Financial Frictions," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(S1), pages 383-410, March.
    40. Stephen Leybourne & Paul Newbold & Dimitrios Vougas, 1998. "Unit roots and smooth transitions," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 83-97, January.
    41. Granger, Clive W. J. & Terasvirta, Timo, 1993. "Modelling Non-Linear Economic Relationships," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198773207.
    42. Allen, Franklin & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2011. "Asset Prices, Financial Stability and Monetary Policy," Working Papers 11-39, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    43. repec:fip:fedgsq:y:2010:x:4 is not listed on IDEAS
    44. Monika Piazzesi & Martin Schneider, 2007. "Inflation Illusion, Credit, and Asset Pricing," NBER Working Papers 12957, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. 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.
    2. Calvin He & Gianni La Cava, 2020. "The Distributional Effects of Monetary Policy: Evidence from Local Housing Markets," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2020-02, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    3. Dieckelmann, Daniel & Hempell, Hannah S. & Jarmulska, Barbara & Lang, Jan Hannes & Rusnák, Marek, 2023. "House prices and ultra-low interest rates: exploring the non-linear nexus," Working Paper Series 2789, European Central Bank.
    4. Christopher G. Gibbs & Jonathan Hambur & Gabriela Nodari, 2021. "Housing and Commodity Investment Booms in a Small Open Economy," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 97(317), pages 212-242, June.
    5. Sarantis Tsiaplias & Jiao Wang, 2023. "The Australian Economy in 2022–23: Inflation and Higher Interest Rates in a Post‐COVID‐19 World," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 56(1), pages 5-19, March.

    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. repec:iae:iaewps:wp2016n2 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:zbw:bofism:2012_047 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Taipalus, Katja, 2012. "Detecting asset price bubbles with time-series methods," Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, number 2012_047.
    4. Taipalus, Katja, 2012. "Detecting asset price bubbles with time-series methods," Bank of Finland Scientific Monographs, Bank of Finland, volume 0, number sm2012_047, July.
    5. Jordà, Òscar & Schularick, Moritz & Taylor, Alan M., 2015. "Betting the house," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(S1), pages 2-18.
    6. Dieci, Roberto & Westerhoff, Frank, 2016. "Heterogeneous expectations, boom-bust housing cycles, and supply conditions: A nonlinear economic dynamics approach," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 21-44.
    7. Pascal Towbin & Mr. Sebastian Weber, 2015. "Price Expectations and the U.S. Housing Boom," IMF Working Papers 2015/182, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Knut Are Aastveit & Bruno Albuquerque & André K. Anundsen, 2023. "Changing Supply Elasticities and Regional Housing Booms," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(7), pages 1749-1783, October.
    9. Punzi, Maria Teresa, 2016. "Financial cycles and co-movements between the real economy, finance and asset price dynamics in large-scale crises," FinMaP-Working Papers 61, Collaborative EU Project FinMaP - Financial Distortions and Macroeconomic Performance: Expectations, Constraints and Interaction of Agents.
    10. Bauer, Gregory H., 2017. "International house price cycles, monetary policy and credit," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 88-114.
    11. Dieci, Roberto & Westerhoff, Frank, 2015. "Heterogeneous expectations, boom-bust housing cycles, and supply conditions: A nonlinear dynamics approach," BERG Working Paper Series 99, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    12. Matteo Luciani, 2015. "Monetary Policy and the Housing Market: A Structural Factor Analysis," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 199-218, March.
    13. Graeme O'Meara, 2015. "Housing Bubbles and Monetary Policy: A Reassessment," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 46(4), pages 521-565.
    14. Hertrich Markus, 2019. "A Novel Housing Price Misalignment Indicator for Germany," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 20(4), pages 759-794, December.
    15. Łukasz Goczek & Karol Partyka, 2017. "Polityka pieniężna i ceny nieruchomości w krajach OECD w modelu losowych współczynników," Collegium of Economic Analysis Annals, Warsaw School of Economics, Collegium of Economic Analysis, issue 47, pages 101-112.
    16. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    17. Knut Are Aastveit & André K. Anundsen, 2022. "Asymmetric Effects of Monetary Policy in Regional Housing Markets," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 499-529, October.
    18. Dana Orfaig, 2017. "A Structural VAR Model for Estimating the Link between Monetary Policy and Home Prices in Israel," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2017.09, Bank of Israel.
    19. Jane K. Dokko & Brian M. Doyle & Skander J. van den Heuvel & Michael T. Kiley & Jinill Kim & Shane M. Sherlund & Jae W. Sim, 2009. "Monetary policy and the housing bubble," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2009-49, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. Helmut Herwartz & Fang Xu, 2020. "Low Mortgage Rates and Securitization: A Distinct Perspective on the US Housing Boom," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(1), pages 164-190, January.
    21. Greg Howard & Jack Liebersohn, 2023. "Regional Divergence and House Prices," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 49, pages 312-350, July.
    22. Mr. Tobias Adrian & Andrea Deghi & Mitsuru Katagiri & Mr. Sohaib Shahid & Nico Valckx, 2020. "Predicting Downside Risks to House Prices and Macro-Financial Stability," IMF Working Papers 2020/011, International Monetary Fund.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C30 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - General
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

    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:bla:ecorec:v:94:y:2018:i:s1:p:33-48. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esausea.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.