IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juecon/v58y2005i3p474-487.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

House prices and consumer welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Bajari, Patrick
  • Benkard, C. Lanier
  • Krainer, John

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.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Bajari, Patrick & Benkard, C. Lanier & Krainer, John, 2005. "House prices and consumer welfare," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 474-487, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:58:y:2005:i:3:p:474-487
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094-1190(05)00054-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    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. 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.
    3. Kearl, J R, 1979. "Inflation, Mortgages, and Housing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 1115-1138, October.
    4. Edward L. Glaeser & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2003. "The Benefits of the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 17, pages 37-82, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Glenn B. Canner & Karen E. Dynan & Wayne Passmore, 2002. "Mortgage refinancing in 2001 and early 2002," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), vol. 88(Dec), pages 469-481, December.
    6. Theodore M. Crone & Leonard I. Nakamura & Richard Voith, 1998. "Measuring housing services inflation," Working Papers 98-21, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    7. 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.
    8. Dougherty, Ann & Van Order, Robert, 1982. "Inflation, Housing Costs, and the Consumer Price Index," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 154-164, March.
    9. DiPasquale, Denise & Glaeser, Edward L., 1999. "Incentives and Social Capital: Are Homeowners Better Citizens?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 354-384, March.
    10. 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.
    11. Case, Karl E. & Quigley, John M. & Shiller, Robert J., 2001. "Comparing Wealth Effects: The Stock Market versus The Housing Market," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt44k6g6vx, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    12. James M. Poterba, 1984. "Tax Subsidies to Owner-Occupied Housing: An Asset-Market Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(4), pages 729-752.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. Green, Richard K. & White, Michelle J., 1997. "Measuring the Benefits of Homeowning: Effects on Children," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 441-461, May.
    16. Diewert, W. E., 1976. "Exact and superlative index numbers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 115-145, May.
    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. Juan Ayuso & Fernando Restoy, 2003. "House prices and rents: an equilibrium asset pricing approach," Working Papers 0304, Banco de España.
    2. Jonathan McCarthy & Richard Peach, 2004. "Are home prices the next \\"bubble\\"?," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Dec, pages 1-17.
    3. Ayuso, Juan & Restoy, Fernando, 2006. "House prices and rents: An equilibrium asset pricing approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 371-388, June.
    4. Jacob L. Vigdor, 2004. "Liquidity Constraints and Housing Prices: Theory and Evidence from the VA Mortgage," NBER Working Papers 10611, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Benítez-Silva, Hugo & Eren, Selçuk & Heiland, Frank & Jiménez-Martín, Sergi, 2015. "How well do individuals predict the selling prices of their homes?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 12-25.
    6. Frederic S. Mishkin, 2007. "Housing and the monetary transmission mechanism," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 359-413.
    7. Duca, John V. & Muellbauer, John & Murphy, Anthony, 2010. "Housing markets and the financial crisis of 2007-2009: Lessons for the future," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 203-217, December.
    8. 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.
    9. Davis, Morris A. & Heathcote, Jonathan, 2007. "The price and quantity of residential land in the United States," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2595-2620, November.
    10. Madsen, Jakob B., 2009. "Taxes and the fundamental value of houses," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 365-376, May.
    11. Frederic S. Mishkin, 2007. "\"Housing and the monetary transmission mechanism,\" Finance and Economics Discussion Series Working Paper: a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Economic Symposium, Jackson ," Speech 312, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. Hussain Mohammed A. Al Obaid, 2020. "Factors Determining Housing Demand in Saudi Arabia," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 10(5), pages 150-157.
    13. Thomas Hemmelgarn & Gaetan Nicodeme & Ernesto Zangari, 2011. "The Role of Housing Tax Provisions in the 2008 Financial Crisis," Taxation Papers 27, Directorate General Taxation and Customs Union, European Commission.
    14. Sheng Guo & William G. Hardin, 2017. "Financial and Housing Wealth, Expenditures and the Dividend to Ownership," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 58-96, January.
    15. Juan Ayuso & Fernando Restoy, 2006. "House prices and rents in Spain: does the discount factor matter?," Working Papers 0609, Banco de España.
    16. Hembre, Erik & Dantas, Raissa, 2022. "Tax incentives and housing decisions: Effects of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    17. Stuart A. Gabriel & Stuart S. Rosenthal, 2015. "The Boom, the Bust and the Future of Homeownership," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 43(2), pages 334-374, June.
    18. Ambrose, Brent W. & Diop, Moussa, 2014. "Spillover effects of subprime mortgage originations: The effects of single-family mortgage credit expansion on the multifamily rental market," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 114-135.
    19. Andreas Hetland & Simon Hetland, 2017. "Short-Term Expectation Formation Versus Long-Term Equilibrium Conditions: The Danish Housing Market," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-21, September.
    20. Oikarinen, Elias, 2005. "Is Housing Overvalued in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area?," Discussion Papers 992, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics

    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:eee:juecon:v:58:y:2005:i:3:p:474-487. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622905 .

    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.