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No Price Like Home: Global House Prices, 1870-2012

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Katharina Knoll
  • Moritz Schularick
  • Thomas Steger

Abstract

How have house prices evolved over the long-run? This paper presents annual house prices for 14 advanced economies since 1870. Based on extensive data collection, we show that real house prices stayed constant from the 19th to the mid-20th century, but rose strongly during the second half of the 20th century. Land prices, not replacement costs, are the key to understanding the trajectory of house prices. Rising land prices explain about 80 percent of the global house price boom that has taken place since World War II. Higher land values have pushed up wealth-to-income ratios in recent decades.

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File URL: http://www.cesifo-group.de/portal/page/portal/DocBase_Content/WP/WP-CESifo_Working_Papers/wp-cesifo-2014/wp-cesifo-2014-10/cesifo1_wp5006.pdf
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Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number 5006.

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Date of creation: 2014
Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5006
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Keywords: house prices; land prices; transportation costs; neoclassical theory;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • N10 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - General, International, or Comparative
  • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
  • R30 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - General
  • R40 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - General

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  1. Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman, 2014. "Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries 1700–2010," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 129(3), pages 1255-1310.
  2. Glaeser, Edward L. & Ward, Bryce A., 2009. "The causes and consequences of land use regulation: Evidence from Greater Boston," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 265-278, May.
  3. Òscar Jordà & Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor, 2016. "The great mortgaging: housing finance, crises and business cycles," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 31(85), pages 107-152.
  4. Charles Goodhart & Boris Hofmann, 2008. "House prices, money, credit, and the macroeconomy," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 180-205, spring.
  5. Zheng Liu & Pengfei Wang & Tao Zha, 2013. "Land‐Price Dynamics and Macroeconomic Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(3), pages 1147-1184, 05.
  6. Ethan M. J. Lieber, 2017. "Does It Pay to Know Prices in Health Care?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 154-179, February.
  7. 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.
  8. Edward L. Glaeser & Joshua D. Gottlieb & Kristina Tobio, 2012. "Housing Booms and City Centers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 127-133, May.
  9. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 2003. "Computation and analysis of multiple structural change models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
  10. Andreas Hornstein, 2009. "Problems for a fundamental theory of house prices," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Win, pages 1-24.
  11. Odran Bonnet & Pierre-Henri Bono & Guillaume Chapelle & Etienne Wasmer, 2014. "Does housing capital contribute to inequality? A comment on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century," Sciences Po Economics Discussion Papers 2014-07, Sciences Po Departement of Economics.
  12. Leo Grebler & David M. Blank & Louis Winnick, 1956. "Capital Formation in Residential Real Estate: Trends and Prospects," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number greb56-1, October.
  13. Raymond W. Goldsmith, 1962. "The National Wealth of the United States in the Postwar Period," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gold62-1, October.
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Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Stagnation & intergenerational justice
    by chris in Stumbling and Mumbling on 2015-02-24 14:38:02
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