IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_5006.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Katharina Knoll & Moritz Schularick & Thomas Steger, 2014. "No Price Like Home: Global House Prices, 1870-2012," CESifo Working Paper Series 5006, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5006.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman, 2014. "Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries 1700–2010," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, 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. Karl E. Case & Robert J. Shiller, 1987. "Prices of single-family homes since 1970: new indexes for four cities," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Sep, pages 45-56.
    4. Òscar Jordà & Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor, 2016. "The great mortgaging: housing finance, crises and business cycles," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 31(85), pages 107-152.
    5. 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.
    6. repec:ucp:bkecon:9780226301532 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Zheng Liu & Pengfei Wang & Tao Zha, 2013. "Land‐Price Dynamics and Macroeconomic Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(3), pages 1147-1184, May.
    8. 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.
    9. Bradford Case & Susan Wachter, 2005. "Residential real estate price indices as financial soundness indicators: methodological issues," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Real estate indicators and financial stability, volume 21, pages 197-211, Bank for International Settlements.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. Andreas Hornstein, 2009. "Problems for a fundamental theory of house prices," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 95(Win), pages 1-24.
    14. Silver, Mick, 2014. "The degree and impact of differences in house price index measurement," Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, IOS Press, issue 4, pages 305-328.
    15. 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, June.
    16. 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, June.
    17. Piet M.A. Eichholtz, 1997. "A Long Run House Price Index: The Herengracht Index, 1628–1973," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 25(2), pages 175-192, June.
    18. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/30nstiku669glbr66l6n7mc2oq is not listed on IDEAS
    19. repec:bla:ausecr:v:38:y:2005:i:3:p:265-281 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01109372 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/30nstiku669glbr66l6n7mc2oq is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Behr,Daniela Monika & Chen,Lixue & Goel,Ankita & Haider,Khondoker Tanveer & Sandeep Singh & Zaman,Asad, 2023. "Estimating House Prices in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies : A Big Data Approach," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10301, The World Bank.
    2. Hideaki Hirata & M. Ayhan Kose & Christopher Otrok & Marco E Terrones, 2013. "Global House Price Fluctuations: Synchronization and Determinants," NBER International Seminar on Macroeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(1), pages 119-166.
    3. Cesa-Bianchi, Ambrogio, 2013. "Housing cycles and macroeconomic fluctuations: A global perspective," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 215-238.
    4. Homburg, Stefan, 2017. "A Study in Monetary Macroeconomics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198807537, Decembrie.
    5. Kuvshinov, Dmitry & Zimmermann, Kaspar, 2022. "The big bang: Stock market capitalization in the long run," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 527-552.
    6. Konstantin A. Kholodilin & Sebastian Kohl & Florian Müller, 2023. "Government-Made House Price Bubbles? Austerity, Homeownership, Rental, and Credit Liberalization Policies and the “Irrational Exuberance” on Housing Markets," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2061, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Luigi Bonatti, 2017. "Land, Housing, Growth and Inequality," DEM Working Papers 2017/01, Department of Economics and Management.
    8. Sofoklis Vogiazas & Constantinos Alexiou, 2017. "Determinants of Housing Prices and Bubble Detection: Evidence from Seven Advanced Economies," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 45(1), pages 119-131, March.
    9. Òscar Jordà & Katharina Knoll & Dmitry Kuvshinov & Moritz Schularick & Alan M Taylor, 2019. "The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(3), pages 1225-1298.
    10. John C Williams, 2016. "Measuring the effects of monetary policy on house prices and the economy," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Expanding the boundaries of monetary policy in Asia and the Pacific, volume 88, pages 7-16, Bank for International Settlements.
    11. 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.
    12. Waldenström, Daniel, 2015. "Wealth-income ratios in a small, late-industrializing, welfare-state economy: Sweden, 1810–2014," Working Paper Series, Center for Fiscal Studies 2015:6, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    13. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    14. Grossmann, Volker & Larin, Benjamin & Löfflad, Hans Torben & Steger, Thomas, 2021. "Distributional consequences of surging housing rents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    15. Christophe Blot & Paul Hubert & Fabien Labondance, 2017. "Does monetary policy generate asset price bubbles ?," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2017-05, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    16. Jordà, Òscar & Schularick, Moritz & Taylor, Alan M., 2015. "Leveraged bubbles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(S), pages 1-20.
    17. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2011. "Winners and Losers in Housing Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 255-296, March.
    18. Huub Ploegmakers & Pascal Beckers & Erwin Van der Krabben, 2018. "The impact of planning intervention on business development: Evidence from the Netherlands," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(14), pages 3252-3273, November.
    19. Lambertini, Luisa & Mendicino, Caterina & Punzi, Maria Teresa, 2017. "Expectations-driven cycles in the housing market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 297-312.
    20. Dong, Ding & Liu, Zheng & Wang, Pengfei & Zha, Tao, 2022. "A theory of housing demand shocks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    house prices; land prices; transportation costs; neoclassical theory;
    All these keywords.

    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

    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:ces:ceswps:_5006. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.