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How large is the housing wealth effect? A new approach

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  • Carroll, Christopher D.
  • Otsuka, Misuzu
  • Slacalek, Jirka

Abstract

This paper presents a simple new method for estimating the size of 'wealth effects' on aggregate consumption. The method exploits the well-documented sluggishness of consumption growth (often interpreted as 'habits' in the asset pricing literature) to distinguish between short-run and long-run wealth effects. In U.S. data, we estimate that the immediate (next-quarter) marginal propensity to consume from a $1 change in housing wealth is about 2 cents, with a final long-run effect around 9 cents. Consistent with several recent studies, we find a housing wealth effect that is substantially larger than the stock wealth effect. We believe that our approach is preferable to the currently popular cointegrationbased estimation methods, because neither theory nor evidence justifies faith in the existence of a stable cointegrating vector.

Suggested Citation

  • Carroll, Christopher D. & Otsuka, Misuzu & Slacalek, Jirka, 2006. "How large is the housing wealth effect? A new approach," CFS Working Paper Series 2006/35, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:cfswop:200635
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Housing Wealth; Wealth Effect; Consumption Dynamics; Asset Price Bubbles;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes

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