Essays on Housing and Monetary Policy

Essays on Housing and Monetary Policy
Author: Min-Ho Nam
Publisher:
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2013
Genre: Housing
ISBN:

This thesis, motivated by my reflections about the failings of monetary policy implementation as a cause of the sub-prime crisis, attempts to answer the following inquiries: (i) whether interest rates have played a major role in generating the house price fluctuations in the U.S., (ii) what are the effects of accommodative monetary policy on the economy given banks' excessive risk-taking, and (iii) whether an optimal monetary policy rule can be found for curbing credit-driven economic volatilities in the model economy with unconventional transmission channels operating. By using a decomposition technique and regression analysis, it can be shown that short-term interest rates exert the most potent influence on the evolution of the volatile components of housing prices. One possible explanation for this is that low policy rates for a prolonged period tend to encourage bankers to take on more risk in lending. This transmission channel, labelled as the risk-taking channel, accounts for the gap to some extent between the forecast and the actual impact of monetary policy on the housing market and the overall economy. A looser monetary policy stance can also shift the preference of economic agents toward housing as theoretically and empirically corroborated in the context of choice between durable and nondurable goods. This transmission route is termed the preference channel. If these two channels are operative in the economy, policy makers need to react aggressively to rapid credit growth in order to stabilize the paths of housing prices and output. These findings provide meaningful implications for monetary policy implementation. First of all, central bankers should strive to identify in a timely fashion newly emerging and state-dependent transmission channels of monetary policy, and accurately assess the impact of policy decisions transmitted through these channels. Secondly, the intervention of central banks in the credit or housing market by adjusting policy rates can be optimal, relative to inaction, in circumstances where banks' risk-taking and the preference for housing are overly exuberant.

Essays on Interest Rates and the Housing Market

Essays on Interest Rates and the Housing Market
Author: Roberto Maria Croce
Publisher:
Total Pages: 99
Release: 2011
Genre:
ISBN:

Abstract: In the first essay of this dissertation, "Monetary Policy and the Housing Cycle," I investigate the role of monetary policy in a housing boom that precipitated the U.S. financial crisis of 2007. I find expansionary policy between 2002 and 2005 accounts for about 50% of the peak deviation of real residential investment from its long-run trend, which occurred in the second quarter of 2005. To determine if monetary policy was a contributor to the housing boom I estimate a large dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model (DSGE) to fit the economy in several different time periods. I mathematically isolate a series of changes in the Fed Funds rate that are statistically unrelated to changes in the macroeconomy and classify these deviations as a measure of monetary policy. The magnitude of the monetary policy series is relatively small during the housing boom but explains half of the of the 2005 peak in residential investment because of inertia in the Fed Funds rate.

Essays on Housing, Unemployment and Monetary Policy

Essays on Housing, Unemployment and Monetary Policy
Author: Ejindu Ume
Publisher:
Total Pages: 91
Release: 2014
Genre: Electronic dissertations
ISBN:

In this dissertation, I study the interconnections between the housing market and labor market, and the link between monetary policy and housing market activity. In the first chapter, I focus on the interplay between the housing and labor market. To do so, I construct a model of search and bargaining across two different markets: the labor market and the housing market. The model highlights that housing prices and frictions in the housing market have a profound impact on labor market activity through the desire of workers to eventually purchase a home, the "American Dream." The model also reveals that labor market frictions can impact housing market activity. I also perform a calibration exercise to evaluate economic activity in general equilibrium. I find that frictions in the housing market generate strong negative external effects on the labor market. More specifically, a tighter housing market is associated with higher unemployment rates and less job creation. Consequently, my findings suggest that policymakers should be very careful in implementing policies targeted towards housing -- housing markets are likely to generate significant external effects to other sectors of the economy, especially the labor market. To study the effects of monetary policy on housing market activity I develop an overlapping generations model in which housing is traded across generations of individuals. Incomplete information leads to a transactions role for money so that monetary policy can be effectively studied. Moreover, individuals face liquidity risk which interferes with their ability to accumulate housing wealth. Contrary to the existing literature, I demonstrate that it is important to disaggregate fixed investment between the residential and non-residential sectors. In particular, I find the effects of monetary policy are asymmetric across the components of the overall capital stock. I conclude this chapter with a policy experiment studying how optimal monetary policy depends on housing market fundamentals. In response to adverse supply conditions in the housing sector, monetary policy should be more aggressive in order to promote residential investment and the housing stock. However, monetary policy should be conservative in order to limit exposure to risk if fundamentals favor housing demand. The third chapter is an empirical look at the relationship between monetary policy and housing market activity. I analyze and quantify the effects of monetary policy on residential investment, housing starts, new private housing permits and new single family houses sold. To conduct the analysis I estimate a vector autoregression model (VAR) where the monetary policy shock is identified using sign restrictions. No restrictions are imposed on the variables of interest, however, in response to a monetary policy shock I impose sign restrictions on the impulse responses of price, output, reserves and the federal funds rate. I find that a contractionary monetary policy shock reduces housing market activity for up to a year after the shock. Interestingly, 2 to 3 years after the economy contracts, activity in the housing sector reverses course. The findings suggest that once the economy contracts the Federal Reserve Bank reverses course by lowering the federal funds rate, and this policy reversal stimulates housing market activity.

Housing and Monetary Policy

Housing and Monetary Policy
Author: Clara Wolf
Publisher:
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis investigates heterogeneous topics since it is related to both housing economics and monetary economics, and uses various tools including theoretical modeling, microeconomic policy evaluation and macroeconomic empirical approach. It is constituted of three chapters. The first one, co-authored with Eric Monnet, is interested in the relationship between demographic changes within countries and housing investment. The second one, co-authored with Guillaume Chapelle and Benjamin Vignolles, assesses the impact of a housing tax credit on several dimensions of the housing market. Finally, the third one studies how monetary policy should react to capital inflows when there are frictions on the financial market.

Essays on Monetary Policy, Household Expectations, and Housing Prices

Essays on Monetary Policy, Household Expectations, and Housing Prices
Author: Shihan Xie
Publisher:
Total Pages: 119
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

Monetary policy in the U.S. has changed substantially in the past few decades. This thesis seeks to understand the effects of monetary policy through household expectations and housing prices. The first chapter proposes and estimates a dynamic model of household inflation expectations. The information flow constraint of the household leads to costly information monitoring. Households use a Bayesian learning model to form and update inflation expectations. The model identifies and corrects for sizable reporting and sampling errors prevalent in household surveys. The estimates show that better-educated households track inflation more closely and report their expectations more accurately. Household inflation expectations are less responsive to changes in the inflation target after the Great Recession. Model-implied household inflation expectations improve the fit of the expectation-augmented Phillips curve. Inattention from households makes it costlier for the Fed to lower inflation than would be the case if everyone is perfectly informed. The second chapter examines the differential effect of monetary policy shocks on U.S. local housing markets. By exploiting the heterogeneity in housing supply elasticity, I provide estimates of local housing price responses to monetary policy shocks in a large sample of metropolitan statistical areas. Given an expansionary shock that decreases the Federal Funds rate by 100 basis points, housing prices increase by 7.2% in cities with a highly inelastic housing supply (e.g., San Francisco), but by only 1.0% in cities with a very elastic housing supply (e.g., Iowa City) at the two-year horizon. To understand the monetary policy transmission mechanism in the housing market, I develop and estimate a structural model of the housing price with information friction. The third chapter surveys a number of important methods on the identification of monetary policy shocks and compares their estimated impacts on output, inflation and unemployment rate for pre- and post-1984 periods. In particular, identification using monetary SVAR or Romer-Romer method suggests substantial changes in the effects of monetary policy shocks. In contrast, the FAVAR method provides relatively consistent estimation for both periods. Tests for structural breaks point to parameter instability during 1979-1984. Such instability persists after accounting for GARCH effects.

Essays on Monetary Policy

Essays on Monetary Policy
Author: Omer Bayar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 72
Release: 2010
Genre:
ISBN:

Central banks use a series of relatively small interest rate changes in adjusting their monetary policy stance. This persistence in interest rate changes is well documented by empirical monetary policy reaction functions that feature a large estimated coefficient for the lagged interest rate. The two hypotheses that explain the size of this large estimated coefficient are monetary policy inertia and serially correlated macro shocks. In the first part of my dissertation, I show that the effect of inertia on the Federal Reserve's monthly funds rate adjustment is only moderate, and smaller than suggested by previous studies. In the second part, I present evidence that the temporal aggregation of interest rates puts an upward bias on the size of the estimated coefficient for the lagged interest rate. The third part of my dissertation is inspired by recent developments in the housing market and the resulting effect on the overall economy. In this third essay, we show that high loan-to-value mortgage borrowing reduces the effectiveness of monetary policy.

Essays on Housing Policy

Essays on Housing Policy
Author: J. B. Cullingworth
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2021-03-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000296660

Originally published in 1979, these essays provide a guide to the labyrinth of issues which together made up ‘housing policy’ in the late 20th Century. The focus is on the practical and political difficulties of devising measures which meet policy objectives – difficulties which are just as prevalent in the 21st Century. The search for ‘comprehensive strategies’ is shown to be a vain one: given the number of relevant issues and their complexity, only an incremental approach is practicable. Major issues are discussed in the context of an analysis of the institutional, historical and financial framework within which housing policy is formulated and operated.