[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/119143.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Housing market fluctuations in a life-cycle economy with credit constraints

Author

Listed:
  • Ortalo-Magné, François
  • Rady, Sven
Abstract
This paper presents a first step towards a new theory of housing market fluctuations. We develop a life-cycle model where agents face credit constraints and their housing consumption is restricted to a discrete set of possibilities. The market interaction of young credit constrained agents climbing the property ladder with old agents trading down, generates co-movements of aggregate house prices, volume of transactions and income, consistent with the patterns observed in the U.S. and the U.K. Under plausible assumptions, the model reproduces the slight lead of transaction volume over the other two series as documented in the data. Our theory asserts that the fluctuations in housing prices depend crucially on fluctuations in the current income of young households (the first-time buyers). Thus, it sheds light on why housing prices are more volatile than GDP, and why they exhibit some degree of predictability in a market where households optimize over the timing of their transactions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ortalo-Magné, François & Rady, Sven, 1998. "Housing market fluctuations in a life-cycle economy with credit constraints," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119143, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:119143
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/119143/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Sanford J & Laroque, Guy, 1990. "Asset Pricing and Optimal Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Illiquid Durable Consumption Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 25-51, January.
    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. Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro & Moore, John, 1997. "Credit Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 211-248, April.
    4. Muellbauer, John & Murphy, Anthony, 1997. "Booms and Busts in the UK Housing Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(445), pages 1701-1727, November.
    5. Ioannides, Yannis M., 1989. "Housing, other real estate, and wealth portfolios : An empirical investigation based on the 1983 Survey of Consumer Finances," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 259-280, May.
    6. Jones, Lawrence D., 1997. "The Tenure Transition Decision For Elderly Homeowners," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 243-263, March.
    7. Green, Richard & Hendershott, Patric H., 1996. "Age, housing demand, and real house prices," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 465-480, August.
    8. Lawrence D. Jones, 1989. "Current Wealth and Tenure Choice," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 17(1), pages 17-40, March.
    9. Engelhardt, Gary V, 1996. "Consumption, Down Payments, and Liquidity Constraints," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(2), pages 255-271, May.
    10. Peter Linneman & Susan Wachter, 1989. "The Impacts of Borrowing Constraints on Homeownership," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 17(4), pages 389-402, December.
    11. Jeremy C. Stein, 1995. "Prices and Trading Volume in the Housing Market: A Model with Down-Payment Effects," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(2), pages 379-406.
    12. Ortalo-Magne, Francois & Rady, Sven, 1999. "Boom in, bust out: Young households and the housing price cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 755-766, April.
    13. 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.
    14. Duca, John V. & Rosenthal, Stuart S., 1994. "Borrowing constraints and access to owner-occupied housing," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 301-322, June.
    15. Mankiw, N. Gregory & Weil, David N., 1989. "The baby boom, the baby bust, and the housing market," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 235-258, 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. François Ortalo-Magné & Sven Rady, 2006. "Housing Market Dynamics: On the Contribution of Income Shocks and Credit Constraints ," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(2), pages 459-485.
    2. Fracois Ortalo-Magne & Sven Rady, 2000. "Why are Housing Prices so Volatile? Income Shocks in a Stochastic Heterogeneous-Agents Model," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1352, Econometric Society.
    3. Dietz, Robert D. & Haurin, Donald R., 2003. "The social and private micro-level consequences of homeownership," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 401-450, November.
    4. Ghysels, Eric & Plazzi, Alberto & Valkanov, Rossen & Torous, Walter, 2013. "Forecasting Real Estate Prices," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 509-580, Elsevier.
    5. Andrew Benito, 2006. "How does the down-payment constraint affect the UK housing market?," Bank of England working papers 294, Bank of England.
    6. 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.
    7. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Christian Julliard, 2008. "Money Illusion and Housing Frenzies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 135-180, January.
    8. Arno Vlist & Daniel Czamanski & Henk Folmer, 2011. "Immigration and urban housing market dynamics: the case of Haifa," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 47(3), pages 585-598, December.
    9. 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.
    10. 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.
    11. Ortalo-Magné, François & Rady, Sven, 2005. "Housing Market Dynamics: On the Contribution of Income Shocks and Credit Constraints (Revised Version)," Discussion Papers in Economics 494, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    12. Charles Himmelberg & Christopher Mayer & Todd Sinai, 2005. "Assessing High House Prices: Bubbles, Fundamentals and Misperceptions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 67-92, Fall.
    13. Juan Ayuso & Fernando Restoy, 2003. "House prices and rents: an equilibrium asset pricing approach," Working Papers 0304, Banco de España.
    14. Luci Ellis, 2005. "Disinflation and the dynamics of mortgage debt," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Investigating the relationship between the financial and real economy, volume 22, pages 5-20, Bank for International Settlements.
    15. Gervais, Martin, 2002. "Housing taxation and capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(7), pages 1461-1489, October.
    16. Hochgürtel, S. & van Soest, A.H.O., 1996. "The Relation Between Financial and Housing Wealth of Dutch Households," Other publications TiSEM db5f1307-aa5a-4a4b-bec2-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    17. Davis, Morris A. & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2015. "Housing, Finance, and the Macroeconomy," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 753-811, Elsevier.
    18. Antonio F. Galvao JR. & Gabriel Montes-Rojas & Sung Y. Park, 2013. "Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model with an Application to House Price Returns," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(2), pages 307-321, April.
    19. Sarah Carrington & Jakob B. Madsen, 2011. "House Prices, Credit and Willingness to Lend," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 87(279), pages 537-557, December.
    20. Vigdor, Jacob L., 2006. "Liquidity constraints and housing prices: Theory and evidence from the VA Mortgage Program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(8-9), pages 1579-1600, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand

    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:ehl:lserod:119143. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.