News-driven housing booms: Spain vs. Germany

Laurentiu Guinea, Luis Puch and Jesus Ruiz

No 2019-32, Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico

Abstract: In this paper we investigate how the economy responds to anticipated (news) shocks to future investment decisions. Using structural vector autoregressions (SVARs), we show that news about the future relative price of residential investment explains a high fraction of the variance of output, aggregate investment and residential investment for Spain. In contrast, for Germany it is the news shocks on business structures and equipment that explain a higher fraction of the variance of output, consumption and non-residential investment. To interpret our empirical findings we propose a stylized two-sector model of the willingness to substitute current consumption for future investment in housing, structures or equipment. The model combines a wealth effect driven by the expectation of rising house prices, with frictions in labour reallocation. We find that the model calibrated for Spain displays a response to anticipated house price shocks that stimulate residential investment, whereas for Germany those shocks enhance investment in equipment and structures. The results stress that the propagation mechanism of anticipated shocks to future investment is consistent with the housing booms in Spain.

Keywords: Investment-specifi technical change; News shocks; Housing booms; Wealth eff. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 D84 E22 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 77 pages
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-mac and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/57343/1/1932.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: News-driven housing booms: Spain vs. Germany (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucm:doicae:1932

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales. Pabellón prefabricado, 1ª Planta, ala norte. Campus de Somosaguas, 28223 - POZUELO DE ALARCÓN (MADRID)
https://www.ucm.es/f ... -de-trabajo-del-icae

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Águeda González Abad ().