Are Housing Wealth Effects Asymmetric in Booms and Busts?

Mairead Roiste, Apostolos Fasianos, Robert Kirkby and Fang Yao ()
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Mairead Roiste: Victoria University of Wellington

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2021, vol. 62, issue 4, No 4, 578-628

Abstract: Abstract This paper investigates the effects of household indebtedness and housing wealth on consumption. To identify exogenous movements of housing wealth and leverage, we estimate housing supply elasticities for New Zealand urban centers. We construct synthetic panel series by using household survey data to estimate the marginal propensity to consume out of exogenous changes in housing wealth, while controlling for the household leverage ratio. Our empirical results show that, on average, the marginal propensity to consume out of housing wealth is about 3 cents out of one dollar. But it is larger, about 4 cents, in response to falling house wealth than to increasing housing wealth, about 2 cents. We further investigate the role of household indebtedness in accounting for the asymmetric effect. Our findings suggest that household leverage reinforces the housing wealth effect in a housing bust, but dampens the housing wealth effect in a boom.

Keywords: Household debt; Housing wealth effects; Leverage; Marginal propensity to consume (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D14 E21 R2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11146-020-09757-6

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