The Microfoundations of Housing Price Dynamics (0721136) Patrick Bayer and Christopher Timmins
Fluctuations in home building play a central role in economic business cycles. Fueled by low interest rates, the upsurge in housing prices in the US between 1997-2006, and the subsequent building boom, is generally considered to have been a driving force in the expansion of the economy over that period. And, worries about a major housing market correction have played a central role in the determination of monetary policy by the Fed in the subsequent period. Yet while researchers have documented many of important macroeconomic aspects of housing market dynamics, little is understood about the behavior of individual home-buyers and sellers at various points in a real estate boom-bust cycle. In particular, a number of questions about the fundamental determinants of the nature and length of local real estate boom-bust cycles remain open.
The intellectual merit of the project derives from two novel features of its design, which permit the analysis to deliver new insights concerning housing market dynamics. The first is the construction of a new dataset that uses detailed information on millions of housing transactions over a 15-year period. The second is the development of a tractable model of neighborhood choice that permits the study of individual home-buying and selling decisions in a dynamic context.
The empirical applications in the project follow two main lines of inquiry, seeking to improve our understanding of (i) the underlying causes of housing price fluctuations and (ii) the underlying factors driving the dynamics of racial segregation in cities. The principal goal of the first line of research is to provide a clear linkage between the microeconomic primitives of the housing market (i.e., the factors governing individual buying and selling decisions) and the aggregate market dynamics (e.g., the positive persistence of prices, local housing bubbles, etc). Of particular importance is the question of whether individual home buyers and sellers have rational expectations about housing market dynamics at different points in a local real estate cycle. In other words, do individuals become irrationally exuberant during local real estate booms and unduly pessimistic during downturns?
The second line of research includes three papers that aim to improve our understanding of the microeconomic forces driving the dynamics of racial segregation. The first two papers develop new empirical tests for racial discrimination in housing transactions and racial tipping, respectively. Each paper uses the detailed nature of the transaction data to devise tests that are subject to far fewer confounding issues than those that have appeared in the literature to date. The third paper in this line of research uses the estimated dynamic model of neighborhood choice to better understand the roles of preferences versus expectations about price and neighborhood dynamics in the evolution and persistence of racial segregation.
This project has a number of broader impacts. The new dataset and methodologies developed as part of the project are potentially applicable to the study of a much wider set of dynamic phenomena in housing markets and cities. Moreover, an increased understanding of the nature and causes of housing market fluctuations has direct benefits for the setting of policy at both the federal and local levels.
