This paper presents the Sale Price Appraisal Ratio (SPAR) method for constructing house price indexes. The method, which uses ratios of transaction prices and previous appraised values to build up an index, has been applied since the early 1960s to produce semi-annual price indexes for regions...

This paper studies actual house prices relative to fundamental house prices. Using UK data and a time-varying present value approach, we find that deviations of house prices fromtheir fundamental value (as warranted by real disposable income) are significant but not dominated by speculative...

This paper explores the prices of three aesthetic externalities (the presence of a water view, the appearance of nearby improvements, and the quality of landscaping in the neighborhood) in residential property markets. In particular, we focus on how the implicit prices of such characteristics...

This paper compares the impacts of alternative models of spatial dependence on the accuracy of house price predictions in a mass appraisal context. Explicit modeling of spatial dependence is characterized as a more fluid approach to defining housing submarkets. This approach allows the relevant...

Equity and neutrality are distinct concepts in housing taxation and weak and strong tenure neutrality should be distinguished. When a tax system is tested for those criteria, the taxes paid by landlords must be included, as they affect the rents renters pay. This paper defines appropriate tests,...

We maintain that the appropriate definition of submarkets depends on the use to which they will be put. For mass appraisal purposes, submarkets should be defined so that the accuracy of hedonic predictions will be optimized. Thus we test whether out-of-sample hedonic value predictions can be...

While the average change in house prices is related to changes in fundamentals or perhaps market-wide bubbles, not all houses in a market appreciate at the same rate.The primary focus of our study is to investigate the reasons for these variations in price changes among houses within a market....

We present a model in which a sovereign country optimally decides on its consumption and investment policies as well as on the optimal time to default. In the paper we allow the sovereign borrower to keep the fraction of its augmented wealth in so-called international reserves. We further assume...

We develop a new methodology to measure conditional dependency between time series each driven by complicated marginal distributions. We achieve this by using copula functions that link marginal distributions, and by expressing the parameter of the copula as a function of predetermined...

To obtain the maximum benefits from diversification, financial theory suggests that investors should invest internationally because of the larger potential for risk reduction stemming from the lower correlation exisiting between assets of different countries. The question that we raise in this...