Using U.S. data and Bayesian methods, we quantify the contribution of the housing market to business fluctuations. The estimated model, which contains nominal and real rigidities and collateral constraints, is used to address two questions. First, what shocks drive the housing market? We find...

This paper investigates the benefits of allowing households to compensate the portfolio distortion due to their housing consumption through investments in housing price derivatives. Focusing on the London market, we show that a major loss from over-investment in housing is that households are...

I construct an economy with heterogeneous agents that mimics the time-series behavior of the earnings distribution in the United States from 1963 to 2003. Agents face aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks and accumulate real and financial assets. I estimate the shocks that drive the model using...

We study housing and debt in a quantitative general equilibrium model. In the cross-section, the model matches the wealth distribution, the age profiles of homeownership and mortgage debt, and the frequency of housing adjustment. In the time-series, the model matches the procyclicality and...

I develop a general equilibrium model with sticky prices, credit constraints, nominal loans and asset (house) prices. Changes in house prices modify agents' borrowing capacity through collateral value; changes in nominal prices affect real repayments through debt deflation. Monetary shocks move...

We examine the international transmission of business cycles in a two-country economy in which credit contracts are imperfectly enforceable. In our economy, foreign lenders differ from domestic lenders in their ability to recover value from borrowers' assets and, therefore, to protect themselves...

If borrowing capacity of indebted households is tied to the value of their home, house prices should enter a correctly specified aggregate Euler equation for consumption. I develop a simple two-agent, dynamic general equilibrium model in which home (collateral) values affect debt capacity and...

We build and estimate a two-sector (goods and services) dynamic general equilibrium model with two types of inventories: finished goods (output) inventories yield utility services while materials (input) inventories facilitate the production of goods. The model, which contains neutral and...

We analyse the impact of financial liberalisation on the link between monetary policy and house prices. We present a simple model of a small open economy subject to credit constraints. The model shows that the higher the degree of financial liberalisation, the stronger is the impact of interest...

A structural vector autoregressive approach identifies the main macroeconomic factors behind fluctuations in house prices in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Quarterly GDP, house prices, money, inflation and interest rates are characterised by a multivariate process driven by...