Both monetary policy and real factors played crucial causal roles in the housing boom and bust. Monetary policy distorted relative prices, particularly intertemporal prices. Prices play a critical role in allocating resources by signaling the relative scarcity of resources. Prices convey...

This paper examines how monetary expansion causes asset bubbles. When there is no monetary expansion, a bubbly asset is not created due to a hold-up problem. Monetary expansion increases buyers' money holdings, and then, dealers are willing to buy a worthless asset from sellers, in hopes of...