IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jrisks/v11y2023i7p136-d1199398.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Power Laws and Inequalities: The Case of British District House Price Dispersion

Author

Listed:
  • David Paul Gray

    (Department of Accountancy Finance and Economics, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK)

Abstract

Descriptive statistics that are easy to generate and interpret are central to policy decision making. The GINI coefficient and the coefficient of variation are used widely when assessing inequality. In many areas of inequality, such as wealth and income holdings, the distribution is skewed. Here, simple power laws could provide useful ‘descriptive’ exponents. The Zipf-Pareto power law and Lavalette’s law are used to reveal a steepening in the distribution of district house prices in Britain that began before the financial crash of 2008. The time profiles indicate the exponents closely mirror those of the GINI coefficient and the coefficient of variation. As such, they are useful tools in the quantification of inequalities.

Suggested Citation

  • David Paul Gray, 2023. "Power Laws and Inequalities: The Case of British District House Price Dispersion," Risks, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-15, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jrisks:v:11:y:2023:i:7:p:136-:d:1199398
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9091/11/7/136/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9091/11/7/136/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Todd Sinai, 2010. "Feedback Between Real Estate And Urban Economics," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 423-448, February.
    2. Montagnoli, Alberto & Nagayasu, Jun, 2015. "UK house price convergence clubs and spillovers," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 50-58.
    3. Philip McCann, 2020. "Perceptions of regional inequality and the geography of discontent: insights from the UK," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(2), pages 256-267, February.
    4. Aoki, Kosuke & Proudman, James & Vlieghe, Gertjan, 2004. "House prices, consumption, and monetary policy: a financial accelerator approach," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 414-435, October.
    5. Ron Martin & Peter Sunley & Ben Gardiner & Emil Evenhuis & Peter Tyler, 2018. "The city dimension of the productivity growth puzzle: the relative role of structural change and within-sector slowdown," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 539-570.
    6. Coulson, N. Edward & Liu, Crocker H. & Villupuram, Sriram V., 2013. "Urban economic base as a catalyst for movements in real estate prices," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(6), pages 1023-1040.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Gray, 2022. "Do house price-earnings ratios in England and Wales follow a power law? An application of Lavalette’s law to district data," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 49(4), pages 1184-1196, May.
    2. David Gray, 2018. "An application of two non-parametric techniques to the prices of British dwellings: An examination of cyclicality," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(10), pages 2286-2299, August.
    3. David Gray, 2019. "Medium-term cycles and housing: Is regional integration different?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(9), pages 1786-1800, July.
    4. David Gray, 2020. "An international housing market in the British Isles: Evidence from business and medium-term cycles using a Friedman test," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(2), pages 307-322, February.
    5. David Paul Gray, 2022. "How Have District-Based House Price Earnings Ratios Evolved in England and Wales?," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-14, August.
    6. David Gray, 2021. "A simple measure of beta-convergence revisited," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(12), pages 2569-2583, September.
    7. David Paul Gray, 2024. "An Investigation into the Spatial Distribution of British Housing Market Activity," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-16, January.
    8. Sandra Eickmeier & Boris Hofmann & Andreas Worms, 2009. "Macroeconomic Fluctuations and Bank Lending: Evidence for Germany and the Euro Area," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 10(2), pages 193-223, May.
    9. Vitek, Francis, 2006. "Measuring the Stance of Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy: A Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Approach," MPRA Paper 802, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Martin Henning & Hans Westlund & Kerstin Enflo, 2023. "Urban–rural population changes and spatial inequalities in Sweden," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(4), pages 878-892, May.
    11. Nyakabawo, Wendy & Miller, Stephen M. & Balcilar, Mehmet & Das, Sonali & Gupta, Rangan, 2015. "Temporal causality between house prices and output in the US: A bootstrap rolling-window approach," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 55-73.
    12. Charles Ka Yui Leung & Joe Cho Yiu Ng, 2018. "Macro Aspects of Housing," GRU Working Paper Series GRU_2018_016, City University of Hong Kong, Department of Economics and Finance, Global Research Unit.
    13. Janine Aron & John Muellbauer, 2006. "Housing Wealth, Credit Conditions and Consumption," CSAE Working Paper Series 2006-08, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    14. International Monetary Fund, 2011. "Kingdom of Netherlands: Netherlands: Selected Issues and Analytical Notes," IMF Staff Country Reports 2011/143, International Monetary Fund.
    15. Javier Gómez Pineda, 2004. "A Framework for Macroeconomic Stability in Emerging Market Economies," Borradores de Economia 320, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    16. Kevin D. Salyer & Gabriel S. Lee & Victor Dorofeenko, 2010. "Risk Shocks and Housing Markets," 2010 Meeting Papers 451, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Nobili, Andrea & Zollino, Francesco, 2017. "A structural model for the housing and credit market in Italy," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 73-87.
    18. Sami Alpanda & Sarah Zubairy, 2016. "Housing and Tax Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 485-512, March.
    19. repec:nbb:reswpp:201606-306 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Hyun Jeong Kim & Jong Chil Son & Myung-Soo Yie, 2017. "House Price Dynamics with Household Debt: The Korean Case-super-," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 31(1), pages 39-59, March.
    21. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Neil Lee & Cornelius Lipp, 2021. "Golfing with Trump. Social capital, decline, inequality, and the rise of populism in the US," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 14(3), pages 457-481.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jrisks:v:11:y:2023:i:7:p:136-:d:1199398. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.