IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/openec/v29y2018i4d10.1007_s11079-018-9494-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are House Prices Responsible for Unemployment Persistence?

Author

Listed:
  • Ekkehard Ernst

    (International Labour Organisation)

  • Faten Saliba

    (University of Manchester)

Abstract

The paper analyses the ambiguous role of house prices and housing investment for unemployment dynamics. Whereas traditional models see an increase in house prices as a dynamic multiplier that contributes positively to business cycle swings, the paper considers additional transmission mechanisms via the competitiveness channel (wages) and productivity. As house prices rise, wages tend to follow in order to make up for the loss in real disposable income, which limits employment creation. In addition, with rising house prices, the relative size of the construction sector – a low-productivity industry – tends to increase, lowering aggregate productivity growth, further dampening competitiveness. The paper estimates a stylised dynamic general equilibrium model with unemployment flows. Introducing different transmission mechanisms through which the housing market influences labour and macroeconomic dynamics, the size and direction of the housing market channel is being analysed. The estimation results show that housing shocks can have long-lasting negative effects on employment even though a housing boom can generate a short-lived stimulus on growth and employment. The paper also offers some policy advice simulating housing shocks under different types of structural reforms and macro-prudential regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Ekkehard Ernst & Faten Saliba, 2018. "Are House Prices Responsible for Unemployment Persistence?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 795-833, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:openec:v:29:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s11079-018-9494-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11079-018-9494-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11079-018-9494-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11079-018-9494-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2000. "Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262161877, December.
    2. Kuttner, Kenneth N. & Shim, Ilhyock, 2016. "Can non-interest rate policies stabilize housing markets? Evidence from a panel of 57 economies," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 31-44.
    3. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald, 2013. "Does High Home-Ownership Impair the Labor Market?," NBER Working Papers 19079, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Askenazy, Philippe, 2013. "Capital Prices and Eurozone Competitiveness Differentials," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 1301, CEPREMAP.
    5. Gerhard Rünstler & Marente Vlekke, 2018. "Business, housing, and credit cycles," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(2), pages 212-226, March.
    6. Bernanke, Ben S. & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1999. "The financial accelerator in a quantitative business cycle framework," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1341-1393, Elsevier.
    7. Alessandro Calza & Tommaso Monacelli & Livio Stracca, 2013. "Housing Finance And Monetary Policy," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 101-122, January.
    8. Lee, Tsung-Hsien Michael & Chen, Wenjuan, 2015. "Is there an asymmetric impact of housing on output?," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2015-020, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    9. Michael Kumhof & Romain Rancière & Pablo Winant, 2015. "Inequality, Leverage, and Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1217-1245, March.
    10. Matteo Iacoviello, 2005. "House Prices, Borrowing Constraints, and Monetary Policy in the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 739-764, June.
    11. Hanming Fang & Quanlin Gu & Wei Xiong & Li-An Zhou, 2016. "Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 105-166.
    12. Gordon Hughes & Barry McCormick, 1991. "Housing Markets, Unemployment and Labour Market Flexibility in the U.K," NBER Chapters, in: International Volatility and Economic Growth: The First Ten Years of The International Seminar on Macroeconomics, pages 83-114, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Allen Head & Huw Lloyd-Ellis, 2012. "Housing Liquidity, Mobility, and the Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(4), pages 1559-1589.
    14. Liu, Zheng & Miao, Jianjun & Zha, Tao, 2016. "Land prices and unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 86-105.
    15. Ernst, Ekkehard & Semmler, Willi, 2010. "Global dynamics in a model with search and matching in labor and capital markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(9), pages 1651-1679, September.
    16. Carlsson, Mikael & Eriksson, Stefan & Gottfries, Nils, 2006. "Testing Theories of Job Creation: Does Supply Create Its Own Demand?," Working Paper Series 194, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    17. Mr. Marcello M. Estevão & Ms. Evridiki Tsounta, 2011. "Has the Great Recession Raised U.S. Structural Unemployment?," IMF Working Papers 2011/105, International Monetary Fund.
    18. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    19. Morris A. Davis, 2010. "housing and the business cycle," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    20. Alejandro Justiniano & Giorgio E. Primiceri & Andrea Tambalotti, 2019. "Credit Supply and the Housing Boom," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1317-1350.
    21. Ritashree Chakrabarti & Junfu Zhang, 2015. "Unaffordable housing and local employment growth: Evidence from California municipalities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(6), pages 1134-1151, May.
    22. Hoon Hian Teck, 2010. "Macroeconomic Effects of Over-Investment in Housing in an Aggregative Model of Economic Activity," Capitalism and Society, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 1-27, October.
    23. Henry S. Farber, 2012. "Unemployment in the Great Recession: Did the Housing Market Crisis Prevent the Unemployed from Moving to Take Jobs?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 520-525, May.
    24. Gylfi Zoega, 2012. "Employment and asset prices," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(26), pages 3343-3355, September.
    25. Iacoviello, Matteo & Pavan, Marina, 2013. "Housing and debt over the life cycle and over the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 221-238.
    26. Òscar Jordà & Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor, 2016. "The great mortgaging: housing finance, crises and business cycles," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 31(85), pages 107-152.
    27. Rupert, Peter & Wasmer, Etienne, 2012. "Housing and the labor market: Time to move and aggregate unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 24-36.
    28. Qiang Dai & Thomas Philippon, 2005. "Fiscal Policy and the Term Structure of Interest Rates," NBER Working Papers 11574, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Davis, Steven J. & Faberman, R. Jason & Haltiwanger, John, 2012. "Labor market flows in the cross section and over time," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 1-18.
    30. Michael Kumhof & Romain Rancière & Pablo Winant, 2015. "Inequality, Leverage, and Crises," Post-Print halshs-01511070, HAL.
    31. Olivier Bandt & Thomas Knetsch & Juan Peñalosa & Francesco Zollino (ed.), 2010. "Housing Markets in Europe," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-642-15340-2, June.
    32. Luc Laeven & Alexander Popov, 2016. "A Lost Generation? Education Decisions and Employment Outcomes during the US Housing Boom-Bust Cycle of the 2000s," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 630-635, May.
    33. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2010. "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9111.
    34. Branch, William A. & Petrosky-Nadeau, Nicolas & Rocheteau, Guillaume, 2016. "Financial frictions, the housing market, and unemployment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 101-135.
    35. Matteo Iacoviello & Stefano Neri, 2010. "Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from an Estimated DSGE Model," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 125-164, April.
    36. Michael W. L. Elsby & Bart Hobijn & Ayşegül Şahin, 2013. "Unemployment Dynamics in the OECD," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 530-548, May.
    37. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01207208 is not listed on IDEAS
    38. Michael Woodford, 2001. "The Taylor Rule and Optimal Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 232-237, May.
    39. Robert Shimer, 2012. "Reassessing the Ins and Outs of Unemployment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 127-148, April.
    40. Ekkehard Ernst & Uma Rani, 2011. "Understanding unemployment flows," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 27(2), pages 268-294.
    41. Stefano Neri & Matteo Iacoviello, 2007. "The Role of Housing Collateral in an Estimated Two-Sector Model of the US Economy," 2007 Meeting Papers 245, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    42. Fontana, Alessandro & Corradin, Stefano, 2013. "House price cycles in Europe," Working Paper Series 1613, European Central Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jorge Davalos & Ekkehard Ernst, 2021. "How has labour market power evolved? Comparing labour market monopsony in Peru and the United States," Papers 2103.15183, arXiv.org.
    2. Benjamin Kwakye & Chan Tze Haw, 2020. "Interplay of the Macroeconomy and Real Estate: Systematic Review of Literature," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 10(5), pages 262-271.
    3. Yanfang Sun & Haiyan Xie & Xirong Niu, 2019. "Characteristics of Cyclical Fluctuations in the Development of the Chinese Construction Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(17), pages 1-14, August.
    4. Ekkehard Ernst, 2019. "Finance and Jobs: How Financial Markets and Prudential Regulation Shape Unemployment Dynamics," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-30, January.
    5. Nauro Campos & Karim Aynaoui & Davide Furceri & Prakash Loungani, 2018. "Slow Recovery to Nowhere? Labor Market Issues in Advanced Economies: Introduction," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 695-701, September.

    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. Ekkehard Ernst, 2019. "Finance and Jobs: How Financial Markets and Prudential Regulation Shape Unemployment Dynamics," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-30, January.
    2. Sterk, Vincent, 2015. "Home equity, mobility, and macroeconomic fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 16-32.
    3. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    4. Guerrieri, V. & Uhlig, H., 2016. "Housing and Credit Markets," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1427-1496, Elsevier.
    5. Guo, Zi-Yi, 2017. "Information heterogeneity, housing dynamics and the business cycle," EconStor Preprints 168561, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    6. Fernández-Amador, Octavio, 2016. "Finance-augmented business cycles: A robustness check," Papers 1038, World Trade Institute.
    7. Saleem Bahaj & Angus Foulis & Gabor Pinter, 2016. "The Residential Collateral Channel," Discussion Papers 1607, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM), revised Jun 2016.
    8. Guo, Zi-Yi, 2017. "Information heterogeneity, housing dynamics and the business cycle," Economics Discussion Papers 2017-17, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    9. Octavio Fernández-Amador & Martin Gächter & Friedrich Sindermann, 2016. "Finance-augmented business cycles: A robustness check," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(1), pages 132-144.
    10. Jensen, Henrik & Ravn, Søren Hove & Santoro, Emiliano, 2018. "Changing credit limits, changing business cycles," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 211-239.
    11. Menno, Dominik & Oliviero, Tommaso, 2020. "Financial intermediation, house prices, and the welfare effects of the U.S. Great Recession," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    12. Federico Di Pace & Matthias Hertweck, 2019. "Labor Market Frictions, Monetary Policy, and Durable Goods," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 32, pages 274-304, April.
    13. Schüler, Yves S. & Hiebert, Paul P. & Peltonen, Tuomas A., 2020. "Financial cycles: Characterisation and real-time measurement," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    14. Theodore Panagiotidis & Panagiotis Printzis, 2016. "On the macroeconomic determinants of the housing market in Greece: a VECM approach," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 387-409, July.
    15. Marcus Moelbak Ingholt, 2017. "House Prices, Geographical Mobility, and Unemployment," Discussion Papers 17-06, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    16. Mendicino, Caterina & Punzi, Maria Teresa, 2014. "House prices, capital inflows and macroprudential policy," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 337-355.
    17. Jiaqian Chen & Daria Finocchiaro & Jesper Linde & Karl Walentin, 2023. "The costs of macroprudential deleveraging in a liquidity trap"," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 991-1011, December.
    18. Stockhammer, Engelbert & Wildauer, Rafael, 2018. "Expenditure Cascades, Low Interest Rates or Property Booms? Determinants of Household Debt in OECD Countries," Review of Behavioral Economics, now publishers, vol. 5(2), pages 85-121, September.
    19. Aye, Goodness C. & Balcilar, Mehmet & Bosch, Adél & Gupta, Rangan, 2014. "Housing and the business cycle in South Africa," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 471-491.
    20. Paolo Gelain & Kevin J Lansing & Gisle James Natvik, 2018. "Leaning Against the Credit Cycle," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(5), pages 1350-1393.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Housing market; House prices; Unemployment; Competitiveness; Asset price booms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:kap:openec:v:29:y:2018:i:4:d:10.1007_s11079-018-9494-z. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.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.