IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/11019.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Evolution of House Price Distribution

Author

Listed:
  • OHNISHI Takaaki
  • MIZUNO Takayuki
  • SHIMIZU Chihiro
  • WATANABE Tsutomu

Abstract

Is the cross-sectional distribution of house prices close to a lognormal distribution, as is often assumed in empirical studies on house price indexes? How does the distribution evolve over time? To address these questions, we investigate the cross-sectional distribution of house prices in the Greater Tokyo Area. We find that house prices (Pi) are distributed with much fatter tails than a lognormal distribution and that the tail is quite close to that of a power-law distribution. We also find that house sizes (Si) follow an exponential distribution. These findings imply that size-adjusted house prices, defined by lnPi - aSi, should be normally distributed. We find that this is indeed the case for most of the sample period, but not the bubble era, during which the price distribution has a fat upper tail even after adjusting for size. The bubble was concentrated in particular areas in Tokyo, and this is the source of the fat upper tail.

Suggested Citation

  • OHNISHI Takaaki & MIZUNO Takayuki & SHIMIZU Chihiro & WATANABE Tsutomu, 2011. "The Evolution of House Price Distribution," Discussion papers 11019, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:11019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/11e019.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2010. "Why Has House Price Dispersion Gone Up?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(4), pages 1567-1606.
    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. Greg Howard & Carl Liebersohn, 2019. "What Explains U.S. House Prices? Regional Income Divergence," 2019 Meeting Papers 1054, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. repec:esx:essedp:712 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko, 2006. "Housing Dynamics," NBER Working Papers 12787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. An-Ming Wang, 2016. "Agglomeration and simplified housing boom," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(5), pages 936-956, April.
    5. Gabriele Galati & Federica Teppa & Rob Alessie, 2013. "Heterogeneity in house price dynamics," DNB Working Papers 371, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    6. Määttänen, Niku & Terviö, Marko, 2014. "Income distribution and housing prices: An assignment model approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 381-410.
    7. Andrii Parkhomenko, 2018. "The Rise of Housing Supply Regulation in the US: Local Causes and Aggregate Implications," 2018 Meeting Papers 275, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Davis, Morris A. & Palumbo, Michael G., 2008. "The price of residential land in large US cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 352-384, January.
    9. Zhenyu Gao & Michael Sockin & Wei Xiong, 2020. "Learning about the Neighborhood," NBER Working Papers 26907, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2011. "Winners and Losers in Housing Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 255-296, March.
    11. Morris A. Davis & Jonas D. M. Fisher & Marcelo Veracierto, 2010. "The role of housing in labor reallocation," Working Paper Series WP-2010-18, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    12. Jack Favilukis & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2021. "Out‐of‐Town Home Buyers and City Welfare," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(5), pages 2577-2638, October.
    13. François Ortalo-Magné & Andrea Prat, 2016. "Spatial Asset Pricing: A First Step," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(329), pages 130-171, January.
    14. Michael Funke & Petar Mihaylovski & Adrian Wende, 2021. "Out of Sync Subnational Housing Markets and Macroprudential Policies in the UK," De Economist, Springer, vol. 169(4), pages 445-467, November.
    15. repec:ehu:ikerla:15485 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. John Hartwick, 2013. "The Law Of Urban Growth And The Local Public Sector," Working Paper 1304, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    17. Plamen Nenov, 2013. "Regional Mismatch and Labor Reallocation in an Equilibrium Model of Migration," 2013 Meeting Papers 565, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Frame, David, 2013. "Saving and consumption in cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 111-124.
    19. Funke, Michael & Kirkby, Robert & Mihaylovski, Petar, 2018. "House prices and macroprudential policy in an estimated DSGE model of New Zealand," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 152-171.
    20. Guerrieri, Veronica & Hartley, Daniel & Hurst, Erik, 2013. "Endogenous gentrification and housing price dynamics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 45-60.
    21. Landier, Augustin & Sraer, David & Thesmar, David, 2017. "Banking integration and house price co-movement," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 1-25.
    22. Funke, Michael & Leiva-Leon, Danilo & Tsang, Andrew, 2019. "Mapping China’s time-varying house price landscape," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:eti:dpaper:11019. 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: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.html .

    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.