Working Paper

The long-run relationship between house prices and income: evidence from local housing markets

Abstract: The proposition that \"housing prices can't continue to outpace growth in household income\" (Wall Street Journal; July 25, 2002) is the received wisdom among many housing-market observers. More formally, many in the housing literature argue that house prices and income are cointegrated. In this paper, I show that the data do not support this view. Standard tests using 27 years of national-level data do not find evidence of cointegration. However, it is known that tests for cointegration have low power, especially in small samples. I use panel-data tests for cointegration that have been shown to be more powerful than their standard time-series counterparts to test for cointegration in a panel of 95 metro areas over 23 years. Using a bootstrap approach to allow for cross-correlations in city-level house-price shocks, I show that even these more powerful tests do not reject the hypothesis of no cointegration. Thus the error-correction specification for house prices and income commonly found in the literature may be inappropriate.

Keywords: Housing; Housing - Prices;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)

Part of Series: Finance and Economics Discussion Series

Publication Date: 2003

Number: 2003-17