Search Results
Working Paper
Why Rent When You Can Buy?
Using a model with bilateral trades, we explain why agents prefer to rent the goods they can afford to buy. Absent bilateral trading frictions, renting has no role even with uncertainty about future valuations. With pairwise meetings, agents prefer to sell (or buy) durable goods whenever they have little doubt on the future value of the good. As uncertainty grows, renting becomes more prevalent. Pairwise matching alone is sufficient to explain why agents prefer to rent, and there is no need to introduce random matching, information asymmetries, or other market frictions.
Journal Article
Do rising rents complicate inflation assessment?
In the face of falling house prices, decreasing rates of homeownership, and a glut of vacant homes, the Consumer Price Index?s measure of the cost of owner-occupied housing?owners? equivalent rent of residence (OER)?has begun to accelerate, rising at an annualized rate of 2.3 percent over the past six months. Given a backdrop of generally subdued underlying inflation elsewhere in the index, a persistent increase in the relative price of OER?the largest component of the consumer market basket by far?may create upward pressure on measured inflation.
Working Paper
The CPI for rents: a case of understated inflation.
Until the end of 1977, the method used in the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) to measure rent inflation tended to omit rent increases when units had a change of tenants or were vacant. Since such units typically had more rapid increases in rents than average units, this response bias biased inflation estimates downward. Beginning in 1978, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) implemented a series of methodological changes that reduced response bias but substantial bias remained until 1985. We set up a model of response bias, parameterize it, and test it using a BLS microdata set for rents. We ...
Working Paper
Measuring American rents: a revisionist history.
Until the end of 1977, the method used to measure changes in rent of primary residence in the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) tended to omit price changes when units changed tenants or were temporarily vacant. Since such units typically had more rapid increases in rents than average units, omitting them biased inflation estimates downward. Beginning in 1978, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) implemented a series of methodological changes that reduced this bias. The authors use data from the American Housing Survey to check the success of the corrections. They compare estimates of the ...
Working Paper
Compensating variation in wages and rents
Working Paper
Rents have been rising, not falling, in the postwar period
Until the end of 1977, the U.S. consumer price index for rents tended to omit rent increases when units had a change of tenants or were vacant, biasing inflation estimates downward. Beginning in 1978, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) implemented a series of methodological changes that reduced this nonresponse bias, but substantial bias remained until 1985. The authors set up a model of nonresponse bias, parameterize it, and test it using a BLS microdata set for rents. From 1940 to 1985, the official BLS CPI-W price index for tenant rents rose 3.6 percent annually; the authors argue that ...
Working Paper
House prices and credit constraints: making sense of the U.S. experience
Most U.S. house price models break down in the mid-2000s due to the omission of exogenous changes in mortgage credit supply (associated with the subprime mortgage boom) from house price-to-rent ratio and inverted housing demand models. Previous models lack data on credit constraints facing first-time homebuyers. Incorporating a measure of credit conditions?the cyclically adjusted loan-to-value ratio for first-time buyers?into house price-to-rent ratio models yields stable long-run relationships, more precisely estimated effects, reasonable speeds of adjustment and improved model fits.
Journal Article
State of New York City's housing and neighborhoods: an overview of recent trends
This paper was presented at the conference "Policies to Promote Affordable Housing," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, February 7, 2002. It was part of Session 1: State of New York City's Housing and Neighborhoods.
Journal Article
Break-the-lease party