Search Results
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.
Journal Article
Comparing the costs of federal housing assistance programs
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 4: Housing Subsidies and Finance.
Journal Article
Break-the-lease party
Journal Article
Landlords and tenants
Journal Article
Landlords' plight
Working Paper
The CPI for rents: a case of understated inflation
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
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 ...
Journal Article
Gimme shelter! rents have risen, not fallen, since World War II
Two recent studies have concluded that for roughly four decades the measure of inflation for rents in the U.S. consumer price index was substantially underestimated. Why should this mismeasurement be of concern? In ?Gimme Shelter! Rents Have Risen, Not Fallen, Since World War II,? Len Nakamura explains that rents are important in measuring the price of housing services for homeowners as well as renters. They are also the main standard against which market participants and others weigh the reasonableness of house prices. In addition, such mismeasurement affected the estimated rate of overall ...
Journal Article
Government regulation and changes in the affordable housing stock
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 2: Affordable Housing and the Housing Market.