Regulating Speculative Housing Markets via Public Housing Construction Programs: Insights from a Heterogeneous Agent Model

An Agent-Based Model of Coupled Housing and Land Markets

This paper describes a spatially disaggregated, economic agent-based model of urban land use that includes explicitly specified and coupled land and housing markets. The three types of agents— consumer, farmer and developer—all make decisions based on underlying economic principles, and heterogeneity of both individuals and the landscape is represented. The model can be used to simulate the con...

Housing Bubbles, Herds and Frenzies: Evidence from British Housing Markets

1 In a world of uncertainty, imperfect information and irreversible decision-making, speculation and information acquisition will generate bubbles, herding and frenzies in housing demand. The instability generated will be further exacerbated by liquidity constraints and institutional change. In this paper, the influence of herds, frenzies and bubbles on housing demand is assessed in the context...

Arbitrage in Housing Markets

Urban economists understand housing prices with a spatial equilibrium approach that assumes people must be indifferent across locations. Since the spatial no arbitrage condition is inherently imprecise, other economists have turned to other no arbitrage conditions, such as the prediction that individuals must be indifferent between owning and renting. This paper argues these non-spatial, no arb...

Stimulating Housing Markets

This paper studies temporary policy incentives designed to address capital overhang by inducing asset demand from buyers in the private market. Using variation across local geographies in ex ante program exposure and a difference-in-differences design, we find that the First-Time Homebuyer Credit induced a cumulative increase in home sales of 397 to 546 thousand, or 7.8 to 10.7 percent, nationa...

Public Housing: The Experimental Housing Allowance Program