Asymmetric Causality between Unemployment Rate and House Prices in Select OECD Economies

Abstract

Previous research on how unemployment influences house prices is limited by employing a symmetric approach to cointegration. The symmetric method masks the underlying link between unemployment and housing prices. This study examines the impact of unemployment on house prices across 20 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies by using an asymmetric approach to cointegration. The current research additionally leverages Hatemi-J causality to bolster the asymmetric causation between unemployment and house prices. According to the symmetric approach, 13 of the 20 OECD economies in the short run and 9 economies in the long run have at least one lagged significant coefficient associated with the LnUN variable. The asymmetric effects demonstrate a significant short- and long-term asymmetric association between unemployment and house prices in the instance of 16 OECD nations. The Hatemi-J causality results demonstrate that in each of the selected economies, there is evidence of an asymmetric bidirectional causal relationship between unemployment and house prices, as shown by at least one significant variable that runs either from unemployment to house prices or from house prices to unemployment.