Has there actually been a sustained increase in the synchronization of house price (and business) cycles across countries?

Abstract

Housing has been demonstrated to affect the macroeconomy, particularly business cycle fluctuations. Given the more globalized nature of financial and economic activity in comparison to past decades, there has been much research on how synchronized home values are across countries. This research mirrors a similar line of inquiry on business cycle movement across nations. The degree of co-movement has implications portfolio management in real estate investment, as well as for macroeconomic policy coordination across countries. In this paper, we apply a newly developed set of international house price data and utilize some recently created tools to investigate international housing and business cycle co-movement. We find that there has been no sustained increase in co-movement for either house prices or income across nations.