Real User Cost Research Articles

Monetary Policy, User Cost and Inequality: Homeowners versus Renters

User costs of housing are a major part of a household’s expenditure. I empirically investigate the heterogeneous impact of an unanticipated expansionary monetary policy on housing markets and household tenurial decision by exploiting the user cost of housing channel. Drawing on a Swiss household panel data and daily interest rate futures, I find that the less financially constrained households are 3.45 percentage points more likely to become homeowners in case of unexpected decrease of 100 basis points in 3-month CHF Libor. The households in the upper income quartile with pillar 3a savings benefit the most in case of an unanticipated negative monetary policy shock. The real user cost expenses of renting also benefits significantly by a decrease of on average 19% from an unexpected expansionary monetary policy. Single family houses do not benefit from the shocks in the monetary policy. The findings highlight the importance of apartments and multifamily housing.

The 'Embodied Equity' Theory of Term Structure

This study analytically specifies the residual cash flow stream that real capital embodies. The specification separates debt cash flows from equity and obtains an equilibrium condition equating marginal physical product and real user cost of capital. Analysis of the user cost specification reveals that the equilibrium interest rate is an increasing function of the debt contract's loan-to-value ratio and average period of debt. The basic reason why the interest rate increases with average period is this: the equity financing rate exceeds the interest rate, a lengthening debt average period reduces to equity the discounted cost of debt, the financing rate increases to re-establish equilibrium. The “embodied equity” hypothesis advanced herein joins the expectations hypothesis, the liquidity preference hypothesis, and the market segmentation hypothesis as a fundamental explanation for the upward slope on the yield curve.

The macro determinants of firms' and households' investment: Evidence from Italy

Using under-exploited institutional sector account data, we assess the main drivers of both firms' and households' investment in Italy over the past two decades. We thus test the validity of the flexible neoclassical model of investment for both sectors, in particular by exploring the significance of additional drivers to output and to the real user cost of capital and by assessing both feedback effects and short- and long-run linkages across all variables in a vector error correction framework. Our findings support the neoclassical model in the long run. However, in the short run, both firms' and households' capital accumulation is found to have been dampened by a rise in uncertainty, a deterioration in confidence, as well as by higher indebtedness and by tighter financing constraints. Moreover, we find that disregarding the role of these short-run variables hinders the understanding of investment dynamics in Italy, especially in the most recent recessionary years.

Schooling and productivity growth: evidence from a dual growth accounting application to U.S. states

This paper exploits the dual growth accounting framework to determine the effect of schooling on total-factor productivity (TFP) growth for U.S. states over 1980–2010. The paper contributes to the literature by constructing TFP growth measures, in the process, both real wage growth and real user cost growth measures at the state level. The growth accounting exercise reveals that states display considerable heterogeneity in TFP growth with both real wage growth and real user cost growth equally contributing to it. While our econometric estimates reveal significant TFP growth effects associated with college education, they are considerably lower in magnitude when compared to the earlier studies. Productivity growth effects associated with high school education remain insignificant. Our empirical findings are further validated by the use of instrumental variable estimation to address the endogeneity of the schooling variables and are also robust to the inclusion of a rich set of control variables, alternative TFP growth measures as well as to the tests to draw robust inferences in the presence of weak instruments.

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN GOODS AND SERVICES ACROSS THE HETEROGENEOUS STATES OF AMERICA

In this study, we examine the importance of multifactor productivity (MFP) growth in goods and services for U.S. States during 1980–2007 by applying the dual growth accounting framework. We find that MFP growth was relatively high and converged in the goods sector, but was low and did not converge in services. Although low growth in MFP in services was due to declining real user cost, particularly in real estate services, the lack of convergence itself was due to variation in wage growth. We also document that while the gap between productivity and wage growth was higher in goods, the two series were more strongly correlated in services. Finally, states with higher initial human capital experienced higher growth in both sectors. (JEL O47, R11)

Productivity Growth in Goods and Services Across US States: What Can We Learn from Factor Prices?

This paper exploits the dual accounting technique to uncover multi-factor productivity growth patterns for goods and services across US states from 1980 to 2007. Due to changes in sectoral classifications, the period is divided into two parts, 1980-1997 and 1998-2007. Over both periods, states exhibit a wide range of productivity growth rates with the goods sector showing much larger variations. The variations are larger for the second time period with some states recording productivity growth as high as almost nine percent annually while other states showing declines at more than two percent. Underlying the wide variation in productivity growth are variations in both wage growth and real user cost growth. Since 1998, the real user cost declines at almost two per cent annually. Incorporating human capital into the analysis makes wage growth and, hence, productivity growth lower in both sectors, and on average negative in the second period. Scaling up the analysis to the national level, we also find that there are large differences between the growth rates of primal based measures of marginal product of capital and our calculations of real user cost growth. This can only be partially explained by the anomalous behavior of particular industries such as mining and real estate services, and to some degree due to the declining relative price of investment goods.

Economic Fundamentals, Subprime Lending and Housing Prices: Evidence from MSA-level Panel Data

This study finds that employment, real construction cost and the real user cost of housing have a significant impact on real housing price over the 1990:Q2–2009:Q1 period for a panel of 20 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the US. Over the 2003–2005 period when subprime lending soared, all 20 MSAs experienced a rapid appreciation in real price. Nine MSAs with higher subprime lending relative to the rest experienced a larger appreciation and four of these nine MSAs with high prevalence of second home purchases experienced the highest appreciation rates. The findings are important to policy makers because they point out the importance of underlying economic factors in determining home prices. In general, policy makers at the local level should caution against a sudden surge in the price of homes that is not sustained by economic fundamentals, especially since the magnitude and effect of such shocks can vary considerably across MSAs.

The Role of ICT in the Global Investment Cycle

Most macroeconomic forecasters underestimated global investment during the late 1990s. One potential reason was that the models they were using were insufficiently disaggregated. In this paper, an empirical model is estimated whose out-of-sample forecasts largely predicted the global investment boom of the late 1990s. The main factor behind the improved model performance is the distinction between investment in ICT assets and investment in other assets, using disaggregated investment data provided by the OECD. In line with previous studies on US and UK investment performance, ICT investment is estimated to be much more responsive to changes in the real user cost of capital. In particular, panel and seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) estimates suggest very strong relative price effects on ICT investment for all G7 countries and Australia. The data also allow an examination of the effects of possible deflator mismeasurement; but within our framework, the measurement of investment using harmonised, rather than national, deflators is not found to have a material impact on forecasting performance.

Modelling Investment When Relative Prices are Trending: Theory and Evidence for the United Kingdom

In recent work, Stacey Tevlin and Karl Whelan argue that aggregate econometric models fail to capture the US investment boom in plant and machinery in the second half of the 1990s, whereas a disaggregated approach does much better. In particular, they show that aggregate models do not capture the increase in replacement investment associated with compositional shifts in the capital stock towards high depreciation rate assets, such as computers. And aggregate models invariably find little or no role for the real user cost, so do not pick up the strong effects of relative price declines on investment in computers. In this paper, a data set for the United Kingdom is constructed in order to investigate the ability of different equations to account for the UK boom in plant and machinery investment in the second half of the 1990s. The findings are similar to those of Tevlin and Whelan, whose analysis is extended in two main ways. First, the failure of the aggregate equations is explained more formally in terms of misspecification when relative prices are trending downwards. Second, the econometric analysis is conducted in a formal cointegration framework. As in the United States, the paper shows that asset-level equations can explain the investment boom in plant and machinery in the second half of the 1990s in the United Kingdom, whereas the aggregate equation fails completely.

Changing factor market conditions in South Africa: The capital market – a sectoral description of the period 1970–97

This article explores changing conditions in South African real capital markets. Noteworthy is the evidence of strong restructuring in this market during the 1990s. Whereas the 1970s and 1980s showed the best investment performance among primary commodity sectors and sectors with strong parastatal involvement, the highest investment rates of the 1990s have been associated with the manufacturing industry. We show that the real user cost of capital and capital productitivity contribute plausible determinants of investment rates in South Africa. The extent to which market forces are allowed to bring in line marginal cost and marginal return on capital appears to influence the sustainability of investment.

The user cost of capital in Danish and Swedish agriculture

This paper derives a generalised dynamic arbitrage model for the aggregated real user cost of capital attributable to the agricultural firm. The applicability of the model is demonstrated by analysing structural differences in investment incentives between the crop, dairy and hog industries for different farm sizes in Denmark and Sweden during the period between 1984 and 1995. The results indicate notable differences in user costs between countries, farm sizes and farming systems. Although larger farms are found to be characterised by a lower user cost, this result is mitigated by the structure of asset composition. Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.

Modelling structural change in the UK housing market: A comparison of alternative house price models

This paper develops a new approach to the modelling of house prices in the UK, with housing demand being conditioned directly on consumers' expenditure rather than the determinants of expenditure. Conditioning on consumption ensures that the permanent income measure used in determining the level of consumption is consistently reflected in housing demand. The effects of financial liberalisation on the relative consumption of housing and non-housing goods and services are captured using the average loan-value ratio for first-time buyers. We also allow for financial effects via the real user cost of home ownership. House prices are assumed to adjust so as to clear the housing market. The proposed model is found to have structurally stable parameters across the housing market downturn since 1990. Statistical comparisons with the more conventional models in use at HM Treasury and the Bank of England during the early 1990s provide additional evidence in favour of our proposed approach.

Inflation and housing demand: A new perspective

The effects of inflation on the housing market are investigated in this study of new house prices in 42 U.S. metropolitan areas from 1971 to 1978. The results show that estimates of the elasticity of real house prices with respect to the real user cost have been biased sharply downward owing to an errors-in-variables problem. When the error term in estimating expected inflation is recognized explicitly, the negative relationship between real house prices and real user cost is found to be very strong. This analysis helps to resolve the conflict in the literature between the negative cash-flow effects and the positive untaxed capital gains and declining real payment effects resulting from inflation.

The Allocation of Capital Between Residential and Nonresidential Uses: Taxes, Inflation and Capital Market Constraints

We have constructed a simple two-sector model of the demand for housing and corporate capital. An increase in the inflation rate, with and with- out an increase in the risk premium on equities, was then simulated with a number of model variants. The model and simulation experiments illustrate both the tax bias in favor of housing (its initial average real user cost was 3 percentage points less than that for corporate capital) and the manner in which inflation magnifies it (the difference rises to 5 percentage points without an exogenous increase in real house prices and 4 percentage points with an exogenous increase). The existence of a capital-market constraint offsets the increase in the bias against corporate capital, but it introduces a sharp, inefficient reallocation of housing from less wealthy, constrained households to wealthy households who do not have gains on mortgages and are not financially const rained. Widespread usage of innovative housing finance instruments would overcome this reallocation but at the expense of corporate capital. Only a reduction in inflation or in the taxation of income from business capital will solve the problem of inefficient allocation of capital. The simulation results are also able to provide an explanation for the failure of nominal interest rates to rise by a multiple of an increase in the inflation rate in a world with taxes. When the inflation rate alone was increased, the ratio of the increases in the risk-free and inflation rates was 1.32. An increase in the risk premium on equities, in conjunction with the increase in inflation, lowered the simulated ratio to 1.10, introduction of a supply price elasticity of 4 and an exogenous increase in the real house price reduced the ratio to 1.03, and incorporation of the credit-market. constraint reduced the ratio to 0.95.

Accelerating Inflation and Nonassumable Fixed-Rate Mortgages: Effects On Consumer Choice and Welfare

As a result of both the decline of real user cost of owner-occupied housing and the failure of this cost for nonresidential investment to fail similarly, some have argued that the U.S. economy has overinvested to housing at the expense of industrial capital and thus has suffered substantial productivity losses.