We use the dynamic Gordon-growth model to decompose the rent-price ratio for owner-occupied housing in the U.S., four Census regions, and twenty-three metropolitan areas into three components: The expected present value of real rental growth, real interest rates, and future housing premia. We...

We apply the dynamic Gordon growth model to the housing market in 23 US metropolitan areas, the four Census regions, and the nation from 1975 to 2007. The model allows the rent-price ratio at each date to be split into the expected present discounted values of rent growth, real interest rates,...

Many recent papers have claimed that when housing services are treated separately from other forms of consumption in utility, a wide range of economic puzzles such as the equity premium puzzle can be explained. Our paper challenges these claims. The key assumption embedded in this literature is...

We ask if a standard representative agent model with a home-production sector can resolve the equity-premium or value-premium puzzles. In the model, agents value market (numeraire) consumption and a home consumption good that is produced from the stock of housing, home labor, and a...

We test if a standard representative agent model with a home-production sector can resolve the equity premium or value premium puzzles. In this model, agents value market consumption and a home consumption good that is produced as an aggregate of the stock of housing, home labor, and a...

We construct a time series of the rent-price ratio for the owner- occupied stock of housing, starting in 1960:1, by merging micro data from the last five Decennial Censuses of Housing with price indexes for house prices and rents.

We construct a quarterly time series of the rent-price ratio for the aggregate stock of owner-occupied housing in the United States, starting in 1960, by merging micro data from the last five Decennial Censuses of Housing surveys with price indexes for house prices and rents. We show that the...

The proposition that "housing prices can't continue to outpace growth in household income" (Wall Street Journal; July 25, 2002) is the received wisdom among many housing-market observers. More formally, many in the housing literature argue that house prices and income are cointegrated. In this...

I show that when house prices are high relative to rents (that is, when the rent-price ratio is low) changes in real rents tend to be larger than usual and changes in real prices tend to be smaller than usual. Standard error-correction models provide inconclusive results about the predictive...

The recent U.S. expansion has provided employment experience to individuals at tail of the skill distribution. Will these opportunities bestow persistent benefits in the form of greater future employability? Using synthetic cohorts constructed from the CPS, this paper estimates the degree of...