United in Booms, Divided in Busts: Regional House Price Cycles and Monetary Policy

This paper shows that regional disparities in house price growth are more pronounced during house price busts than during booms. To explain this observation we construct a two-region currency union model incorporating a housing sector and extrapolative belief updating regarding house prices. To solve the model, we propose a new method that efficiently handles extrapolative belief updating in a wide class of structural models. We show that intensified extrapolation in busts and regional housing market heterogeneities jointly explain elevated regional house price growth dispersion in busts and muted dispersion in booms. Consistent with our theory, we provide empirical evidence that house price belief updating is indeed more pronounced in busts and we document that regional heterogeneities on the housing supply side affect regional house prices. Quantitatively, our model can match empirically observed elevated regional house price growth dispersion in busts. Moreover, we demonstrate that a monetary authority targeting house prices may reduce the volatility of output and prices as well as regional house price growth disparities. This policy is welfare-improving relative to an inflation-targeting benchmark.