The recent boom-and-bust cycle in housing prices has refreshed the debate on the drivers of housing cycles as well as the appropriate policy response. We analyze the case of Spain, where housing prices have soared since it joined the EMU. We present evidence based on a VAR model, and we calibrate a New Keynesian model of a currency area with durable goods to explain it. We find that labor market rigidities provide stronger amplification effects to all type of shocks than financial frictions do. Finally, we show that when the central bank reacts to house prices, the non-durable sector suffers an important contraction. As a result, the boom-and-bust cycle would not have been avoided if Spain had remained outside the EMU during the 1996-2007 period.

Many developed countries have seen housing prices and residential investment soar in the last decade. This fact has refreshed the debate on the drivers of housing cycles as well as the appropriate policy response. We analyze these issues for the case of Spain, who has seen the interest rates at historical lows since it joined the EMU, and increasing housing demand pressures from immigration and the baby boom generation. First, we present evidence based on a VAR model that suggests that both monetary and demand shocks are behind Spain's housing boom. Second, we calibrate a New Keynesian dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy in a currency area with durable goods. We study the effects of a housing demand shock, a monetary policy shock and a risk premium shock in the model. This allows us to better understand the factors amplifying a housing boom, the role played by the ECB and the recessionary effects of a housing bust. Our results are as follows. First, the model confirms that a combination of these shocks is indeed behind Spain's housing boom. Second, labor market rigidities provide strong amplification effects to all type of shocks, while financial frictions play a secondary role. Third, monetary policy autonomy is of first order importance to cushion risk premium shocks, while this is not the case for housing demand shocks.

In this paper we first compare house price cycles in advanced and emerging economies using a new quarterly house price data set covering the period 1990-2012. We find that house prices in emerging economies grow faster, are more volatile, less persistent and less synchronized across countries than in advanced economies. We also find that they correlate with capital flows more closely than in advanced economies. We then condition the analysis on an exogenous change to a particular component of capital flows. We find that a global liquidity shock, identified by aggregating bank-to-bank cross border flows and by using the external instrumental variable approach of Stock and Watson (2012) and Mertens and Ravn (2013), has a much stronger impact on house prices and consumption in emerging markets than in advanced economies. In our empirical model, holding house prices or the exchange rate constant in response to this shock tends to dampen its effects on consumption in emerging economies.

An integrated analysis of how financial frictions can be accounted for in macroeconomic models built to study monetary policy and macroprudential regulation. Since the global financial crisis, there has been a renewed effort to emphasize financial frictions in designing closed- and open-economy macroeconomic models for monetary and macroprudential policy analysis. Drawing on the extensive literature of the past decade as well as his own contributions, in this book Pierre-Richard Age&́nor provides a unified set of theoretical and quantitative macroeconomic models with financial frictions to explore issues that have emerged in the wake of the crisis. These include the need to understand better how the financial system amplifies and propagates shocks originating elsewhere in the economy; how it can itself be a source of aggregate fluctuations; the extent to which central banks should account for financial stability considerations in the conduct of monetary policy; whether national central banks and regulators should coordinate their policies to promote macroeconomic and financial stability; and how much countercyclical macroprudential policies should be coordinated at the international level to mitigate financial spillovers across countries.

Since Spain joined the EMU, two main important factors behind the housing boom appear to be the decrease of nominal interest rates and demographic factors. In this paper we estimate a New Keynesian model of a currency area, using data for Spain and the rest of the EMU to study the importance of those factors. We also examine the role of different rigidities and find that labor market frictions are crucial to explain main features of the data. On the other hand, financial frictions that impose a collateral constraint on borrowing do not appear to be relevant.

The recent global crisis highlighted the risks stemming from real estate booms. This has generated a growing literature trying to better understand the sources and the risks associated with housing and credit booms. This paper complements and supplements the previous work by (i) exploiting more disaggregated data on credit allowing us to dissociate between firm-credit and household (and in some cases mortgage) credit, and (ii) by taking into account the characteristics of the mortgage market, including institutional as well as other factors that vary across countries. This detailed cross-country analysis offers new valuable insights.