No. 217 Do Central Banks React to House Prices?

by Daria Finocchiaro and Virginia Queijo von Heideken

November 2007

Abstract

The substantial fluctuations in house prices recently experienced by many industrialized economies have stimulated a vivid debate on the possible implications for monetary policy. In this paper, we ask whether the U.S. Fed, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England have reacted to house prices. We study the responses of these central banks by estimating a structural model for each country where credit constrained agents borrow against real estate. The main result is that house price movements did play a separate role in the U.S., U.K.. and Japanese central bank reaction functions.

Keywords

House prices, monetary policy, DSGE models, Bayesian estimation

JEL codes

E31, E44, E52, E58