A paper in this quarter's
Journal of Economic Perspectives by Himmelberg (the Fed of NY), Mayer (Columbia) & Sinai (Wharton) says that their "analysis reveals little evidence of a housing bubble." We'll see if they know what they are talking about. Myself, I am skeptical myself since part of their analysis involves constructing new measures for evaluating the cost of home ownership because existing measures (which seem to indicate prices are exuberant) are not adequate. Whatever.
Wow, these guys are even thicker than I originally thought. It turns out that in April 2006 they "updated their data through the third quarter of 2005 and come to the same conclusion."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nber.org/digest/apr06/w11643.html
Other articles from that same time
ReplyDeleteWhy there is no housing bubble - Jim Jubak - 6/10/2005
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P116257.asp
Housing Bubble or Bunk? - BusinessWeek - 6/22/2005
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jun2005/nf20050622_9404_db008.htm
This paper was on the APMV actuarial exam in May 2008. It looked particularly ridiculous next to the Schiller paper explaining why there was a housing bubble.
ReplyDelete