Seminar Vol. 158

Title: The Decision to Move House and Aggregate Housing-Market Dynamics

Speaker: Liwa Rachel Ngai, London School of Economics

Time: May 20th, 2019 13:30–15:00

Venue: Conference Room 106B, Zhonghui Building (IESR, JNU College of Economics)

About the speaker:

Rachel Ngai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics, and a member of Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM). She is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Her research interests span the theory of economic growth, labor markets and housing markets, with focus on the structural transformation, time allocation across gender and across countries, and fluctuations in the housing market. Rachel Ngai has published widely in such journals as American Economic Review, Review of Economic Dynamics, American Economic Journal – Microeconomics, and others. She has received a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Pennsylvania in 2001.

Abstract:

Using data on house sales and inventories, this paper shows that housing transactions are driven mainly by listings and less so by transaction speed, thus the decision to move house is key to understanding the housing market. The paper builds a model where moving house is essentially an investment in match quality, implying that moving depends on macroeconomic developments and housing-market conditions. The number of transactions has implications for welfare because each transaction reduces the degree of mismatch for homeowners. The quantitative importance of the decision to move house is shown in understanding the U.S. housing market boom during 1995–2003.