Housing Price Risk, Home Ownership, and Wealth

DESCRIPTION（由申请人提供）：在这个项目中，我们将测试房价风险对住房选择和财富积累的影响。我们的模型预测，居住在房价风险较高的地区或国家的人应该在更年轻的时候拥有他们的第一套住房，应该住在更大的房子里，应该有不那么陡峭的住房消费状况，应该少持有股票等风险资产的权益。我们将扩展这一模型，纳入个人面临的另外两种重要风险：收入风险，集中在生命周期的年轻阶段；健康风险，这与老年人的关系更大。我们还将把我们的模型扩展到生命周期的较老阶段，这样我们就可以从理论上和经验上检查人们是否愿意缩小规模以资助他们的退休消费，以及这种决定如何受到波动的房价的影响。最后，我们将把我们的工作扩展到另外四个国家——西班牙、意大利、德国和加拿大——这些国家在住房所有权模式和房价风险方面差异很大。我们将继续调查股市和楼市的资本利得对消费和储蓄的影响。使用来自美国和英国的数据，我们将特别关注这些对消费和储蓄的“财富效应”是否在不同类型的资产中有所不同，以及这些估计的影响在多大程度上可以解释家庭储蓄率的长期波动。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this project, we will test the effects of housing price risk on housing choice and wealth accumulation. Our model predicts that people who live in areas or countries with higher housing price risk should own their first home at a younger age, should live in larger homes, should have less steep housing consumption profiles, and should hold less equity in risky assets such as stocks. We will extend this model to incorporate two additional types of important risks individuals face-- income risk, which is concentrated in the younger phases of the life cycle; and health risk, which is more relevant at older ages. We will also extend our model into the older stages of the life cycle, so that we can examine both theoretically and empirically whether people are willing to downsize to fund their retirement consumption and how this decision is affected by volatile house prices. Finally, we will extend our work to four additional countries--Spain, Italy, Germany, and Canada--that vary considerably in patterns of home ownership and in housing price risk. We will continue to investigate the impact of capital gains in stocks and housing on consumption and savings. Using data from the US and UK, we will be particularly concerned with whether these 'wealth effects' on consumption and savings varied across different types of assets and the extent to which these estimated effects can explain the long-term swing in household savings rates.