Joshua H. Gallin

The Long-Run Relationship between House Prices and Rents

I use standard error-correction models and long-horizon regression models to examine how well the rent-price ratio predicts future changes in real rents and prices. I find evidence that the rent-price ratio helps predict changes in real prices over 4-year periods, but that the rent-price ratio has little predictive power for changes in real rents over the same period. I show that a long-horizon regression approach can yield biased estimates of the degree of error correction if prices have a unit root but do not follow a random walk, and I construct bootstrap distributions to conduct appropriate inference in the presence of this bias. The results lend empirical support to the view that the rent-price ratio is an indicator of valuation in the housing market. Copyright 2008 American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association

Net migration and state labor market dynamics

Existing empirical estimates of net migration models are not identified because they lack an explicit measure of expected future conditions. I find that using actual one‐period‐ahead net migration at the state level to control for expectations reduces the strength of the relationship between current wages and net migration by more than one‐third. I use the case of Michigan to show how existing empirical models mischaracterize the response of migration to shocks that are expected to be transitory. I add migration to a labor market model and simulate responses to permanent and transitory demand shocks.

A Trend and Variance Decomposition of the Rent-Price Ratio in Housing Markets

We use the dynamic Gordon-growth model to decompose the rent-price ratio for owner-occupied housing in the U.S., four Census regions, and twenty-three metropolitan areas into three components: The expected present value of real rental growth, real interest rates, and future housing premia. We use these components to decompose the trend and variance in rent-price ratios for 1975-2005, for an early sub-sample (1975-1996), and for the recent housing boom (1997-2005). We have three main findings. First, variation in expected future real rents accounts for a small share of variation in our sample rent-price ratios; variation in real interest rates and housing premia account for most of the variability. Second, expected future real rates and housing premia were so strongly negatively correlated prior to 1997 that changes to real interest rates did not affect the rent-price ratio. After 1997, rates and premia have been positively correlated, and the decline in the rent-price ratio that has occurred in almost every geographic area in our sample since 1997 reflects both declining real rates and declining premia. Third, we show that in the recent housing boom, 65 percent of the decline in the aggregate rent-price ratio is due to a declining housing premium.

Shadow Banking and the Funding of the Nonfinancial Sector

I show how to use data from the Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States to estimate how much funding of nonfinancial businesses, households, and governments is provided by the domestic shadow banking system. I define the shadow banking system as the set of entities and activities that provide short-term funding outside of the traditional commercial banking system, but I do not equate all nonbank funding with shadow banking. My results suggest that at the end of 2008, domestic shadow-bank funding of the nonfinancial sector was an important, but fairly modest source of funding relative to that provided by more traditional funding sources such as commercial banks, insurance companies, and pension funds. However,my results suggest that domestic shadow banking played a large role in the increase of nonfinancial-sector debt in the two years before 2008:Q4 and was, at least in an arithmetic sense,the entire reason for the slowdown in nonfinancial-sector debt growth after 2008. Domestic shadow-bank funding of the nonfinancial sector has increased since 2010, but remains well below the level seen right in late 2008.

Enhanced Financial Accounts

The Federal Reserve Board has begun an ambitious and long-term effort to upgrade the Financial Accounts of the United States to provide a significantly more detailed and timely picture of financial intermediation in the United States.

Risk Transfer Across Economic Sectors using Credit Default Swaps

Credit default swaps (CDS) play an important role in distributing risk in the global financial system.

A Theory of Sticky Rents: Search and Bargaining with Incomplete Information

The housing rental market offers a unique laboratory for studying price stickiness. This paper is motivated by two facts: 1. Tenants’ rents are remarkably sticky even though regular and expected recontracting would, by itself, suggest substantial rent flexibility. 2. Rent stickiness varies significantly across structure type; for example, detached unit rents are far stickier than large apartment unit rents. We offer the first theoretical explanation of rent stickiness that is consistent with these facts. In this theory, search and bargaining with incomplete information generates stickiness in the absence of menu costs or other commonly used modeling assumptions. Tenants’ valuations of their units, and whether they are considering other units, are both private information. At lease end, the behavior of risk-averse landlords differs according to the number of units managed. Multi-unit landlords, aided by the law of large numbers, exploit tenant moving costs. When renegotiating rent contracts, they set rent increases that exceed the inflation rate; while the majority of tenants stay, those who place low value on the unit search elsewhere and leave. Landlords with one unit loathe vacancy and offer tenants the identical contract to pre-empt search; only those who really hate the unit leave.