An early warning system to identify house price bubbles

The global financial and economic crisis resulting from the US housing crisis has shown that house prices can have far-reaching consequences for the real economy. For macroprudential supervision, it is, therefore, necessary to identify house price bubbles at an early stage to counteract speculative price developments and to ensure financial market stability. This paper aims to develop an early warning system to signal speculative price bubbles.

The results of explosivity tests are used to identify periods of excessive price increases in 18 industrialized countries. The early warning system is then based on a logit and an ordered logit regression, in which monetary, macroeconomic, regulatory, demographic and private factors are used as explanatory variables.

The empirical results show that monetary developments have the highest explanatory power for the existence of house price bubbles. Further, the study reveals currently emerging house price bubbles in Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

The results implicate a new global housing boom, particularly in those countries that did not experience a major price correction during the global financial crisis.

The ordered logit model is an advanced approach that offers the advantage of being able to differentiate between different phases of a house price bubble, thereby allowing a multi-level assessment of the risk of speculative excesses in the housing market.