Heterogeneous beliefs and housing-market boom-bust cycles

This paper presents a business cycle model capturing the stylized features of housing-market boom-bust cycles in developed countries. The model implies that over-optimism of mortgage borrowers generates housing-market boom-bust cycles, if mortgage borrowers are credit-constrained and savers do not share their optimism. This result holds without price stickiness. If price stickiness is introduced into the model, then the model replicates a low policy interest rate during a housing boom as an endogenous reaction to a low inflation rate, given a Taylor rule. Thus, monetary easing observed during housing booms are consistent with the presence of over-optimism causing boom-bust cycles.