Deregulation: Invitation to Disaster in the S&L Industry

This speech was given by Professor Case as part of the Annual Financial Institutions and Regulation Symposium at the Fordham School of Law

The changing housing market: a bang or a whimper?

The U.S. housing market has had an extraordinary 15-year run in terms of prices, sales of existing homes, and new construction, especially on the East and West Coasts. Beginning in the spring of 2006, however, the housing market began to turn distinctly downward. We know that 2005 was a good year and that 2006 has not been such a good year, and we see indications that 2007 could be tough. To help understand why the market has shifted from hot to, at a minimum, cool, this paper, which is the first in a series of NEPPC policy briefs on housing, recaps some of the factors that contributed to this housing run and discusses some of the factors that will determine just how long and steep this reversal of housing fortune might be.Housing - Prices

The Central Role of Home Prices in the Current Financial Crisis: How Will the Market Clear?

macroeconomics, financial crisis, subprime, house, home, market, household

Accuracy of Three Dimensional Solid Finite Elements

The results of a study to determine the accuracy of the three dimensional solid elements available in NASTRAN for predicting displacements is presented. Of particular interest in the study is determining how to effectively use solid elements in analyzing thick optical mirrors, as might exist in a large telescope. Surface deformations due to thermal and gravity loading can be significant contributors to the determination of the overall optical quality of a telescope. The study investigates most of the solid elements currently available in either COSMIC or MSC NASTRAN. Error bounds as a function of mesh refinement and element aspect ratios are addressed. It is shown that the MSC solid elements are, in general, more accurate than their COSMIC NASTRAN counterparts due to the specialized numerical integration used. In addition, the MSC elements appear to be more economical to use on the DEC VAX 11/780 computer

A Computer Program to Calculate Two-Stage Short-Run Control Chart Factors for (X,MR) Charts

This paper is the second in a series of two papers that fully develops two-stage short-run (X, MR) control charts. This paper describes the development and execution of a computer program that accurately calculates first- and second-stage short-run control chart factors for (X, MR) charts using the equations derived in the first paper. The software used is Mathcad. The program accepts values for number of subgroups, alpha for the X chart, and alpha for the MR chart both above the upper control limit and below the lower control limit. Tables are generated for specific values of these inputs and the implications of the results are discussed. A numerical example illustrates the use of the program.

How the commercial real estate boom undid the banks

Real property ; Construction industry ; Regional economics

Home price appreciation in low- and moderate-income markets

Do homes in low- and moderate- income areas of a city appreciate like homes in high income areas? Do owners of those lower-priced homes accumulate as much equity as owners of higher-priced homes? Karl Case and Maryna Marynchenko share their results, some of which are quite surprising.Housing - Boston ; Housing - Chicago ; Housing - Los Angeles

Is There a Bubble in the Housing Market?

This paper looks for evidence of a bubble in U.S. housing prices. It analyzes quarterly state-level data over 1985-2002, focusing on the relationship between home prices and selected fundamental variables. Income per capita alone largely explains price changes in all but eight states; in the latter, large price movements are observed unrelated to the fundamentals. Results from a new survey of recent homebuyers in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Milwaukee metropolitan areas are reported. This survey replicates an almost identical 1988 survey and finds, as before, that buyers in most of these markets perceive little risk in their housing investment, have unrealistic expectations about future price increases, and hold economically implausible beliefs about home price behavior—findings consistent with a bubble. Prices in such markets could stall or decline, but only if such declines are simultaneous or spread to other markets are significant effects on the national economy likely.macroeconomics, Bubble, Housing Market

The Efficiency of the Market for Single-Family Homes

Tests of weak-form efficiency of the market for single family homes are performed using data on repeat sales prices of 39,210 individual homes, each for two sales dates. Tests were done for Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco/Oakland for 1970-86. While evidence for seasonality in real housing prices is weak, we do find some evidence of inertia in housing prices. A city-wide real log price index change in a given year tends to be followed by a city-wide real log price index change in the same direction (and between a quarter to a half as large in magnitude) in the subsequent year. However, the inertia cannot account for much of the variation in individual housing real price changes. There is so much noise in individual housing prices relative to city-wide price index changes that the R[squared] in forecasting regressions for annual real price change in individual homes is never more than .04.