Essays on macroeconomics and housing

Résumé

My thesis consists of two chapters on Macroeconomics and particularly related to the housing markets. Housing markets have recently played a central role in the evolution of important macroeconomic variables for a set of developed countries. The increasing globalization of the economy and the huge flow of capital between countries interacted with housing markets, having macroeconomic consequences that need to be evaluated. In Chapter 1 I study the negative correlation between current account balances and housing prices from mid-90s to 2007. This paper studies the effect of financial liberalization during that period on the join behavior of the current account and housing prices in those economies. To this end, I build a life-cycle heterogeneous agents, small open economy model where agents value the consumption of two types of goods: tradable (non-housing) and non-tradable (housing). I calibrate the model to replicate selected aggregate statistics of the US economy and I compute the transition after financial liberalization. Results match some relevant facts: the boom and the bust (after 2007) in the housing market even with remaining low interest rates after the boom, as data show; the increase in the homeownership rate; the simultaneous boom - and bust - in non housing consumption; and the coexistence of borrowing from aboard with a current account deficit along the transition. In Chapter 2 I quantitatively asses two striking facts of the Spanish economy from a growth accounting perspective: one is the break in the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth rate on 1995 with a slowdown tendency since then; and the other is the increase in the relative price of investment. In the light of these facts, I assess quantitatively the contribution of each type of capital in the evolution of measured TFP and growth experience in Spain during the period 1985-2007. I find that almost a 30% of the TFP growth rate slowdown is caused by the increase in the relative price of structures over the period 2001-2007. I also quantify the importance of high technological investment goods on productivity growth. Finally, I assess the ability of a three-sector growth model with a wedge in structures to replicate the growth experience in Spain since 1985.