Do house prices overreact to relevant information? New evidence from the UK housing market

Hudson, Robert; Manahov, Viktor; Metcalf, Hugh; Zhang, Hanziong

Abstract

We use recent panel data and various empirical models to investigate the validity of the irrational expectations hypothesis and the feedback theory in the UK housing market. We provide the first empirical evidence to justify the statistically significant and positive feedback causality effect between the changes in bubbles and the contemporaneous changes in house prices. While we have found evidence to support the idea that the irrational expectation hypothesis best fits the UK housing market in the short-run, we failed to find evidence in support of the feedback theory. We observe that an increase in bubbles could cause a subsequent decrease in house prices, ceteris paribus, suggesting that people also learn from their mistakes and attempt to compromise by acting as rationally as possible. Overall, we observe that the causality effects are asymmetrical, being more significant from bubble to house price than they are from house price to bubble.

Citation

Hudson, R., Manahov, V., Metcalf, H., & Zhang, H. (in press). Do house prices overreact to relevant information? New evidence from the UK housing market. Investment management & financial innovations, 12(3), 33-46

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 3, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Oct 5, 2015
• Deposit Date: Sep 2, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 23, 2017
• Journal: Investment management and financial innovations
• Print ISSN: 1810-4967
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 33-46
• Keywords: Panel data, Endogeneity, House price, Expectation hypothesis, Bubble
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/378640
• Publisher URL: https://businessperspectives.org/journals/investment-management-and-financial-innovations/issue-100/do-house-prices-overreact-to-relevant-information-new-evidence-from-the-uk-housing-market
• Additional Information: Authors' accepted manuscript of article published in: Investment management and financial innovations, 2015, v.12, issue 3.
• Contract Date: Nov 23, 2017