Showing papers by "Olympia Bover published in 2015"

Measuring expectations from household surveys: new results on subjective probabilities of future house prices

Abstract: Analizo nuevos datos acerca de las expectativas probabilisticas subjetivas de precios de la vivienda recogidos en la Encuesta Financiera de las Familias (EFF). Se pide a los hogares que repartan diez puntos entre cinco escenarios distintos relativos al cambio en el precio de sus viviendas durante los proximos doce meses. Este trabajo es el primer estudio empirico en documentar las creencias de una muestra representativa de hogares acerca del valor futuro de sus viviendas. El trabajo tambien describe la metodologia de la medicion de expectativas e investigaciones recientes sobre probabilidades subjetivas de los hogares. Modelizo las funciones de densidad de probabilidad subjetiva individuales utilizando una interpolacion lineal con intervalos, construyo cuantiles basados en esas funciones y analizo como la heterogeneidad en las distribuciones individuales se relaciona con diferencias en caracteristicas de la vivienda y del hogar. Un resultado importante del trabajo es que las mujeres son mas optimistas acerca de la evolucion del precio de la vivienda que los hombres. La localizacion geografica de la vivienda a escala de codigo postal explica una gran parte de la variacion entre hogares en las distribuciones subjetivas. Finalmente, proporciono algunos resultados acerca de como las expectativas subjetivas importan para predecir el comportamiento del gasto. Invertir en vivienda y comprar un coche se asocian de forma negativa con expectativas pesimistas acerca de los cambios en los precios de la vivienda futuros y con incertidumbre en esas expectativas.

Measuring expectations from household surveys: new results on subjective probabilities of future house prices

Abstract: I analyze new data on subjective probabilistic expectations on house prices collected in the Spanish Survey of Household Finances. Households are asked to distribute ten points among five different scenarios for the change in the price of their homes over the next 12 months. This paper is the first empirical study to document the beliefs of a representative sample of households about the future value of their homes. It also reviews the methodology of expectation measurement and recent work on household subjective probabilities. I model individual subjective probability densities using splines, construct quantiles from those densities, and analyze how the heterogeneity in the individual distributions relates to differences in housing and household characteristics. An important result of the paper is that women are more optimistic about the evolution of house prices than men. Location at the postal code level accounts for a large fraction of the variation in the subjective distributions across households. Finally, I provide some results on how subjective expectations matter for predicting spending behavior. Housing investment and car purchases are negatively associated with pessimistic expectations about future house price changes and with uncertainty about those expectations.

Measuring Expectations from Household Surveys: New Results on Subjective Probabilities of Future House Prices

Abstract: I analyse new data on subjective probabilistic expectations on house prices collected in the Spanish Survey of Household Finances. Households are asked to distribute ten points among five different scenarios for the change in the price of their homes over the next 12 months. This paper is the first empirical study to document the beliefs of a representative sample of households about the future value of their homes. It also reviews the methodology of expectation measurement and recent work on household subjective probabilities. I model individual subjective probability densities using splines, construct quantiles from those densities, and analyse how the heterogeneity in the individual distributions relates to differences in housing and household characteristics. An important result of the paper is that women are more optimistic about the evolution of house prices than men. Location at the postal code level accounts for a large fraction of the variation in the subjective distributions across households. Finally, I provide some results on how subjective expectations matter for predicting spending behaviour. Housing investment and car purchases are negatively associated with pessimistic expectations about future house price changes and with uncertainty about those expectations.

Measuring expectations from household surveys: new results on subjective probabilities of future house prices

Abstract: I analyse new data on subjective probabilistic expectations on house prices collected in the Spanish Survey of Household Finances. Households are asked to distribute ten points among five different scenarios for the change in the price of their homes over the next 12 months. This paper is the first empirical study to document the beliefs of a representative sample of households about the future value of their homes. It also reviews the methodology of expectation measurement and recent work on household subjective probabilities. I model individual subjective probability densities using splines, construct quantiles from those densities, and analyse how the heterogeneity in the individual distributions relates to differences in housing and household characteristics. An important result of the paper is that women are more optimistic about the evolution of house prices than men. Location at the postal code level accounts for a large fraction of the variation in the subjective distributions across households. Finally, I provide some results on how subjective expectations matter for predicting spending behaviour. Housing investment and car purchases are negatively associated with pessimistic expectations about future house price changes and with uncertainty about those expectations.