Testing the relationship between housing prices and inflation in the OECD countries

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to construct alternative models to establish the dynamic nexus between inflation and housing prices by estimating the short- and long-run relationship between housing prices and inflation for 15 OECD countries from 1980Q1 to 2022Q4. Furthermore, the authors examined this association using the core and headline inflation and price-income and price-rent ratios as proxies for inflation and housing prices, respectively. Design/methodology/approach The authors use the panel autoregressive distributed lag technique to examine the nexus between housing prices and inflation to capture the distinct characteristics of the sample countries, estimate various short-run and long-run dynamics cum separate analyses for turbulent and calm periods in the relationship between housing prices and inflation. Findings Changes in housing prices have a greater impact on core inflation than headline inflation. Overall, the authors establish a positive (negative) relationship between housing prices and core inflation in the long run (short run) based on alternative proxies of housing prices. However, this connection tends to be less significant for headline inflation and episodic over smaller samples, as it seems stronger during calm periods than turbulent ones. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors are the first to examine the association between housing prices and inflation by demonstrating how these variables behave during calm and turbulent periods.