More than four years after the peak of the stock market boom, the US economy has regained its former status as the engine of economic growth in the world. Following GDP growth of just 0.5% in 2001,economic activity in the USA has returned to rather strong, i.e. above long-term potential, growth rates, accompanied by fairly buoyant private consumer and corporate investment spending, both exerting a positive impact on employment. Moreover, stock markets have left their troughs, indicating market agents’ improved economic expectations
In particular rising real estate prices, though, are said to have contributed considerably to ongoing domestic demand and a high level of consumer confidence. However, house price increases have been exorbitant for the last eight years when put into historical perspective.1 The increase in house prices has outpaced consumer price inflation by more than 45per cent, which appears, historically speaking, highly atypical. Therefore, the question was raised by various quarters, from journalists to economists to central bank officials, of whether the boom in the US real estate market has become a bubble and whether house prices have already reached unsustainable levels. This is a question of paramount importance since in the case of a bubble in real estate prices the question emerges if and how the Fed should react to it. Implicitly, monetary policy in the euro area where France and Spain have experienced exorbitant price increases of real estate during the last four years is addressed as well. The question of bubbles in real estate prices is an increasingly hot topic on both sides of the Atlantic because markets for assets like real estate, stocks and bonds significantly gain importance in times of increasing wealth of the population far beyond the area of private old-age insurance and pension schemes. Moreover, private wealth plays an increasingly large role in determining the spending decisions of households. Finally, the llberallsation of capital flows fosters price volatility on asset markets. Central banks can and should not ignore these developments. A correct analysis of real estate price developments (as ventured in this paper) and the drawing of conclusions for monetary policy decisions are nowadays among the most important challenges for monetary policy.
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