International synchronicity of housing prices

Abstract

While the synchronization of business cycles has been much studied in the literature, housing prices' synchronization has not. In this paper we study the determinants of the housing prices' synchronicity for a variety of advanced and emerging countries. In order to do so, we rely on Kalemli-Ozcan et al. (2009)'s definition of synchronicity and on the housing prices indexes provided by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and other sources. In particular, we study the relationship of the housing prices' synchronicity and banking integration. Our finding show that, after controlling by macroeconomic and idiosyncratic factors, banking integration positively and significantly affects the synchronicity of housing prices. We also find that this effect is lost during the global financial crisis for the synchronicity between advanced countries, but it remains significant for the synchronicity between advanced and emerging economies.