Housing price bubble analysis - Case of the Czech republic

Abstract

The paper deals with the hypothesis of housing price bubble in the Czech economy. This topic is very popular among economists worldwide now, especially because of the U.S. housing crisis and subsequent collapses on financial markets. However, surprisingly there are not many analyses dealing with the Czech housing market (besides e.g. very brief Financial Stability Report published by the Czech National Bank in 2008) and with the possible housing bubble burst. The first standard bubble indicators like P/I ratio are used to identify the bubble possibility on the Czech housing market. As the second step a regression analysis (VAR model) is being used for deeper analysis of the situation. The whole analysis is complicated by a lack of relevant data and quite short-time series.