Title: The role of housing activity: a case of major developed countries

Authors: Terry J. O'Neill, Jack Penm, R.D. Terrell

Addresses: School of Finance and Applied Statistics, College of Business and Economics, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. ' School of Finance and Applied Statistics, College of Business and Economics, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. ' National Graduate School of Management, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Abstract: Housing activity is an important indicator of general economic activity, and house price movements are an important variable in international financial markets. In this paper we utilise Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models to examine how the interrelationship between housing activity and general economic activity has evolved in four OECD countries. Our results provide support for the hypothesis that the relationship between housing activity and general economic activity has changed in many OECD countries, For Australia, however, no such evidence was found. These results suggest that caution needs to be exercised when using previous experience to forecast both housing cycles and general economic activity.

Keywords: housing activity; housing cycles; general economic activity; VAR models; Australia; USA; United States; Canada; UK; United Kingdom; management development; enterprise development.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMED.2008.021189

International Journal of Management and Enterprise Development, 2008 Vol.5 No.6, pp.673 - 682

Published online: 09 Nov 2008 *

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