Absorption Rates and Price Responses: Housing Explained by the 4th Round of Quantitative Easing & Monetary Supply Expansions in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author

Luke Ostrander, Claremont McKenna CollegeFollow

Researcher ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7520-3548

Graduation Year

2021

Date of Submission

5-2021

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Richard Burdekin

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2021 Luke M Ostrander

Abstract

This study intends to evaluate whether quantitative easing and expansionary monetary policy truly impact the supply levels of real estate and housing prices. The period throughout this study includes an appropriate sample period before the fourth round of quantitative easing and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: January 1^st, 2017 to February 1^stt, 2021. The study simultaneously strove to determine the extent of the emergency expansionary response enacted by the Federal Reserve due to COVID-19 and its impact on the relevant housing variables evaluated in the study. The results, hopefully, will lead to new avenues to examine the effects of quantitative easing, which is a relatively new but permanent tool to central banking and its impact on real estate markets. The data set uses stationary data on growth rates to examine various independent variables and their effects on the dependent variable, with instrumentation on endogenous variables. The dataset controls for COVID-19 by inserting a dummy variable. Using a three-stage least squares regression model, this study instruments second lag variables against the relevant instrumented endogenous variables. The study concludes that quantitative easing does not create wealth but rather causes consumers to seek wealth, in this instance, through one of the most commonwealth seeking forms: housing. The study conclusively determines that expansionary policies regarding the monetary base in the fourth round of quantitative easing have adversely impacted housing prices rather than enhanced the wealth of the housing market throughout the sample period considered. Finally, the study concludes that the effects of COVID-19 have not significantly altered the housing market yet and may not at all.

Recommended Citation

Ostrander, Luke, "Absorption Rates and Price Responses: Housing Explained by the 4th Round of Quantitative Easing & Monetary Supply Expansions in the COVID-19 Pandemic" (2021). CMC Senior Theses. 2757.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/2757