Three Essays On The Housing Market And The Macroeconomy

This thesis sheds light on certain macroeconomic aspects of the housing market. Chapter 1 explores a novel channel for house price bubble formation: the demand for housing consumption. I argue that the lower the demand for housing consumption, the larger the maximum bubble size, and the larger economies' vulnerability to house price bubbles. In terms of policy implications, I show that a help-to-buy scheme makes the economy more bubble-prone, while rental subsidies are an effective tool to reduce the prevalence of house price bubbles. Using a laboratory experiment, Chapter 2 supports the theoretical and empirical findings of Chapter 1. Chapter 3 investigates whether the persistent cross-country differences in homeownership rates are driven by cultural tastes. Analyzing the homeownership attitudes of second-generation immigrants in the United States leads to robust evidence for this hypothesis.