TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gan,Li
AU  - Zhang,Qinghua
TI  - The Thick Market Effect on Housing Markets Transactions
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12134
PY  - 2006
Y2  - April 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12134
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12134.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Li Gan
Department of Economics
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4228
Tel: 979/862-1667
Fax: 979/847-8747
E-Mail: gan@econmail.tamu.edu

Qinghua Zhang
Guanghua School of Management
Peking University
Beijing 100871
China
E-Mail: zhangq@gsm.pku.edu.cn
AB  - This paper provides a search model for housing market where the number of buyers and/or sellers plays very important role. The model makes three testable predictions: (1) the unemployment rate has a negative impact on the trading volume and the sale prices of the housing market; (2) a larger housing market has a lower average sale price, shorter time-to-sale and smaller price dispersion, in addition to a lower vacancy rate. (3) In a larger housing market, when the unemployment rate goes up (or down), the sale price decreases (or increases) by a smaller percentage than in a smaller market. All three predictions are supported by a panel dataset of the Texas city-level housing markets.
ER  -