This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Gillingham, R. Articles by Greenlees, J. S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Estimating Inter-city Differences in the Price of Housing Services: Further Evidence 1

Division of Price and Index Number Research, Office of Prices and Living Conditions, US Bureau of Labor Statistics

John S. Greenlees

Division of Price and Index Number Research, Office of Prices and Living Conditions, US Bureau of Labor Statistics

This paper reconsiders an approach to inter-area house price index construction applied by Harvey Rosen in a recent article in Urban Studies. Rosen's cost function-based approach is shown to rely upon certain implicit assumptions regarding consumer preferences and housing production technology. Using FHA home purchase data, we estimate a more general production model and generate alternative inter-area indexes. Based on our results, Rosen's production technology assumptions are rejected. Further, the production-theoretic indexes are shown to differ only negligibly from a fixed-weight index using FHA data. Thus the difference which Rosen finds between the production-theoretic FHA and published BLS indexes does not result from Rosen's recognition of substitution in production, but because of very different data sources and scopes of coverage.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?