This paper examines the effects of a mortgage interest rate subsidy on booms and busts in the housing market by analyzing the Housing Mortgage program in Mongolia. We find that the most recent housing boom in Mongolia occurred from the second quarter (Q2) of 2012 to first quarter (Q1) of 2014, and that the subsequent housing bust lasted 4 years. Both house-specific factors and macroeconomic variables had a significant influence on housing price dynamics. Mortgage interest rate semielasticity and real household income elasticity were estimated as −3 and 1.4, respectively. Dynamic analysis of the estimated vector error correction models suggests that the country’s policy intervention in the mortgage market—introducing an interest rate subsidy on mortgage loans for residential properties of up to 80 square meters—drove the recent housing boom in Mongolia.

This paper examines the macroeconomic effects of unconventional monetary policies in Mongolia, a developing and commodity‐exporting economy. Within a Bayesian structural vector autoregression framework, central bank balance sheet, policy rate, demand, and supply shocks are identified using a combination of sign and zero restrictions. An expansionary balance sheet shock stimulates bank lending and M2, decreases interest rate spread, leads to a depreciation of the domestic currency, and increases output and consumer prices. The estimated output and consumer price effects are qualitatively similar to the effects of conventional monetary policy, while the impacts on the exchange rate and foreign exchange reserves are different. We also find favourable evidence for the delayed overshooting response of the exchange rate to the balance sheet shock and reveal that financial friction amplifies the effects of demand and supply shocks on the Mongolian economy.