The Role of House Prices and Transactions in Monetary Policy Transmission: The Case of Italy

Abstract

The housing market is a key channel for monetary policy transmission. The literature has focused mainly on cyclical fluctuations in house prices rather than other indicators to account for housing market dynamics, such as residential transactions. This paper investigated the impact of the monetary policy stance on the housing market by considering residential transactions (together with house prices). First, we estimated a structural vector autoregressive (VAR) model for Italy from 1999Q1 to 2019Q4 using Cholesky structural identification. Second, we used an external instrument to identify the contemporaneous response of all endogenous variables to the shock of interest (Proxy-VAR). Our results indicate that transactions are more significantly reactive than house prices to a restrictive monetary policy shock. After a policy rate increases, the sudden stop in exchange volumes and the low degree of liquidity perceived in the housing market can contribute to shaping the housing wealth effect captured by prices. The results are supported by a robustness analysis based on local projections. Therefore, policy-makers should consider the role of residential transactions in evaluating the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission.