Oil Price Shocks and Housing Business Cycles in Iran: Markov Regime-Switching GARCH Model

Abstract: The housing market is one of the most important subsectors of capital markets that have the most backward and forward linkages with other sectors. Because of the high dependence of Iranian economy to oil revenues, oil price shocks can be affect the housing market. The aim of this study is to analyze the business cycle of the housing market, with emphasis on the impact of oil shocks on the return of housing. According to APM model, regardless of portfolio selected, several factors affect the return of housing assets that in this study, the risk and shocks of macroeconomic factors including money supply, private sector investment, housing facilities allocated by special Maskan Bank and oil export revenues, have been analyzed on the housing return by a Markov regime-switching GARCH model during the period 1982 -2016. The results have shown that the return of housing in the Iranian economy has three high, moderate and low return regimes. So that the volatility of the housing return is different in each of the three regimes. Housing returns volatility at the low return regime is more than volatility of returns at the moderate and high return regimes. Therewith in the 35 years of the research period, housing market has been 13 years in the moderate return regime, 20 years in the low return regime and only 2 years in the high return regime. The results also showed that based on Dutch disease hypothesis oil shocks, liquidity and private investment have a significant positive impact on the return of housing but the housing facilities of Maskan Bank have a significant negative impact on the return of housing.