The Central Role of Home Prices in the Current Financial Crisis: How Will the Market Clear?
描述了近几十年房价变动的模式，讨论了住房市场的独特性（如价格粘性、数量出清）以及信贷和货币政策的影响，并分析了房价未来可能出现的两种相反情景。
This paper begins by describing some patterns in home price movements over recent decades. It then discusses some distinguishing characteristics of housing markets that will contribute to determining prices going forward: Housing is heterogeneous, making prices hard to measure. Home prices are subject to inertia and are sticky downward. Housing markets have traditionally been quantity clearing markets, with excess inventories absorbed only as new households are formed. And housing markets depend critically on credit market conditions and monetary policy. Two opposite scenarios for future home prices are both plausible: The first, noting among other things the many “underwater” mortgages and unsold inventories and the likelihood of a severe recession, foresees a slow recovery. The second observes that the market clearing process has been orderly so far and that deep regional housing busts in the past have sometimes been followed by quick recoveries, suggesting that a more rapid turnaround is possible.