Thursday, 15 March, 2018

14:00 | Macro Research Seminar

Sergi Basco, Ph.D. (UAB, Spain) “Housing Bubbles and Misallocation: Evidence from Spain”

Sergi Basco, Ph.D.

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain


Authors: Sergi Basco, David Lopez-Rodriguez, and Enrique Moral-Benito

Abstract: During the 2000s, several developed economies experienced a housing bubble. At the same time, productivity growth started to decline. Spain is a paradigmatic example. We use unique matched firm- and bank-level data to empirically analyze the effects of the housing bubble on the allocation of capital and credit across firms. We focus on manufacturing firms (robust to consider non-financial market economy). We employ housing supply elasticity at the municipality level (based on land availability) as an instrument for house price growth. We find empirical evidence that the housing bubble increased misallocation and reduced total factor productivity (TFP). We identify two types of misallocation: (i) industry and (ii) geographical misallocation. Given the municipality, firms with a larger share of real estate assets (over total assets) increased their investment, whereas firms with less real estate assets decreased their investment (industry misallocation). This difference in investment across firms was exacerbated in municipalities with lower housing supply elasticity (geographical misallocation). We derive the same misallocation results for credit given to firms. Our interpretation is that the housing bubble generated misallocation through the change in the value of the collateral of firms, which depended on both the composition of assets and the location of the firm.

Keywords: Bubbles, Housing, Misallocation, Credit.

JEL Classification: E22, E44, O16, O47.


Full Text:  “Housing Bubbles and Misallocation: Evidence from Spain”

18:30 | Economics Discovery Hub

Mastering Advanced Excel Functions

Thursdays 18:30 - 20:30 
Starting date: 15 March 2018
Finishing date: 5 April 2018
Duration: 4 lessons
Course instructor: Petar Buha

Registration for this course is closed. Please read about our selection process. Follow EDH on Facebook for the latest news and tips.

These advanced Excel lectures will be aimed at creation of Excel models using advanced formulas and functionalities. It is meant for people who have experience with Excel and would like to see advanced usage of some formulas and features. The course also serves as a natural follow-up to previous Petar Buha's "Mastering Excel Basics" lectures. The students will create a new model during each lecture, with content ranging across finance, marketing, operations and IT.

Prerequisites:

  • To be able to participate in this course you need to be familiar with the following functions:
    • SUM, COUNT
    • SUMIFS, COUNTIFS
    • INDEX/MATCH, VLOOKUP
    • OFFSET
    • IF, AND, OR, NOT
  • Participants need to bring their own laptops with Excel 2007 or later installed, ideally 2013 or 2016.

Participants who attend at least 75% of the sessions will obtain a Certificate of Attendance issued by CERGE-EI.

About the facilitator:

Petar Buha
Petar is an MA in Applied Economics graduate from 2015 and currently works as an Analyst at Accenture. He is interested in analysis, innovation, and IT; it was due to these interests that he worked at Social Bakers prior to his studies and why he joined Accenture after graduation. He used Excel considerably during his studies, especially on the practical Financial Modeling course, and he also uses it extensively in his current role, where he has developed complex models for an insurance provider's regulatory reporting and is administering reporting capabilities for a data migration stream, analyzing and forecasting the productivity of developers and their deliverables. In his free time, Petar likes to do kick-boxing, watch sci-fi movies and actively socialize.

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