Is job insecurity a driver of the housing cycle? Some evidence in the Spanish case

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study a possible connection between the characteristics of the labour market, namely, employment protection and flexibility, and the dynamics of the housing market. More specifically, this contribution analyses whether the poor quality of employment in a given economy could cause the collapse of the housing market and impairs its recovery. In the second stage of our analysis, we provide estimates for Spain over the period 1984-2014. In doing so, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test for cointegration is employed.

Keywords

• labour market
• housing cycle
• residential investment
• cointegration techniques
• Spain