High-frequency impact of monetary policy and macroeconomic surprises on US MSAs and aggregate US housing returns and volatility : a GJR-GARCH approach

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of monetary policy and macroeconomic surprises on the U.S housing market returns and volatility at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and aggregate level using a Glosten–Jagannathan-Runkle generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GJR-GARCH) model. Using daily data and sampling periods which cover both the conventional and unconventional monetary policy periods, empirical results show that monetary policy surprises have a greater impact on the volatility of housing market returns across time with particularly pronounced effect during the conventional monetary policy period. We also show that macroeconomic surprises do not have a significant impact on housing returns for most MSAs for the full sample, conventional and unconventional monetary policy periods.