The Impact of Stock Price and Real Estate Price Shocks on Consumption: The Thai Experience

Abstract

This paper compares the effects of real house price and real stock price shocks on consumption decisions in Thailand over the period 1993 to 2014 using a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) approach. The sample comprises quarterly, seasonally adjusted Thai data on consumption, real house price and real stock price. The results indicate that disturbance originating from consumption itself caused the greatest variability to future consumption: it contributes up to 76.43 percent variability one quarter ahead, GDP shocks explain between 17 and 19 percent of the variance of consumption depending on the forecast horizons- with higher shares explained at longer forecast horizons. While, townhouse price shocks explain about 5 percent and single house price shocks explain about 0.47 to 0.51 percent of the variance of consumption, stock price shocks explain about 0.2 to 0.21 percent of the variance of consumption. To explaining variations of consumption, the housing market is more important than stock market for Thailand case.