Discussion of 'House prices, money, credit, and the macroeconomy' by Charles Goodhart and Boris Hofmann

Goodhart and Hoffman aim to examine causal and other links between house prices, liquidity, and activity, and this note comments on their results. One part of the mechanism is via wealth-but arguably house-price changes have little net impact on wealth, although there are collateral effects. The authors clearly establish strong empirical links between the variables examined. The main practical issues are to do with identification of the source of shocks and therefore on the interpretation of the results.