The impact of immigrants on housing prices and rents has been well documented in the literature. There has been less research, however, on other mechanisms by which global economic and financial developments may impact on local housing markets. We investigate whether the foreign-born—that is the stock of previous immigrants—act as a conduit for economic changes abroad to influence local housing markets. Examining disaggregated regions in Australia from 2006-16, we construct a measure of the average performance of the motherland economies of the foreign-born for each region. We find evidence that house prices and rental growth tend to rise when motherland economies are performing poorly. This effect is economically meaningful, robust and appears to represent a distinct channel from the immigration effect.

文献中充分记录了移民对住房价格和租金的影响。但是，对其他机制可能缺乏研究，这些机制可能会影响全球经济和金融发展对当地住房市场的影响。我们调查了外国出生的人（即以前移民的存货）是否充当国外经济变化影响当地住房市场的渠道。通过研究2006-16年度澳大利亚的分类区域，我们构建了每个区域外国出生的祖国经济的平均绩效指标。我们发现有证据表明，当祖国经济表现不佳时，房价和租金增长趋于上升。这种影响在经济上是有意义的，是有力的，并且似乎代表了与移民影响不同的渠道。