Title: Understanding booms and busts in housing markets
Description: "Some booms in housing prices are followed by busts.  Others are not.  In either case it is difficult to find observable fundamentals that are correlated with price movements.  We develop a model consistent with these observations.  Agents have heterogeneous expectations about long-run fundamentals but change their views because of "social dynamics." Agents meet randomly.  Those with tighter priors are more likely to convert others to their beliefs.  The model generates a "fad": the fraction of the population with a particular view rises and then falls.  Depending on which agent is correct about fundamentals, these fads generate boom-busts or protracted booms"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.