On the morning of October 11, Kasper Nielsen, a Dr. of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, held a lecture about Spillovers in Asset Prices: The Curious Case of Haunted Houses. Teachers in institution of Economics and Finance attended the lecture.
Dr. Nielsen first introduced the main motivation for the study of the spillover effects of asset prices. He introduced the basic concepts of fire sale, price pressure and spillover. Secondly, he introduced the unique characteristics of Hong Kong's real estate market, and people's aversion to "haunted houses" and the high homogeneity between houses. Thirdly, he quantitatively analyzed the effects of unnatural deaths on housing prices by using the difference-in-difference method. He also showed that different types of unnatural death have different effects. For example, the effect of murder to housing prices is greater than the influence of suicide. Moreover, commit suicide by hanging in the room is larger than the effect of jumped to death for house prices. The spillover effect also performs a trend from strong to weak by the distance from the "haunted house", which indicates the peculiar ripple effect. Fourthly, Dr. Nielsen also discussed the dynamic change of this effect. The influence of the "haunted house" is not short-term, but long lasting, even in two decades
The teachers were attracted by the lecture. They asked several questions to communicate with Dr. Nielsen. They focus on where to collect data on "haunted houses". Dr. Nielsen shows one of their websites. He explained that because of Hong Kong's special location, many unnatural deaths have been noted and reported by local media, and thus can be achieved.
Through this lecture, teachers have a deeper understanding of the pricing of the real estate market, and have acquired the research ideas at the same time. Dr. Nielsen's research on subdivision, creative thinking, and his logical and rhythmic presentation have inspired us a lot.
