Abstract
In
1985 the international exchange rate intervention known as “The Plaza Accord”
was carried out between the G-5 countries, the US, Japan, Germany, France, and
the UK. In this study I employ the synthetic control method (SCM) to examine if
there was a causal effect of The Plaza Accord on residential housing prices in
Japan. Following the agreement Japan experienced a bubble in urban real estate
and the stock market. I find small and insignificant effects of the Plaza
Accord on real housing prices in the several years following it, providing
evidence that the Accord did not exacerbate the bubble.