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Estimating the weight of opportunity costs in housing consumption

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  • Machiel van Dijk

Abstract

People tend to neglect or underweight opportunity costs. Strong empirical evidence for the size of the underweighting appears to be absent. What are the weights people attach to opportunity costs relative to out-of-pocket costs? In this paper I estimate the weight of opportunity costs in probably the largest economic decision that households make: buying a house. I show that homeowners attach approximately twice as much weight to out-of-pocket costs of their housing consumption than to the opportunity costs associated with this. Highlights Housing consumption lends itself well for empirically analyzing opportunity costs. I split up the user costs of housing in out-of-pocket and opportunity costs. Homeowners weigh in their opportunity costs at only 50 to 65 percent. It is unclear whether homeowners underestimate these costs or simply care less about them.

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  • Machiel van Dijk, 2015. "Estimating the weight of opportunity costs in housing consumption," CPB Discussion Paper 314, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpb:discus:314
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Stefan Groot & Arjan Lejour, 2017. "Tax arbitrage incentives for mortgage prepayment behavior: Evidence from Dutch micro data," CPB Discussion Paper 350, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    2. Stefan Groot & Arjan Lejour, 2017. "Tax arbitrage incentives for mortgage prepayment behavior: Evidence from Dutch micro data," CPB Discussion Paper 350.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand

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