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On The User Cost and Homeownership

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Author Info
Antonia Díaz
Maria J. Luengo-Prado

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Abstract

This paper studies the determinants of housing tenure choice and the differences in the cost of housing services across households in an overlapping generations model with household-specific uninsurable earnings risk and housing prices that vary over time. We model houses as illiquid assets that provide collateral for loans. To analyze the impact of preferential housing taxation on the tenure choice, we consider a tax system that mimics that of the U.S. economy in a stylized way. We find that a mixture of idiosyncratic earnings uncertainty, house price risk, down payments and transaction costs are needed for the model to deliver life cycle patterns of homeownership and portfolio composition similar to those found in the data. Through simulations, we also show that a rental equivalence approach (relative to a user cost approach) overestimates the mean unit cost of housing by approximately 3 percent.

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Paper provided by FEDEA in its series Working Papers with number 2006-14.

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Date of creation: Jul 2006
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Handle: RePEc:fda:fdaddt:2006-14

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  1. Bajari, Patrick & Benkard, C. Lanier & Krainer, John, 2005. "House prices and consumer welfare," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 474-487, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Skinner, Jonathan, 1996. "The dynamic efficiency cost of not taxing housing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 397-417, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Edward C. Prescott, 2004. "Why do Americans work so much more than Europeans?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Jul, pages 2-13. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Charles Himmelberg & Christopher Mayer & Todd Sinai, 2005. "Assessing high house prices: bubbles, fundamentals, and misperceptions," Staff Reports 218, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Linneman, Peter & Megbolugbe, Isaac F. & Wachter, Susan M. & Cho, Man, 1997. "Do Borrowing Constraints Change U.S. Homeownership Rates?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 318-333, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. John Y. Campbell & Joao F. Cocco, 2003. "Household Risk Management and Optimal Mortgage Choice," NBER Working Papers 9759, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Wenli Li & Rui Yao, 2007. "The Life-Cycle Effects of House Price Changes," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(6), pages 1375-1409, 09. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. William N. Goetzmann & Matthew I. Spiegel, 2000. "The Policy Implications of Portfolio Choice in Underserved Mortgage Markets," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm161, Yale School of Management. [Downloadable!]
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  10. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Jonathan A. Parker, 1999. "Consumption Over the Life Cycle," NBER Working Papers 7271, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Jesus Fernández-Villaverde & Dirk Krueger, 2007. "Consumption over the Life Cycle: Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(3), pages 552-565, 06. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga, 2005. "Accounting for Changes in the Homeownership Rate," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 304, Society for Computational Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  13. Joao F. Cocco, 2005. "Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Housing," Review of Financial Studies, Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 535-567. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. James M. Poterba, 1983. "Tax Subsidies to Owner-occupied Housing: An Asset Market Approach," Working papers 339, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
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  15. Joao F. Cocco, 2005. "Consumption and Portfolio Choice over the Life Cycle," Review of Financial Studies, Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 491-533. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Storesletten, Kjetil & Telmer, Christopher I. & Yaron, Amir, 2004. "Consumption and risk sharing over the life cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 609-633, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. Antonia Díaz & Maria Jose Luengo-Prado, 2006. "The Wealth Distribution With Durable Goods," Economics Working Papers we067027, Universidad Carlos III, Departamento de Economía. [Downloadable!]
  18. Hansen, G D, 1993. "The Cyclical and Secular Behaviour of the Labour Input: Comparing Efficiency Units and Hours Worked," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(1), pages 71-80, Jan.-Marc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Gervais, Martin, 2002. "Housing taxation and capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(7), pages 1461-1489, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  20. Edward L. Glaeser & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2002. "The Benefits of the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction," NBER Working Papers 9284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  21. Roberto G. Quercia & George W. McCarthy & Susan M. Wachter, . "The Impacts Of Affordable Lending Efforts On Homeownership Rates," Zell/Lurie Center Working Papers 405, Wharton School Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center, University of Pennsylvania. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Henderson, J Vernon & Ioannides, Yannis M, 1983. "A Model of Housing Tenure Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 98-113, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  23. Joseph Gruber & Robert Martin, 2003. "Precautionary savings and the wealth distribution with illiquid durables," International Finance Discussion Papers 773, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  24. Christopher D Carroll, 1990. "Buffer-Stock Saving and the Life Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis," Economics Working Paper Archive 371, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics, revised Aug 1996.
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  25. Ortalo-Magne, Francois & Rady, Sven, 1999. "Boom in, bust out: Young households and the housing price cycle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 755-766, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  26. Mendoza, Enrique G. & Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria & Asea, Patrick, 1997. "On the ineffectiveness of tax policy in altering long-run growth: Harberger's superneutrality conjecture," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 99-126, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  27. Louise Sheiner & David N. Weil, 1992. "The Housing Wealth of the Aged," NBER Working Papers 4115, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  28. Ortalo-Magne, Francois & Rady, Sven, 2002. "Tenure choice and the riskiness of non-housing consumption," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 266-279, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  29. Alicia H. Munnell & Mauricio Soto, 2006. "What Replacement Rates Do Households Actually Experience In Retirement?," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2005-10, Center for Retirement Research. [Downloadable!]
  30. Edward C. Prescott, 1997. "On defining real consumption," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue May, pages 47-53. [Downloadable!]
  31. Todd Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2005. "Owner-Occupied Housing as a Hedge Against Rent Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 120(2), pages 763-789, May.
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Robert J. Gordon & Todd vanGoethem, 2005. "A Century of Housing Shelter Prices: Is There a Downward Bias in the CPI?," NBER Working Papers 11776, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Randal Verbrugge & Thesia I. Garner, 2009. "Reconciling User Costs and Rental Equivalence: Evidence from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey," Working Papers 427, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. [Downloadable!]
  3. Jonas D. M. Fisher & Martin Gervais, 2009. "Why has home ownership fallen among the young?," IFS Working Papers W09/08, Institute for Fiscal Studies. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Khalid Sekkat & Ariane Szafarz, 2009. "Valuing Homeownership," Working Papers CEB 09-006.RS, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Centre Emile Bernheim (CEB). [Downloadable!]
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  5. Thesia I. Garner & Randal Verbrugge, 2007. "Puzzling Divergence of U.S. Rents and User Costs, 1980-2004: Summary and Extensions," Working Papers 409, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. [Downloadable!]
  6. Pedro Silos, 2007. "Housing Tenure and Wealth Distribution in Life Cycle Economies," Topics in Macroeconomics, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 7(1), pages 1486-1486. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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