The objective of this paper is to provide microeconomic evidence for the so called “Oswald’s hypothesis”, which is whether homeownership results in negative outcomes in the labour market. To estimate this effect we use two data base, comparing results from British Household Permanent Survey and French part of European Household Panel Survey. In a first step, a multinomial logit model for the choice of tenure status is estimated. Estimated probabilities of being either homeowner, public or private renter are then used to explain the length of an individual unemployment spell. This flexible method of estimation accounts for both censoring and selection bias, without constraining the shape of the hazard rate of leaving unemployment. Results suggested strong differences between French and British household behaviour. Home-ownership has a positive effect on unemployment duration in France but no significant effect is detected in Britain. However we find a positive impact of public renters on unemployment duration in Britain. These stylised facts seems to confirm the existence of a real spillover effect between labour market and housing market
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique (GATE), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Université Lyon 2, Ecole Normale Supérieure in its series Working Papers with number
0613.