IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejpol/v14y2022i3p1-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Housing Lock: Dutch Evidence on the Impact of Negative Home Equity on Household Mobility

Author

Listed:
  • Asaf Bernstein
  • Daan Struyven

Abstract

This paper employs Dutch administrative population data to test the "housing lock hypothesis": the conjecture that homeowners with negative home equity, low levels of financial assets, and restricted opportunities to borrow reduce their mobility. Variation in home equity driven by the timing of home purchase within a municipality and the harshness of Dutch recourse laws facilitates identification of housing lock effects. The 2SLS estimate for the effect of negative home equity is a 74–79 percent decline in mobility, where effects are substantially larger for households with low financial asset holdings or moves over longer distances.

Suggested Citation

  • Asaf Bernstein & Daan Struyven, 2022. "Housing Lock: Dutch Evidence on the Impact of Negative Home Equity on Household Mobility," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 1-32, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1-32
    DOI: 10.1257/pol.20150252
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20150252
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E151222V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20150252.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20150252.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pol.20150252?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ross M. Batzer & Jonah Coste & William M. Doerner & Michael J. Seiler, 2024. "The Lock-In Effect of Rising Mortgage Rates," FHFA Staff Working Papers 24-03, Federal Housing Finance Agency.
    2. Badarinza, Cristian & Ramadorai, Tarun & Siljander, Juhana & Tripathy, Jagdish, 2024. "Behavioral Lock-In: Aggregate Implications of Reference Dependence in the Housing Market," CEPR Discussion Papers 19123, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Goehausen, Johannes & Thomsen, Stephan L., 2024. "Housing Costs, College Enrollment, and Student Mobility," IZA Discussion Papers 16726, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Liebersohn, Jack & Rothstein, Jesse, 2025. "Household mobility and mortgage rate lock," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    5. J. Carter Braxton & Nisha Chikhale & Kyle F. Herkenhoff & Gordon M. Phillips, 2024. "Intergenerational Mobility and Credit," NBER Working Papers 32031, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. W. Ben Mccartney & John Orellana‐Li & Calvin Zhang, 2024. "Political Polarization Affects Households' Financial Decisions: Evidence from Home Sales," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 79(2), pages 795-841, April.
    7. Liu, Zhiqing & Yin, Haitao & Zhang, Xuemei, 2024. "Tradeoff between air pollution and economic benefits in migration dynamics: Evidence from China," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 669-679.
    8. Hanson, Gordon H. & Moretti, Enrico, 2025. "Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? Changes in the Geography of Work in the U.S., 1980-2021," SocArXiv z6qkn_v1, Center for Open Science.
    9. Julia Fonseca & Lu Liu, 2024. "Mortgage Lock‐In, Mobility, and Labor Reallocation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 79(6), pages 3729-3772, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1-32. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.