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House price responses to a national property tax reform

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  • Elinder, Mikael
  • Persson, Lovisa

Abstract

We show that house prices in general did not respond to a substantial cut in the national property tax in Sweden. The estimates are based on rich register data covering more than 100,000 sales over a time period of two and a half years. Because the Swedish property tax is national and thus unrelated to local public goods, our setting is ideal for causal identification of the property tax on house prices. We observe price increases only in a small segment of the market containing properties with very high tax values. We discuss, but can admittedly not empirically discriminate between, several potential explanations for why we find no evidence of capitalization except for the top segment of the market.

Suggested Citation

  • Elinder, Mikael & Persson, Lovisa, 2017. "House price responses to a national property tax reform," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 18-39.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:144:y:2017:i:c:p:18-39
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2017.09.017
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    Cited by:

    1. Isaiah Hull & Anna Grodecka-Messi, 2022. "Measuring the Impact of Taxes and Public Services on Property Values: A Double Machine Learning Approach," Papers 2203.14751, arXiv.org.
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    3. Bengali, Leila, 2022. "Assessing evidence for inattention to the costs of homeownership," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(PB).
    4. Alexander Leodolter & Savina Princen & Aleksander Rutkowski, 2022. "Immovable Property Taxation for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth," European Economy - Discussion Papers 156, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    5. Portillo, Javier E. & Wagner, Gary A., 2021. "Do cultural districts spur urban revitalization: Evidence from Louisiana," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 651-673.
    6. Livy, Mitchell R., 2018. "Intra-school district capitalization of property tax rates," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 227-236.
    7. Gonçalves, Duarte & Peralta, Susana & Pereira dos Santos, João, 2022. "Short-Term Rental Bans and Housing Prices: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Lisbon," IZA Discussion Papers 15706, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
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    9. Grodecka, Anna & Hull, Isaiah, 2019. "The Impact of Local Taxes and Public Services on Property Values," Working Paper Series 374, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    10. Geschwind, Stephan & Roesel, Felix, 2022. "Taxation under direct democracy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 536-554.
    11. Susana Peralta & João Pereira dos Santos & Duarte Gonçalves, 2020. "Do short-term rentals increase housing prices? Quasi-experimental evidence from Lisbon," GEE Papers 0155, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised Jul 2020.
    12. Chengrui Xiao & Bo Zhou, 2023. "Property taxes and rental housing: Evidence from China," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 51(4), pages 931-958, July.
    13. Andrew Hanson, 2021. "Taxes and Economic Development: An Update on the State of the Economics Literature," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 35(3), pages 232-253, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Announcement effects; Capitalization; Bounded rationality; Housing market; Inattention; Saliency; D1; D3; D4; H2; R3;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • R3 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location

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