IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3505.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A General Equilibrium Model of Housing, Taxes, and Portfolio Choice

Author

Listed:
  • James Berkovec
  • Don Fullerton

Abstract

We describe a model in which rental and owner housing are risky assets, tenure choice is endogenous, and each household is constrained to consume the same amount of owner housing as it has in its investment portfolio. At each iteration in the search for an equilibrium, we determine the new taxable income for each of 3,578 households (from the Survey of Consumer Finances), and we use statutory schedules to find the marginal rate and tax paid. Equilibrium net rates of return are major determinants of the amount of owner housing, but a logit model indicates that demographic factors are the main determinants of ownership rates. A simulation of taxes on owner housing raises welfare not only by re-allocating capital, but also because government takes part of the risk from individual properties and diversifies it away. Measures to disallow property tax or mortgage interest deductions do not help share this risk. Simulations of actual tax reform indicate a small shift from rental to owner housing, and welfare gains from re-allocating risk.

Suggested Citation

  • James Berkovec & Don Fullerton, 1990. "A General Equilibrium Model of Housing, Taxes, and Portfolio Choice," NBER Working Papers 3505, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3505
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3505.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Berkovec, James & Fullerton, Don, 1989. "The General Equilibrium Effects of Inflation on Housing Consumption and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 277-282, May.
    3. Joel Slemrod, 1982. "Tax Effects on the Allocation of Capital Among Sectors and Among Individuals: A Portfolio Approach," NBER Working Papers 0951, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Don Fullerton & Andrew B. Lyon, 1988. "Tax Neutrality and Intangible Capital," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy: Volume 2, pages 63-88, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Olsen, Edgar O., 1987. "The demand and supply of housing service: A critical survey of the empirical literature," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: E. S. Mills (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 25, pages 989-1022, Elsevier.
    6. Gordon, Roger H & Slemrod, Joel, 1983. "A General Equilibrium Simulation Study of Subsidies to Municipal Expenditures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(2), pages 585-594, May.
    7. Roger H. Gordon, 1985. "Taxation of Corporate Capital Income: Tax Revenues Versus Tax Distortions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(1), pages 1-27.
    8. Summers, Lawrence H, 1981. "Inflation, the Stock Market, and Owner-Occupied Housing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(2), pages 429-434, May.
    9. Bulow, Jeremy I & Summers, Lawrence H, 1984. "The Taxation of Risky Assets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(1), pages 20-39, February.
    10. King, Mervyn A., 1983. "Welfare analysis of tax reforms using household data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 183-214, July.
    11. Joel Slemrod, 1984. "A General Equilibrium Model of Taxation That Uses Micro-Unit Data: Withan Application to the Impact of Instituting a Flat-Rate Income Tax," NBER Working Papers 1461, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Hendershott, Patric H & Hu, Sheng Cheng, 1983. "The Allocation of Capital between Residential and Nonresidential Uses: Taxes, Inflation and Capital Market Constraints," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(3), pages 795-812, June.
    13. Don Fullerton & Marios Karayannis, 1987. "The Taxation of Income from Capital in the United States, 1980-86," NBER Working Papers 2478, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Charles L. Ballard & Don Fullerton & John B. Shoven & John Whalley, 1985. "Replacing the Personal Income Tax with a Progressive Consumption Tax," NBER Chapters, in: A General Equilibrium Model for Tax Policy Evaluation, pages 171-187, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Berkovec, James & Fullerton, Don, 1989. "The General Equilibrium Effects of Inflation on Housing Consumption and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 277-282, May.
    2. Skinner, Jonathan, 1996. "The dynamic efficiency cost of not taxing housing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 397-417, March.
    3. James M. Poterba, 1990. "Taxation and Housing Markets: Preliminary Evidence on the Effects of Recent Tax Reforms," NBER Working Papers 3270, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Syed M. Ahsan & Panagiotis Tsigaris, 2009. "The Efficiency Loss of Capital Income Taxation under Imperfect Loss Offset Provisions," Public Finance Review, , vol. 37(6), pages 710-731, November.
    5. Dirk Schindler, 2008. "Taxing Risky Capital Income - A Commodity Taxation Approach," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 64(3), pages 311-333, September.
    6. Magnus Henrekson & Tino Sanandaji, 2011. "Entrepreneurship and the theory of taxation," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 167-185, September.
    7. Konrad, Kai A., 1989. "Kapitaleinkommensteuern und beschleunigte Abschreibungen bei Unsicherheit," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 47(3), pages 404-427.
    8. Marc Rapp & Bernhard Schwetzler, "undated". "Asset Prices in the Presence of a Tax Authority," German Working Papers in Law and Economics 2006-1-1167, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    9. Pindyck, Robert S, 1984. "Risk, Inflation, and the Stock Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 335-351, June.
    10. Hans-Werner Sinn, 1996. "Social insurance, incentives and risk taking," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 3(3), pages 259-280, July.
    11. Alan J. Auerbach, 2006. "The Choice Between Income and Consumption Taxes: A Primer," NBER Working Papers 12307, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. George R. Zodrow, 2019. "Taxation, Uncertainty and the Choice of a Consumption Tax Base," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: George R Zodrow (ed.), TAXATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE Selected Essays of George R. Zodrow, chapter 8, pages 227-237, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    13. Todd Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2005. "Owner-Occupied Housing as a Hedge Against Rent Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 763-789.
    14. Kai A. Konrad, 1991. "Risk Taking and Taxation in Complete Capital Markets," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 16(2), pages 167-177, December.
    15. Katharina Finke & Jost H. Heckemeyer & Timo Reister & Christoph Spengel, 2013. "Impact of Tax-Rate Cut cum Base-Broadening Reforms on Heterogeneous Firms: Learning from the German Tax Reform of 2008," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 69(1), pages 72-114, March.
    16. Eddy Zanoutene, 2023. "Scale‐dependent and risky returns to savings: Consequences for optimal capital taxation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 25(3), pages 532-569, June.
    17. Santoro, Marika & Wei, Chao, 2013. "The marginal welfare cost of capital taxation: Discounting matters," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 897-909.
    18. Goulder, Lawrence H. & Thalmann, Philippe, 1993. "Approaches to efficient capital taxation : Leveling the playing field vs. living by the golden rule," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 169-196, February.
    19. Fullerton, Don & Karayannis, Marios, 1994. "Tax evasion and the allocation of capital," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 257-278, October.
    20. Syed Ahsan & Panagiotis Tsigaris, 2002. "Measuring the Social Discount Rate under Uncertainty: A Methodology and Application," CESifo Working Paper Series 824, CESifo.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:3505. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.