IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/umc/wpaper/0505.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Commodity Taxation When Land and Structures Must Be Taxed at the Same Rate

Author

Abstract

We show that the optimal property tax rate rises with the ratio of land rents tostructure and land development costs. Californias high ratio of income to property taxrevenue and the distribution of Federal housing subsidies thus appear geographicallymisplaced. Proportional taxation of non-housing commodities is not optimal, evenwhen elasticities with respect to wages are identical. Absent externalities, the desirabilityof transportation taxes and anti-sprawl growth controls hinge on the relativeimportance of time versus money in commuting costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Saku Aura & Thomas Davidoff, 2005. "Optimal Commodity Taxation When Land and Structures Must Be Taxed at the Same Rate," Working Papers 0505, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    • Handle: RePEc:umc:wpaper:0505
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.missouri.edu/working-papers/2005/wp0505_aura.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gervais, Martin, 2002. "Housing taxation and capital accumulation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(7), pages 1461-1489, October.
    2. Helsley, Robert W. & Sullivan, Arthur M., 1991. "Urban subcenter formation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 255-275, July.
    3. Dennis Epple & Holger Sieg, 1999. "Estimating Equilibrium Models of Local Jurisdictions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(4), pages 645-681, August.
    4. Joseph Gyourko & Todd Sinai, 2003. "The Spatial Distribution of Housing‐Related Ordinary Income Tax Benefits," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 31(4), pages 527-575, December.
    5. repec:rus:hseeco:126976 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Thorsnes, Paul, 1997. "Consistent Estimates of the Elasticity of Substitution between Land and Non-Land Inputs in the Production of Housing," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 98-108, July.
    7. Lawrence H. Goulder & Roberton C. Williams III, 2003. "The Substantial Bias from Ignoring General Equilibrium Effects in Estimating Excess Burden, and a Practical Solution," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(4), pages 898-927, August.
    8. Davis, Morris A. & Heathcote, Jonathan, 2007. "The price and quantity of residential land in the United States," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2595-2620, November.
    9. Robert E. Lucas & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2002. "On the Internal Structure of Cities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1445-1476, July.
    10. Munk, Knud Jorgen, 1978. " Optimal Taxation and Pure Profit," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 80(1), pages 1-19.
    11. Berkovec, James & Fullerton, Don, 1992. "A General Equilibrium Model of Housing, Taxes, and Portfolio Choice," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 390-429, April.
    12. Rady, Sven & Ortalo-Magné, François, 2002. "Homeownership," Discussion Papers in Economics 28, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kai Konrad & Stergios Skaperdas, 2012. "The market for protection and the origin of the state," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 50(2), pages 417-443, June.

    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. Carlos Garriga, 2010. "The Role of Construction in the Housing Boom and Bust in Spain," Working Papers 2010-09, FEDEA.
    2. Brinkman, Jeffrey C., 2016. "Congestion, agglomeration, and the structure of cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 13-31.
    3. Leung, Charles, 2004. "Macroeconomics and housing: a review of the literature," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 249-267, December.
    4. Morris A. Davis & Francois Ortalo-Magne, 2011. "Household Expenditures, Wages, Rents," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 248-261, April.
    5. Diewert, Erwin & Shimizu, Chihiro, 2015. "Residential Property Price Indices For Tokyo," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(8), pages 1659-1714, December.
    6. Finn E. Kydland & Peter Rupert & Roman Šustek, 2016. "Housing Dynamics Over The Business Cycle," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57, pages 1149-1177, November.
    7. Määttänen, Niku & Terviö, Marko, 2014. "Income distribution and housing prices: An assignment model approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 381-410.
    8. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2009. "Accounting For Changes In The Homeownership Rate," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(3), pages 677-726, August.
    9. Dominique Prunetti & Alexandre Muzy & Eric Innocenti & Xavier Pieri, 2014. "Utility-based Multi-agent System with Spatial Interactions: The Case of Virtual Estate Development," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 43(3), pages 271-299, March.
    10. McMillen, Daniel P. & Smith, Stefani C., 2003. "The number of subcenters in large urban areas," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 321-338, May.
    11. Sevrin Waights, 2019. "The preservation of historic districts—is it worth it?," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 433-464.
    12. Rutger-Jan Lange & Coen Teulings, 2018. "The option value of vacant land and the optimal timing of city extensions," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 18-033/III, Tinbergen Institute.
    13. Nobuhiro Kiyotaki & Alexander Michaelides & Kalin Nikolov, 2011. "Winners and Losers in Housing Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43, pages 255-296, March.
    14. Theodore Panagiotidis & Panagiotis Printzis, 2016. "On the macroeconomic determinants of the housing market in Greece: a VECM approach," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 387-409, July.
    15. Essi Eerola & Niku Määttänen, 2013. "The Optimal Tax Treatment of Housing Capital in the Neoclassical Growth Model," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 15(6), pages 912-938, December.
    16. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2007. "Equilibrium mortgage choice and housing tenure decisions with refinancing," Working Papers 2007-049, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    17. Firas Zebian & Richard Dusansky, 2015. "Housing Tax Reform and Foreclosure Rates," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 351-364, October.
    18. H. Allen Klaiber & V. Kerry Smith, 2013. "Developing general equilibrium benefit analyses for social programs: an introduction and example," Chapters, in: Scott O. Farrow & Richard Zerbe, Jr. (ed.),Principles and Standards for Benefit–Cost Analysis, chapter 6, pages 194-246, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Thomas J. Holmes, 2010. "Structural, Experimentalist, And Descriptive Approaches To Empirical Work In Regional Economics," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 5-22, February.
    20. Martin Gervais & Manish Pandey, 2008. "Who Cares About Mortgage Interest Deductibility?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(1), pages 1-24, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Property Taxes; Henry George Theorem;

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • R13 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General Equilibrium and Welfare Economic Analysis of Regional Economies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:umc:wpaper:0505. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Valerie Kulp). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/edumous.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.