This paper uses a general equilibrium model to simulate both the effects of a preferential capital-gains tax rate on total income tax revenues and the effects of a revenue-neutral substitution between a capital gains preference and marginal income tax rates on economic efficiency and the...

Owner-occupied housing is said to be favored in the tax code because mortgage interest and property taxes can be deducted in the computation of one's income tax base in spite of the fact that the returns from owner- occupied housing = not taxed. The special tax treatment reduces the user cost of...

Real metropolitan house prices have been quite volatile during the 1977-91 period, with half of our 30 areas having annual increases of above 15 percent in a single year and a third having decreases greater than 7.5 percent. Drawing on Capozza and Helsley's models of real land prices, we express...

This paper contains three parts: a discussion of the tax advantages of household capital (owner-occupied housing and consumer durables) relative to business capital (structures and producers durables) ,an analysis of alternative mechanisms for reducing these advantages (including the use of the...

Although the economic literature has analyzed some components of the headship decision, study of household formation has been primarily in the realm of demography. We begin with a pure demographic model and expand it to include additional determinants of the decision to remain with parents or...

Mankiw and Weil have estimated a demographically-driven real house price equation on annual data from the 1947-87 period and used it to forecast real house prices over the 1988-2007 period. The result is their infamous 47 percent real decline. Their equation really only fits data from the 1950s...

While there seems to be no end to estimates of housing tenure determinants, prior studies have not accounted for the simultaneity of tenure choice with household formation, labor supply or the marriage decision. Our estimates are superior to those in the literature both because we address these...

The 1980s was a bad decade for FHA's Mutual Mortgage Insurance (MMI) program, the mainstay of FHA's single family mortgage insurance. While the MMI Fund is required by statute to be actuarially sound, the Fund lost close to $6 billion dollars, and its economic value declined from 5.3 percent of...

Between 1960 and 1980, the number of households in the U.S. increased by 50 percent and the proportion of the population that were household heads rose from 29.5 to 36.3. While some of this increase was due to the maturing of the"baby boom" population, over half was caused by rising age-specific...

Three major changes occurred during the 1980s in the market for home mortgage credit; the securitization of fixed-rate mortgages, the development of a national primary market for adjustable-rate mortgages, and the decimation of the saving and loan industry. These changes and their impacts on...