We present a framework for studying the relation between the distribution of income and the distribution of housing prices that is based on an assignment model of households with heterogeneous incomes and houses of heterogeneous quality. The equilibrium distribution of prices depends on both...

In this paper we use the notion of a housing bubble as an equilibrium in which some investors hold houses only for resale purposes and not for the expectation of a dividend, either in the form of rents or utility. We provide a life-cycle model where households face collateral constraints that...

The 1991 Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth contains detailed information on how respondents acquired their main residence and any other real estate. This information is used to estimate the impact of inter vivos transfers on the saving period required to purchase a house and on the...

This Paper presents a dynamic theory of housing market fluctuations. It develops a life-cycle model where households are heterogeneous with respect to income and preferences, and mortgage lending is restricted by a down-payment requirement. The market interaction of young credit-constrained...

Chetty and Szeidl (2012) propose to estimate the effect of housing on portfolio choice by distinguishing between the effect of mortgage debt and the effect of home equity and by endogenizing these two variables. When replicating their study with French data, we obtain similar qualitative...

We develop a new methodology to estimate the elasticity of urban costs with respect to city population using French land price data. Our preferred estimate, which handles a number of estimation concerns, stands at 0.041. Our approach also yields a number of intermediate outputs of independent...

This paper provides a method to single out customer-based discrimination in the housing market. We build a matching model with ethnic externalities where landlords differ in the number of housing units they own within the same building. Multiple-dwelling landlords discriminate more often than...

Housing transactions by existing homeowners take two steps, a purchase of a new property and sale of the old housing unit. These two decisions are not independent, and their sequence may depend on the state of the housing market. This paper shows how the sequence of buyer-seller decisions...

In the U.S., 15 percent of households move in a given year. This result is based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on gross flows within and between the two segments of the housing market - renter-occupied properties and owner-occupied properties. The gross flows between these two...

To understand the effects of regulation on mortgage risk, it is instructive to track the history of regulatory changes in a country rather than to rely entirely on cross-country evidence that can be contaminated by unobserved heterogeneity. However, in developed countries with fairly stable...