Cross-country differences in homeownership rates are large and persistent over time, with homeownership rates ranging from 44% in Switzerland to 83% in Spain. This paper investigates whether cultures-defined as behavioral attitudes passed across generations-may value homeownership differently,...

Even though economic models have been relatively successful in explaining the long run patterns of house prices, they have more difficulties in explaining short run developments of the housing markets. However, the fact that during such ‘bubbles’ the spatial pattern of house prices, which...

According to economic theory, there are no strong reasons to tax (or to subsidise) residential moves, although low levels of taxation may be potentially justified to deal with the presence of externalities and economic stability. This is in contrast to practise in most countries where...

In housing markets with asymmetric information list prices may signal unobserved properties of the house or the seller. Asymmetric information is the starting point of many models for the housing market. In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of list-price reductions to test for the...

In this paper we investigate the effects of new railway stations on house prices using an extensive repeated sales dataset over a period of 13 years. We employ semiparametric panel data techniques allowing for anticipation effects of station openings. We show that a kilometre reduction in...

Proximity to water is appreciated by households. Hedonic analyses that try to measure the value of this amenity are potentially biased by omitted variables as locations close to the water may be selected by households with higher incomes who construct more luxury houses. Since it is difficult to...

We present a modified open monocentric city model that assumes that land is available for conversion into new housing throughout the city. The model predicts that positive local income shocks (i) increase the cityś share of multi-family housing in new construction and (ii) lead to the...

We estimate the effect of the Dutch-German border on house prices. In the last 40 years the development of house prices in the Netherlands and Germany has been substantially different. While the Netherlands have been hit by two real estate cycles, prices in Germany have been extraordinary...

We introduce heterogeneous expectations in a standard housing market model linking housing rental levels to fundamental buying prices. Using quarterly data we estimate the model parameters for eight different countries, US, UK, NL, JP, CH, ES, SE and BE. We find that the data support...