Subsidizing homeownership makes cities decentralize, so Muth (1967) suggested over half a century ago, and so Voith (1999) and Glaeser (2011) have argued more recently. This paper provides a first quasi-experimental test of "Muth's hypothesis". We analyze a homeownership subsidy's effects on...

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on household mobility using micro data. The UK (until 2014) provided an ideal setting to explore the impact of housing transfer taxes on mobility decisions. This is partly because the stamp duty liability is quite substantial, at least for...

We investigate the difference in homeownership rate between natives and immigrants as well as its evolution in France using a large longitudinal dataset over the 1975-1999 period. For people staying on the territory the whole time (ie. stayers), we show that returns of characteristics change in...

This paper demonstrates that subsidized housing substantially increased inequality among urban Chinese residents in 1988 and 1995. Regressions for 1995 rental units impute estimated market rents in 1988 and 1995 for all dwelling units. In both years, these imputed values exceeded actual rents by...

This paper studies the demand for mortgage debt in the Netherlands. Currently the size of this debt exceeds that of GDP, which makes is interesting to look at its determinants. We argue that the absence of a downpayment constraint is important and focus on two other issue. The first is the...

Homeownership is heavily subsidized in many countries mainly through the tax code. The adverse effects of lenient tax treatment of owner-occupied housing on economic efficiency and growth are well documented in the economics literature. The main argument in favor of subsidizing owner-occupied...