Observed differentials among yield series for different types of long-term instruments--U.S. government bonds, municipal bonds, corporate bonds and residential mortgages--vary considerably over time.

Mortgage interest tax deductibility is needed to treat debt and equity financing of homes equally. Countries that limit deductibility create a debt tax penalty that presumably leads households to shift from debt toward equity financing. The greater the shift, the less is the tax revenue raised...

Real house prices are directly determined by the willingness of households to pay for (and willingness of builders to supply) a constant-quality house. Changes in the quantity of housing demanded will affect real prices only to the extent that the long-run housing supply schedule is positively...

Current tax law provides tax advantages to owner-occupied housing that increase with a household's income. This well understood fact has led to periodic proposals to substitute a tax credit equal to, say, 25 percent of housing-related expenses for their current deductibility. Because all of the...

This paper presents calculations of the impacts of two levels of mortgage revenue bonds (MRBs) on: (1) yields on home mortgages, tax-exempt bonds and taxable bonds, (2) the allocation of the American fixed capital stock among residential (by three tax brackets), business, and state and local...

In contrast to the conventional wisdom, real estate activity in the aggregate is not disfavored by the 1986 Tax Act. Within the broad aggregate, however, widely different impacts are to be expected. Regular rental and commercial activity will be slightly disfavored, while historic and old...

This study extends recent work that developed and tested economic models of the joint decisions of household formation and homeownership. The cost of shelter is an important determinant of whether youth live independently (apart from parents and other nonrelated adults), and the cost of...

The securitization of fixed-rate mortgages suggests that the FRA/VA market was fully integrated with capital markets by the early l98Os and that the conventional market moved toward integration during the l98Os. Assuming full integration of FHA/VA5 via the GNMA securitization process, we first...