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Using Home Maintenance and Repairs to Smooth Variable Earnings

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Author Info
Joseph Gyourko (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
Joseph Tracy (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)

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Abstract

Recent research documents a significant increase in U.S. transitory income variance over the past 25 years. An emerging literature explores the role of durables in the household's attempt to smooth consumption over these movements in transitory income. This paper examines the degree to which homeowners adjust their home maintenance decisions in order to offset transitory income fluctuations. American Housing Survey data show that home maintenance expenditures are economically significant, amounting to nearly $2,100 per year. We find a statistically significant positive elasticity of maintenance expenditures to estimated transitory income changes. However, the results suggest that adjusting home maintenance expenditures plays a relatively minor role in the household's overall consumption smoothing strategy. In terms of actual dollars, deferred home maintenance offsets on average from 1 to 7 cents of each dollar of transitory income loss. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/rest.88.4.736
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Publisher Info
Article provided by MIT Press in its journal The Review of Economics and Statistics.

Volume (Year): 88 (2006)
Issue (Month): 4 (October)
Pages: 736-747
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Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:88:y:2006:i:4:p:736-747

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Web page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/

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Web: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journal-home.tcl?issn=00346535

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  3. MaCurdy, Thomas E., 1982. "The use of time series processes to model the error structure of earnings in a longitudinal data analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 83-114, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Goetzmann, William N & Spiegel, Matthew, 1995. "Non-temporal Components of Residential Real Estate Appreciation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(1), pages 199-206, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Bennett, Paul & Peach, Richard & Peristiani, Stavros, 2001. "Structural Change in the Mortgage Market and the Propensity to Refinance," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 33(4), pages 955-75, November.
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  6. Abowd, John M & Card, David, 1989. "On the Covariance Structure of Earnings and Hours Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 411-45, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Deaton, A. & Grosh, M., 1998. "Consumption," Papers 191, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Development Studies.
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  9. Reschovsky, James D, 1992. "An Empirical Investigation into Homeowner Demand for Home Upkeep and Improvement," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 55-71, March.
  10. Mendelsohn, Robert, 1977. "Empirical evidence on home improvements," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 459-468, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Peter Gottschalk & Robert Moffitt, 1994. "The Growth of Earnings Instability in the U.S. Labor Market," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 25(1994-2), pages 217-272. [Downloadable!]
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Olga gorbachev, 2007. "Did Household Consumption Become More Volatile?," ESE Discussion Papers 161, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh. [Downloadable!]
  2. Hud - Pd&R, 2005. "The Relationship Between Homeowner Age and House Price Appreciation," Economic Development Publications 39137, HUD USER, Economic Development. [Downloadable!]
  3. Glaeser, Edward L. & Gyourko, Joseph, 2008. "Arbitrage in Housing Markets," Working Paper Series rwp08-017, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Morris A. Davis & Robert F. Martin, 2005. "Housing, house prices, and the equity premium puzzle," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-13, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  5. Todd Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2005. "Owner-occupied housing as a hedge against rent risk," Working Papers 05-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Stephen H. Shore & Todd Sinai, 2005. "Commitment, Risk, and Consumption: Do Birds of a Feather Have Bigger Nests?," NBER Working Papers 11588, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Joseph Gyourko & Albert Saiz, 2003. "Urban decline and housing reinvestment: the role of construction costs and the supply side," Working Papers 03-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
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