IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejmac/v13y2013i1p25n10.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bequest taxes, donations, and house prices

Author

Listed:
  • Bellettini Giorgio

    (University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy)

  • Taddei Filippo

    (SAIS – The Johns Hopkins University, Bologna, Italy and Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin, Italy)

  • Zanella Giulio

    (University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy)

Abstract

This paper is an empirical investigation into the effect of bequest taxes (estate or inheritance tax, in the US) and inter vivos real estate donations taxes (gift tax, in the US) on (i) house prices, (ii) house donations, and (iii) market transactions. In a simple model with intergenerational altruism, a lower tax rate unambiguously increases (i) and has an ambiguous effect on (ii) and (iii). We test these predictions using an original and unique data set containing information on sales, donations and real estate prices in 13 large Italian cities between 1993 and 2004. This period spans a major reform that first decreased and then abolished the inter vivos real estate donations tax and bequest tax in Italy. We find that the reform is associated with cumulative real appreciation of about 5% between 2001 and 2004, an increase in donations, and a decrease in market transactions over the same period.

Suggested Citation

  • Bellettini Giorgio & Taddei Filippo & Zanella Giulio, 2013. "Bequest taxes, donations, and house prices," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 355-379, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejmac:v:13:y:2013:i:1:p:25:n:10
    DOI: 10.1515/bejm-2012-0069
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/bejm-2012-0069
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/bejm-2012-0069?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jappelli, Tullio & Padula, Mario & Pica, Giovanni, 2010. "Estate Taxation and Intergenerational Transfers," CEPR Discussion Papers 7701, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. George Constantinides & John Donaldson & Rajnish Mehra, 2007. "Junior is rich: bequests as consumption," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(1), pages 125-155, July.
    3. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Lemke, Robert J. & Scholz, John Karl, 2004. "Do estate and gift taxes affect the timing of private transfers?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2617-2634, December.
    4. Charles Himmelberg & Christopher Mayer & Todd Sinai, 2005. "Assessing High House Prices: Bubbles, Fundamentals and Misperceptions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 67-92, Fall.
    5. Marco Cagetti & Mariacristina De Nardi, 2009. "Estate Taxation, Entrepreneurship, and Wealth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 85-111, March.
    6. Graziella Bertocchi, 2011. "The Vanishing Bequest Tax: The Comparative Evolution Of Bequest Taxation In Historical Perspective," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 107-131, March.
    7. Joulfaian, David, 2004. "Gift taxes and lifetime transfers: time series evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 1917-1929, August.
    8. James M. Poterba, 1991. "House Price Dynamics: The Role of Tax Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(2), pages 143-204.
    9. Pelizzon, Loriana & Weber, Guglielmo, 2008. "Are Household Portfolios Efficient? an Analysis Conditional on Housing," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(2), pages 401-431, June.
    10. Jonathan McCarthy & Richard Peach, 2004. "Are home prices the next \\"bubble\\"?," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Dec, pages 1-17.
    11. James M. Poterba, 1984. "Tax Subsidies to Owner-Occupied Housing: An Asset-Market Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(4), pages 729-752.
    12. Karl E. Case & Robert J. Shiller, 2003. "Is There a Bubble in the Housing Market?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(2), pages 299-362.
    13. Carolina Fugazza & Massimo Guidolin & Giovanna Nicodano, 2007. "Investing for the Long-run in European Real Estate," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 35-80, January.
    14. Glaeser, Edward L & Gyourko, Joseph & Saks, Raven, 2005. "Why Is Manhattan So Expensive? Regulation and the Rise in Housing Prices," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(2), pages 331-369, October.
    15. Hendershott, Patric H. & Pryce, Gwilym, 2006. "The sensitivity of homeowner leverage to the deductibility of home mortgage interest," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 50-68, July.
    16. Bruce, Donald & Holtz-Eakin, Douglas, 1999. "Fundamental Tax Reform and Residential Housing," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 249-271, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bellettini, Giorgio & Taddei, Filippo & Zanella, Giulio, 2017. "Intergenerational altruism and house prices: Evidence from bequest tax reforms in Italy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 1-12.
    2. Wei Han & Ping Wang & Hongjie Dong, 2020. "Influence of Egoistic and Altruistic Bequest Motives on the Willingness to Participate in Reverse Mortgages in China," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 34(4), pages 430-463, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giorgio Bellettini & Filippo Taddei, 2009. "Real Estate Prices and the Importance of Bequest Taxation," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 107, Collegio Carlo Alberto, revised 2011.
    2. Baltagi, Badi H. & Li, Jing, 2015. "Cointegration of matched home purchases and rental price indexes — Evidence from Singapore," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 80-88.
    3. Yongqiang Chu, 2014. "Credit constraints, inelastic supply, and the housing boom," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(1), pages 52-69, January.
    4. Bimonte, Salvatore & Stabile, Arsenio, 2015. "Local taxation and urban development. Testing for the side-effects of the Italian property tax," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 100-107.
    5. Favara, Giovanni & Song, Zheng, 2014. "House price dynamics with dispersed information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 350-382.
    6. Graeme O'Meara, 2015. "Housing Bubbles and Monetary Policy: A Reassessment," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 46(4), pages 521-565.
    7. Zheng Song & Giovanni Favara, 2009. "House Price Dynamics with Heterogeneous Expectations," 2009 Meeting Papers 775, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Mikhed, Vyacheslav & Zemcík, Petr, 2009. "Do house prices reflect fundamentals? Aggregate and panel data evidence," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 140-149, June.
    9. Biljana Davidovska Stojanova & Branimir Jovanovic & Maja Kadievska Vojnovic & Gani Ramadani & Magdalena Petrovska, 2008. "Real Estate Prices In The Republic Of Macedonia," Working Papers 2008-03, National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia.
    10. Frederic S. Mishkin, 2007. "Housing and the monetary transmission mechanism," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 359-413.
    11. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    12. Davis, Morris A. & Heathcote, Jonathan, 2007. "The price and quantity of residential land in the United States," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2595-2620, November.
    13. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Christian Julliard, 2008. "Money Illusion and Housing Frenzies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 135-180, January.
    14. Frederic S. Mishkin, 2007. "\"Housing and the monetary transmission mechanism,\" Finance and Economics Discussion Series Working Paper: a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Economic Symposium, Jackson ," Speech 312, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Jappelli, T. & Padula, M. & Pica, G., 2011. "GINI DP 21: Transfer Taxes and Inequality," GINI Discussion Papers 21, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    16. Margit Schratzenstaller, 2023. "Behavioral Responses to Inheritance Taxation. A Review of the Empirical Literature," WIFO Working Papers 668, WIFO.
    17. Martin, Carolin & Schmitt, Noemi & Westerhoff, Frank, 2022. "Housing Markets, Expectation Formation And Interest Rates," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(2), pages 491-532, March.
    18. Michal Hlavacek & Lubos Komarek, 2009. "Housing Price Bubbles and their Determinants in the Czech Republic and its Regions," Working Papers 2009/12, Czech National Bank.
    19. Jonathan McCarthy & Richard W. Peach, 2005. "Is There a 'Bubble' in the Housing Market Now?," NFI Policy Briefs 2005-PB-01, Indiana State University, Scott College of Business, Networks Financial Institute.
    20. Gavin Cameron & John Muellbauer & Anthony Murphy, 2006. "Was There A British House Price Bubble? Evidence From A Regional Panel," ERES eres2006_150, European Real Estate Society (ERES).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    bequests; donations; estate tax; gift tax; house prices; inheritance tax; JEL codes: E60; E65; H24;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
    • E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bejmac:v:13:y:2013:i:1:p:25:n:10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.