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Did Housing Policies Cause the Postwar Boom in Home Ownership?

In: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective

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  • Matthew Chambers
  • Carlos Garriga
  • Don E. Schlagenhauf

Abstract

After the collapse of housing markets during the Great Depression, the U.S. government played a large role in shaping the future of housing finance and policy. Soon thereafter, housing markets witnessed the largest boom in recent history. The objective in this paper is to quantify the contribution of government interventions in housing markets in the expansion of U.S. homeownership using an equilibrium model of tenure choice. In the model, home buyers have access to a menu of mort- gage choices to finance the acquisition of a house. The government also provides special programs through provisions of the tax code. The parameterized model is consistent with key aggregate and distributional features observed in the 1940 U.S. economy and is capable of accounting for the boom in homeownership in 1960. The decomposition suggests that government policies have significant importance. For example, the expansion in maturity of the fixed-rate mortgage to 30 years can account for 25 percent of the increase. Housing policies, such as the introduction of the mortgage interest deduction, can account for 13 percent of the increase in homeownership.
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  • Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2014. "Did Housing Policies Cause the Postwar Boom in Home Ownership?," NBER Chapters, in: Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective, pages 351-385, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:12802
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    Cited by:

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    2. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2016. "The Postwar Conquest of the Home Ownership Dream," Working Papers 2016-07, Towson University, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2016.
    3. Sami Alpanda & Sarah Zubairy, 2016. "Housing and Tax Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(2-3), pages 485-512, March.
    4. Michele Boldrin & Carlos Garriga & Adrian Peralta-Alva & Juan M. Sanchez, 2020. "Reconstructing the Great Recession," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 102(3), pages 271-311, July.
    5. Gonzalo Paz-Pardo, 2024. "Homeownership and Portfolio Choice over the Generations," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 207-237, January.
    6. Fetter, Daniel K., 2016. "The Home Front: Rent Control and the Rapid Wartime Increase in Home Ownership," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(4), pages 1001-1043, December.
    7. Brian J. Asquith & Margaret C. Bock, 2022. "The Case for Dynamic Cities," Upjohn Working Papers 22-373, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • N1 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations
    • R20 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - General

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