IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_2577.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Real Estate Prices and the Importance of Bequest Taxation

Author

Listed:
  • Giorgio Bellettini
  • Filippo Taddei

Abstract

Taxation of bequests and donations is an important determinant of real estate prices. We show that, ceteris paribus, a decrease in taxes on inter vivos donations and bequests brings about an increase in real estate prices. We provide a general equilibrium rationalization in the context of OLG economies featuring intergenerational altruism. This has relevant policy implications. We test the predictions of our theory employing a unique policy shock: the abolition of bequest and donation taxation that took place in Italy in 2001. Considering this policy shift provides the first evidence that a drastic reduction in bequest and donation taxation significantly increased real estate prices. Our estimates suggest that the 2001 abolition of taxation on bequests and donations alone led to an appreciation of residential real estate in excess of 10%.

Suggested Citation

  • Giorgio Bellettini & Filippo Taddei, 2009. "Real Estate Prices and the Importance of Bequest Taxation," CESifo Working Paper Series 2577, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2577
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp2577.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Emmanuel Farhi & Iván Werning, 2010. "Progressive Estate Taxation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 635-673.
    5. Emmanuel Farhi & Iván Werning, 2007. "Inequality and Social Discounting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(3), pages 365-402.
    6. Margaret Hwang Smith & Gary Smith, 2006. "Bubble, Bubble, Where's the Housing Bubble?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 37(1), pages 1-68.
    7. 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.
    8. Nathalie Girouard & Mike Kennedy & Paul van den Noord & Christophe André, 2006. "Recent House Price Developments: The Role of Fundamentals," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 475, OECD Publishing.
    9. 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.
    10. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko & Raven E. Saks, 2005. "Why Have Housing Prices Gone Up?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 329-333, May.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. 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. Yukutake, Norifumi & Iwata, Shinichiro & Idee, Takako, 2015. "Strategic interaction between inter vivos gifts and housing acquisition," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 62-77.
    2. Theodore Panagiotidis & Panagiotis Printzis, 2016. "On the macroeconomic determinants of the housing market in Greece: a VECM approach," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 387-409, July.
    3. Jappelli, Tullio & Padula, Mario & Pica, Giovanni, 2010. "Estate Taxation and Intergenerational Transfers," CEPR Discussion Papers 7701, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Elek, Péter & Kiss, Áron, 2010. "Az ingatlanadó a magyar adórendszerben. Elméleti megfontolások és mikroszimulációs elemzés [Real-estate taxation in the Hungarian tax system. Theoretical considerations and a micro-simulation analy," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(5), pages 389-411.

    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Zheng Song & Giovanni Favara, 2009. "House Price Dynamics with Heterogeneous Expectations," 2009 Meeting Papers 775, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. 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.
    5. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko, 2006. "Housing Dynamics," NBER Working Papers 12787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Konstantin Kholodilin, 2015. "Speculative Bubbles in Urban Housing Markets in Germany," ERSA conference papers ersa15p67, European Regional Science Association.
    7. Garner, Thesia I. & Verbrugge, Randal, 2009. "Reconciling user costs and rental equivalence: Evidence from the US consumer expenditure survey," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 172-192, September.
    8. Coleman IV, Major & LaCour-Little, Michael & Vandell, Kerry D., 2008. "Subprime lending and the housing bubble: Tail wags dog?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 272-290, December.
    9. Favara, Giovanni & Song, Zheng, 2014. "House price dynamics with dispersed information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 350-382.
    10. 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.
    11. 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.
    12. Christopher L. Foote & Kristopher Gerardi & Paul S. Willen, 2010. "Reasonable people did disagree : optimism and pessimism about the U.S. housing market before the crash," Public Policy Discussion Paper 10-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    13. Itamar Caspi, 2015. "Testing for a housing bubble at the national and regional level: the case of Israel," Globalization Institute Working Papers 246, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    14. Edward E. Leamer, 2007. "Housing is the business cycle," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 149-233.
    15. Christian Hott, 2007. "Explaining house price fluctuations," Proceedings 1055, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    16. Christian Hott & Pierre Monnin, 2008. "Fundamental Real Estate Prices: An Empirical Estimation with International Data," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 36(4), pages 427-450, May.
    17. 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.
    18. 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.
    19. Elias Oikarinen, 2008. "Empirical application of the housing-market no-arbitrage condition: problems, solutions and a Finnish case study," Discussion Papers 39, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    real estate prices; donations; bequest taxation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General

    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:ces:ceswps:_2577. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.