IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/spmain/hal-01053551.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Housing market discrimination, housing regulations and intermediaries

Author

Listed:
  • Etienne Wasmer

    (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Housing and labor markets exhibit many similarities. First, information is imperfect. Tenant quality, like worker quality, is unobserved. Second, separation is costly and time consuming. The laws and regulation typically complicate or slow down the termination process of the contractual relationship and make it more costly for firms and landlords to fire an employee /evict a tenant. And finally, there are rigidities in nominal wages and rents. Adapting tools from labor theory, we attempt to understand how landlords wish to screen and possibly statistically discriminate against potential tenants. They do so when housing regulations are more stringent. If they have a "taste against discrimination" (the opposite of Becker's "taste for discrimination"), they are more likely to have recourse to agencies in order to outsource screening. Preliminary descriptive evidence of cross-country differences in housing regulations and housing market functioning is provided.

Suggested Citation

  • Etienne Wasmer, 2005. "Housing market discrimination, housing regulations and intermediaries," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01053551, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-01053551
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-01053551
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-01053551/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arnott, Richard, 1989. "Housing Vacancies, Thin Markets, and Idiosyncratic Tastes," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 5-30, February.
    2. Gabriel Desgranges & Étienne Wasmer, 2000. "Appariements sur le marché du logement," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 58, pages 253-287.
    3. Read, Colin, 1993. "Tenants' search and vacancies in rental housing markets," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 171-183, April.
    4. repec:adr:anecst:y:2000:i:58:p:11 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Fujita,Masahisa, 1991. "Urban Economic Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521396455, January.
    6. Garibaldi, Pietro, 1998. "Job flow dynamics and firing restrictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 245-275, February.
    7. van Ommeren, Jos & Rietveld, Piet & Nijkamp, Peter, 1997. "Commuting: In Search of Jobs and Residences," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 402-421, November.
    8. Rosenthal, Leslie, 1997. "Chain-Formation in the Owner-Occupied Housing Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(441), pages 475-488, March.
    9. Anas, Alex, 1997. "Rent Control with Matching Economies: A Model of European Housing Market Regulation," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 111-137, July.
    10. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2000. "Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262161877, December.
    11. Colin Read, 1988. "Advertising and Natural Vacancies in Rental Housing Markets," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 16(4), pages 354-363, December.
    12. Colin Read, 1991. "A Price Dispersion Equilibrium in a Spatially Differentiated Housing Market with Search Costs," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 19(4), pages 532-547, December.
    13. Thies, Clifford F, 1993. "Rent Control with Rationing by Search Costs: A Note," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 159-165, September.
    14. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/8988 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Read, Colin, 1997. "Vacancies and Rent Dispersion in a Stochastic Search Model with Generalized Tenant Demand," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 223-237, November.
    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. Pablo Casas-Arce & Albert Saiz, 2010. "Owning versus Renting: Do Courts Matter?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(1), pages 137-165, February.
    2. Antoine Bonleu, 2019. "Procedural Formalism and Social Networks in the Housing Market," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 133, pages 25-56.
    3. Pablo Casas-Arce & Albert Saiz, 2006. "Owning versus leasing: do courts matter?," Working Papers 06-21, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

    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. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/9023 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/9023 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Etienne Wasmer, 2005. "Housing market discrimination, housing regulations and intermediaries," SciencePo Working papers hal-01053551, HAL.
    4. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/9023 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/8988 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Gabriel Desgranges & Étienne Wasmer, 2000. "Appariements sur le marché du logement," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 58, pages 253-287.
    7. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/8988 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/8988 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/8988 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Gabriel Desgranges & Étienne Wasmer, 2000. "Appariements sur le marché du logement," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 58, pages 253-287.
    11. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/9023 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Wasmer, Etienne & Zenou, Yves, 2006. "Equilibrium search unemployment with explicit spatial frictions," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 143-165, April.
    13. Forgionne, G. A., 1996. "Forecasting army housing supply with a DSS-delivered econometric model," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 561-576, October.
    14. Harris Selod & Yves Zenou, 2006. "City Structure, Job Search and Labour Discrimination: Theory and Policy Implications," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(514), pages 1057-1087, October.
    15. Frédéric Gavrel & Nathalie Georges & Yannick L'Horty & Isabelle Lebon, 2012. "Inadéquation des qualifications et fracture spatiale," Working Papers halshs-00809630, HAL.
    16. Brown, Alessio J. G. & Snower, Dennis J., 2009. "Incentives and complementarities of flexicurity," Kiel Working Papers 1526, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    17. Arnott, Richard & Igarashi, Masahiro, 2000. "Rent control, mismatch costs and search efficiency," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 249-288, May.
    18. Nadav Ben Zeev & Tomer Ifergane, 2022. "Firing Restrictions and Economic Resilience: Protect and Survive?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 43, pages 93-124, January.
    19. Borghorst, Malte & Mulalic, Ismir & van Ommeren, Jos, 2024. "Commuting, gender and children," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    20. Myers, Erica, 2020. "Asymmetric information in residential rental markets: Implications for the energy efficiency gap," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    21. Sato, Yasuhiro & Xiao, Wei, 2015. "Land development, search frictions and city structure," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 63-76.
    22. Kawata, Keisuke & Sato, Yasuhiro, 2012. "On-the-job search in urban areas," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 715-726.
    23. Gabrovski, Miroslav & Ortego-Marti, Victor, 2019. "The cyclical behavior of the Beveridge Curve in the housing market," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 361-381.
    24. Andrea Ricci & Robert Waldmann, 2015. "Firm financed training and pareto improving firing taxes," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 32(2), pages 201-220, August.
    25. Zenou, Yves, 2011. "Search, migration, and urban land use: The case of transportation policies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 174-187, November.
    26. Nicolas Juste & Moez Kilani, 2022. "Modeling the impact of transportation on urban segregation and unemployment [Modélisation de l'impact des transports sur la ségrégation urbaine et le chômage]," Post-Print hal-03738609, HAL.
    27. Maury, Tristan-Pierre & Tripier, Fabien, 2014. "Search strategies on the housing market and their implications on price dispersion," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 55-80.
    28. Masatomo Suzuki & Yasushi Asami, 2020. "Tenant Protection, Temporal Vacancy and Frequent Reconstruction in the Rental Housing Market," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1074-1095, December.

    More about this item

    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:hal:spmain:hal-01053551. 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: Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.