IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtu/wpaper/08_14.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Tax, Credit Constraints, and the Big Costs of Small Inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Coleman

    (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research)

Abstract

This paper develops an overlapping generations model incorporating credit constraints, owner-occupier and rental sectors, and detailed tax regulations to examine how the interaction of inflation and the tax system affect the housing market. It shows that even modest rates of inflation can have very large effects on the home-ownership rates of young households, particularly at low real interest rates. This occurs even if there is a large supply response in the quantity of housing. The model suggests that the welfare costs of inflation could be ameliorated by exempting the inflation component of interest payments from income tax.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Coleman, 2008. "Tax, Credit Constraints, and the Big Costs of Small Inflation," Working Papers 08_14, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtu:wpaper:08_14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/08_14.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aaron, Henry J, 1976. "Inflation and the Income Tax," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(2), pages 193-199, May.
    2. Francois Ortalo-Magne & Sven Rady, 1998. "Housing Market Fluctuations in a Life-Cycle Economy with Credit Constraints," Finance 9810003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Franco Modigliani, 1976. "Some Economic Implications of the Indexing of Financial Assets with Special Reference to Mortgages," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Mario Monti (ed.), The ‘New Inflation’ and Monetary Policy, chapter 3, pages 90-141, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. James R. Hines, Jr., 1987. "The Tax Treatment of Structures," NBER Chapters, in: Taxes and Capital Formation, pages 37-50, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Kearl, J R, 1979. "Inflation, Mortgages, and Housing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 1115-1138, October.
    6. Fumio Hayashi & Takatoshi Ito & Joel Slemrod, 1987. "Housing Finance Imperfections and Private Saving: A Comparative Simulation Analysis of the U.S. and Japan," NBER Working Papers 2272, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. François Ortalo-Magné & Sven Rady, 2006. "Housing Market Dynamics: On the Contribution of Income Shocks and Credit Constraints ," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(2), pages 459-485.
    8. Roger H. Gordon & James R. Hines, Jr. & Lawrence H. Summers, 1987. "Notes on the Tax Treatment of Structures," NBER Chapters, in: The Effects of Taxation on Capital Accumulation, pages 223-258, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Martin S. Feldstein, 1999. "Capital Income Taxes and the Benefit of Price Stability," NBER Chapters, in: The Costs and Benefits of Price Stability, pages 9-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Joel Slemrod, 1982. "Down-Payment Constraints: Tax Policy Effects in a Growing Economy With Rental and Owner-Occupied Housing," Public Finance Review, , vol. 10(2), pages 193-217, April.
    11. Bailey, Martin J, 1974. "Progressivity and Investment Yields under U.S. Income Taxation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1157-1175, Nov.-Dec..
    12. Andrew Coleman, 2007. "Credit constraints and housing markets in New Zealand," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2007/11, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    13. Nowotny, Ewald, 1980. "Inflation and Taxation: Reviewing the Macroeconomic Issues," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 1025-1049, September.
    14. Fischer, Stanley & Summers, Lawrence H, 1989. "Should Governments Learn to Live with Inflation?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 382-387, May.
    15. Martin S. Feldstein, 1997. "The Costs and Benefits of Going from Low Inflation to Price Stability," NBER Chapters, in: Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy, pages 123-166, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Andrew Coleman, 2017. "Housing, the ‘Great Income Tax Experiment’, and the intergenerational consequences of the lease," Working Papers 17_09, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    2. Andrew Coleman, 2010. "The long-term effects of capital gains taxes in New Zealand," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(2), pages 159-177.
    3. Andrew Coleman, 2017. "Housing, the ‘Great Income Tax Experiment’, and the intergenerational consequences of the lease," Working Papers 1709, University of Otago, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2017.

    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. Andrew Coleman, 2007. "Credit constraints and housing markets in New Zealand," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2007/11, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    2. Andrew Coleman, 2010. "I Squeezed in and squeezed out: the effects of population ageing on the demand for housing," Working Papers 10_01, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    3. Andrew Coleman, 2010. "The long-term effects of capital gains taxes in New Zealand," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(2), pages 159-177.
    4. Janet L. Yellen, 2015. "Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Policy : A speech at the Philip Gamble Memorial Lecture, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, September 24, 2015," Speech 863, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Jin, Yi & Zeng, Zhixiong, 2004. "Residential investment and house prices in a multi-sector monetary business cycle model," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 268-286, December.
    6. Mihir A. Desai & William M. Gentry, 2004. "The Character and Determinants of Corporate Capital Gains," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 18, pages 1-36, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Blaszkiewicz, Monika & Konieczny, Jerzy & Myslinska, Anna & Radziwil, Artur & Przemyslaw, Wozniak, 2002. "Some benefits of reducing inflation in transition economies," BOFIT Discussion Papers 16/2002, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    8. Basant Kapur, 2006. "Financial liberalization and short-run housing price dynamics," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 29(3), pages 649-675, November.
    9. Shiratsuka, Shigenori, 2001. "Is There a Desirable Rate of Inflation? A Theoretical and Empirical Survey," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 19(2), pages 49-83, May.
    10. Immervoll, Herwig, 2004. "Falling up the stairs: an exploration of the effects of ‘bracket creep’ on household incomes," EUROMOD Working Papers EM3/04, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    11. Matthew Chambers & Carlos Garriga & Don E. Schlagenhauf, 2007. "Equilibrium mortgage choice and housing tenure decisions with refinancing," Working Papers 2007-049, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    12. Levy, Horacio & Nogueira, José Ricardo & Siqueira, Rozane Bezerra & Immervoll, Herwig & O'Donoghue, Cathal, 2010. "Simulating the impact of inflation on the progressivity of personal income tax in Brazil," Revista Brasileira de Economia - RBE, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance - FGV EPGE (Brazil), vol. 64(4), December.
    13. Frame, David, 2013. "Saving and consumption in cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 111-124.
    14. Kenny, Geoff & McGettigan, Donal, 1997. "Low Inflation or Price Stability? A Look at the Issues," Research Technical Papers 3/RT/97, Central Bank of Ireland.
    15. De Veirman Emmanuel & Dunstan Ashley, 2011. "Time-Varying Returns, Intertemporal Substitution and Cyclical Variation in Consumption," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-41, July.
    16. Scholten, Ulrich, 1999. "Die Förderung von Wohneigentum," Beiträge zur Finanzwissenschaft, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, edition 1, volume 8, number urn:isbn:9783161472343, September.
    17. Goulder, Lawrence H. & Thalmann, Philippe, 1993. "Approaches to efficient capital taxation : Leveling the playing field vs. living by the golden rule," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 169-196, February.
    18. Herwig Immervoll, 2006. "Fiscal Drag – An Automatic Stabiliser?," Research in Labor Economics, in: Micro-Simulation in Action, pages 141-163, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    19. 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.
    20. Alan J. Auerbach & James M. Poterba, 1987. "Tax Loss Carryforwards and Corporate Tax Incentives," NBER Chapters, in: The Effects of Taxation on Capital Accumulation, pages 305-342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation; credit constraints; capital income taxes; housing markets; home-ownership rates; monetary policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E40 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - General
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:mtu:wpaper:08_14. 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: Maxine Watene (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/motuenz.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.