IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ssb/dispap/395.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

House ownership and taxes

Author

Listed:

Abstract

The household portfolio is dominated by a small number of assets; primarily housing and mortgages. We compare data on actual portfolios of Norwegian households with estimated optimal portfolios, using traditional financial theory. We find actual portfolios to be close to the portfolio indicated by a mean-variance frontier, based on four assets and estimated under assumptions of short sale constraints. This result is sustained even in a no-tax regime. To induce a substantial change from housing to equity, taxation of the consumption stream from housing is needed. An alternative; taxation of capital gains from housing investment; could actually increase the relative holding of housing.

Suggested Citation

  • Torfinn Harding & Haakon O. Aa. Solheim & Andreas Benedictow, 2004. "House ownership and taxes," Discussion Papers 395, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:ssb:dispap:395
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ssb.no/a/publikasjoner/pdf/DP/dp395.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James M. Poterba, 1983. "Tax Subsidies to Owner-occupied Housing: An Asset Market Approach," Working papers 339, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    2. Lars Ljungqvist & Thomas J. Sargent, 2004. "Recursive Macroeconomic Theory, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 026212274x, April.
    3. Englund, Peter & Hwang, Min & Quigley, John M, 2002. "Hedging Housing Risk," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 24(1-2), pages 167-200, Jan.-Marc.
    4. 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.
    5. James M. Poterba, 2001. "Taxation and Portfolio Structure: Issues and Implications," NBER Working Papers 8223, 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. Eva Sierminska & Andrea Brandolini & Timothy M Smeeding, 2007. "Comparing wealth distribution across rich countries: the Luxembourg Wealth Study project," IFC Bulletins chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Proceedings of the IFC Conference on "Measuring the financial position of the household sector", Basel, 30-31 August 2006 - Volume 1, volume 25, pages 297-310, Bank for International Settlements.
    2. Ingvild Almås & Magne Mogstad, 2009. "Older or Wealthier? The Impact of Age Adjustments on the Wealth Inequality Ranking of Countries," Discussion Papers 583, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    3. Irving Fisher Committee, 2007. "Proceedings of the IFC Conference on "Measuring the financial position of the household sector", Basel, 30-31 August 2006 - Volume 1," IFC Bulletins, Bank for International Settlements, number 25.

    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. Antonia Diaz & Maria Jose Luengo Prado, 2008. "On the User Cost and Homeownership," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(3), pages 584-613, July.
    2. Paulo M.M. Rodrigues & Rita Fradique Lourenço, 2015. "House prices: bubbles, exuberance or something else? Evidence from euro area countries," Working Papers w201517, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    3. Lennart Berg, 2002. "Prices on the second-hand market for Swedish family houses: correlation, causation and determinants," European Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 1-24.
    4. Matteo Iacoviello, 2002. "House Prices and Business Cycles in Europe: a VAR Analysis," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 540, Boston College Department of Economics.
    5. Morris A. Davis, 2010. "housing and the business cycle," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    6. Berkovec, James & Fullerton, Don, 1989. "The General Equilibrium Effects of Inflation on Housing Consumption and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 277-282, May.
    7. Gábor Vadas, 2004. "Modelling Households’ Savings and Dwellings Investment – A Portfolio Choice Approach," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 7(1), pages 31-55.
    8. Barsky, Robert B, 1989. "Why Don't the Prices of Stocks and Bonds Move Together?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1132-1145, December.
    9. Haavio, Markus & Kauppi, Heikki, 2009. "House price fluctuations and residential sorting," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 14/2009, Bank of Finland.
    10. Muellbauer, John & Murphy, Anthony & Cameron, Gavin, 2006. "Was There a British House Price Bubble? Evidence from a Regional Panel," CEPR Discussion Papers 5619, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Haavio, Markus & Kauppi, Heikki, 2009. "House price fluctuations and residential sorting," Research Discussion Papers 14/2009, Bank of Finland.
    12. Nuno C. Martins, 2003. "The Impact of Interest-rate Subsidies on Long-term Household Debt: Evidence from a Large Program," Working Papers w200314, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    13. Todd Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2005. "Owner-Occupied Housing as a Hedge Against Rent Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 763-789.
    14. Joseph Gyourko & Todd Sinai, "undated". "The Spatial Distribution of Housing-Related Tax Benefits in the United States," Zell/Lurie Center Working Papers 399, Wharton School Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center, University of Pennsylvania.
    15. Nuno C. Martins & Ernesto Villanueva, 2003. "The impact of interest-rate subsidies on long-term household debt: Evidence from a large program," Economics Working Papers 713, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    16. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2009_014 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Malte Krüger, 1998. "Exchange Rate Effects of Portfolio Shifts?," University of Western Ontario, Departmental Research Report Series 9807, University of Western Ontario, Department of Economics.
    18. James M. Poterba, 1990. "Taxation and Housing Markets: Preliminary Evidence on the Effects of Recent Tax Reforms," NBER Working Papers 3270, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko & Raven Saks, 2003. "Why is Manhattan So Expensive? Regulation and the Rise in House Prices," NBER Working Papers 10124, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Lawrence H. Goulder, 1989. "Tax Policy, Housing Prices, and Housing Investment," NBER Working Papers 2814, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Oikarinen, Elias, 2005. "Is Housing Overvalued in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area?," Discussion Papers 992, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Households; portfolio choice; consumption tax; capital gains tax.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household

    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:ssb:dispap:395. 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: L Maasø (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ssbgvno.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.