IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/382.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Suburbanization and homeownership rates

Author

Listed:
  • Wolfgang R. K�hler

Abstract

Homeownership rates in suburbs are much higher than in central cities. This paper shows that the systematic difference between homeownership rates causes suburbanization. We consider an economy with several regions: the central city, where most households rent, and the suburbs, where most own. Households migrate and vote on local policies. Renters do not consider the effect of policies on house prices. Therefore, renter dominated central cities provide public goods inefficiently and have high taxes and high debt. Since house prices are lower in the central city, few houses are built and households migrate to the suburbs as houses depreciate. The durability of houses has two effects: it provides owners with incentives to vote for efficient policies and it makes inefficient policies sustainable.

Suggested Citation

  • Wolfgang R. K�hler, 2008. "Suburbanization and homeownership rates," IEW - Working Papers 382, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:iewwpx:382
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/52335/1/iewwp382.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Suburbanization; homeownership; migration; local public debt; local public goods; house prices;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • H73 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Interjurisdictional Differentials and Their Effects

    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:zur:iewwpx:382. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.