alas my home is my castle on the cost of house ownership as a screening device abstract this paper analyzes a model in which housing tenure choice serves as a means of screening households with different utilization rates if the proportion of low utilization types is small there is a separating equilibrium at which tenure choice acts as a screening device consistent with empirical evidence low utilization households buy a house while high utilization types rent otherwise there is a pooling equilibrium the reason why contrary to standard screening models a pooling equilibrium possibly exists is indivisibility of home ownership which makes it a very costly screening device introducing partial ownership restores the standard results non existence of a pooling equilibrium and possible non existence of equilibrium

housing choices and uncertainty the impact of stochastic events abstract in our model a household recognizes that family size is stochastic when making its tenure and housing consumption decisions it also recognizes that initial choices constrain later behavior because they affect the amount of savings simulations of the model show that housing consumption and the duration of stay in a residence are sensitive to whether the realization of the stochastic event is the expected value based on this observation we suggest that empirical housing studies should include both the expected and realized values of stochastic explanatory variables we find few behavioral responses to changes in the variance of an uncertain event even though increased uncertainty is passed through to after tax income and the user cost of owning a notable exception is that if a household knows that a change in an influential variable will occur but it does not know the direction of change it is more likely to rent initially

liquidity constraints and housing prices theory and evidence from the va mortgage program abstract this paper employs a simple intertemporal model to show that presence of liquidity constraints can depress the price of a durable good below its net present rental value regardless of the overall supply elasticity the existence of price effects implies that the relaxation of liquidity constraints is not pareto improving and may in fact be regressive historical evidence which exploits the fact that a clearly identifiable group war veterans enjoyed the most favored access to mortgage credit after world war ii supports the model the results suggest that more recent mortgage market innovations have served primarily to increase prices rather than home ownership rates and that such innovations have the potential to exacerbate socioeconomic disparities in ownership rates

the impact of house prices on consumption in the uk a new perspective this paper proposes an alternative approach to the question of how house prices influence household consumption by focusing on their impact on mortgage equity withdrawal and household saving household level data are used to derive a measure of expected and unexpected changes in house prices these are then incorporated into a recursive bivariate probit model of the decision to withdraw housing equity and save the results suggest that households respond to changes in their housing wealth primarily by increasing their mortgage borrowing rather than by decreasing their savings although this is mainly for younger households however while changes in housing wealth do not have a direct impact on household saving they do have an important indirect impact since they increase the likelihood that the household will withdraw equity which in turn has a negative impact on household saving

firm optimism and pessimism abstract this paper explores the question of whether firms have systematic expectation biases using microdata from the west german manufacturing subset of the ifo business climate survey we infer quarterly production growth rates at the firm level we then combine this information with production growth expectations over a quarterly horizon to construct quantitative firm specific expectation errors our findings show that at most one third of our firms systematically over or underpredict their production growth one quarter ahead our findings further show that larger and exporting firms tend to have more realistic expectations while firms with higher leverage are more prone to expectations that are biased towards optimism

the brevity and violence of contractions and expansions abstract early studies of business cycles argued that contractions in economic activity were briefer shorter and more violent rapid than expansions this paper systematically investigates this claim and in the process discovers a robust new business cycle fact contractions in employment are briefer and more violent than expansions but we cannot reject the null of equal brevity and violence for expansions and contractions in output the difference arises because employment typically lags output around peaks but they coincide in their troughs we discuss the performance of existing business cycle models in accounting for this fact and conclude that none can fully account for it we then show that a business cycle model with asymmetric adjustment costs on employment and a choice of when to scrap old technologies can account for the business cycle fact both qualitatively and quantitatively

the role and growth of new car leasing theory and evidence abstractthere has been substantial growth in rates of new car leasing over the last few decades building on recent theoretical research we construct a model of the leasing decision in which leasing mitigates adverse selection and reduces transaction costs but moral hazard limits its use in our model the prevalence of leasing is related to new car reliability which suggests that the recent growth in leasing is at least partly due to improvements in new car reliability we use this model to derive testable implications and then conduct an empirical analysis to investigate whether the operation of the new and used car markets is consistent with the predictions of this theoretical approach our empirical results support the theoretical predictions of our model in particular we provide direct evidence that leasing mitigates adverse selection and that an important factor in the growth in new car leasing rates has indeed been the growth of new car reliability

segmentation of the indian photovoltaic market this paper provides an analytical framework studying the actors networks and institutions and examines the evolution of the indian solar photovoltaic pv market different market segments along the lines of demand and supply of pv equipment i e on the basis of geography end use application subsidy policy and other financing mechanisms are detailed the objective of this effort is to identify segments that require special attention from policy makers donors and the ministry of non conventional energy sources the paper also discusses the evolution of the commercial pv market in certain parts of the country and trends in the maturity of the market

the impact of supply constraints on house prices in england we test the theoretical prediction that house prices respond more strongly to changes in local earnings in places with tight supply constraints using a unique panel dataset of 353 local planning authorities in england between 1974 and 2008 exploiting exogenous variation from a policy reform vote shares and historical density to identify the endogenous constraints measures we find that regulatory constraints have a substantive positive impact on the house price earnings elasticity the effect of constraints due to scarcity of developable land is largely confined to highly urbanised areas and uneven topography has a quantitatively less meaningful impact

neighborhood externality risk and the homeownership status of properties in contrast to corporate and institutional investors single owner occupiers cannot adequately diversify housing investment risk consequently homeownership should be relatively less likely in places with higher housing investment risk using the american housing survey it is documented that neighborhood externality risk a major component of housing investment risk substantially reduces the probability that a housing unit is owner occupied even when controlling for housing type and numerous location and household specific characteristics the effects are quantitatively meaningful and change in change estimates suggest that the effects are causal

the demand for residence site characteristics the analysis of residential site choice is the primary concern in urban economics research on this problem is deficient in that rigorous theoretical models concentrate almost exclusively on access to the central business district cbd in this decision process while empirical models have been specified in a manner that is inconsistent with standard demand theory although these models possess the power of simplicity they are unable to explain the non monotonic location patterns which characterize urban areas without resorting to ad hoc theorizing this article develops and tests a model which is consistent with demand theory and is also capable of explaining non monotonic location patterns the hedonic rent function is seen as an intermediate step in the analysis of location which allows one to construct the complete data matrix necessary for the estimation of a set of demand functions for location specific traits the analytical importance of the functional form of this hedonic function is briefly noted finally the empirical analysis notes the importance of children in determining residential preferences with special attention being directed to the endogeneity of children with respect to the process of residential choice the traditional location model is generally tested by regressing some transformation of the annual rental payments or alternatively property value r on access or lack of access to the city center acc a vector of other locational traits z income i and a race variable mc

measuring the importance of location in house price appreciation abstract this paper examines the variation in the rates of price appreciation within an individual metropolitan market a methodology is developed to examine the locational variation in house price changes in dade county miami florida from 1971 to 1992 house price appreciation appears to be somewhat spatially related that is it varies by municipality with distance from the cbd with local changes in population and housing units and by ethnic mix however these relationships have minimal explanatory power controlling for the census tract group location of each home explains only around 12 of the residual variation in the appreciation of individual homes that is not explained by metropolitan wide changes in house prices the effect of tract group location appears to be dominated by the idiosyncratic influences of individual homes and their immediate environments

residential hedonic models a rational expectations approach to age effects abstract this paper develops a rational expectations framework for interpreting the coefficient on age in a standard hedonic model the model demonstrates that there are two components to the age coefficient a pure cross sectional depreciation component and a demand side component that changes over time we also show that a constant quality price index with age constant can be estimated by using any repeat sales database that contains the year of construction or property age when fairfax county data are fitted to the model the time series of age coefficients is non stationary they change from negative in the early 1980s to positive in the late 1980s we infer that the demand side component dominated in the latter period

the futures price of a commodity in fixed supply abstract this letter shows that in a general equilibrium model of homogeneous population with production risk the futures price of a commodity which is in fixed supply is always below the expected futures spot price e g normal backwardation it also shows that the difference between the futures price and the expected spot price increases as the representative individual s risk aversion rises an important application of this model is to the housing market since houses are in fixed supply in the short run and buying a house is like holding a long position in a forward contract therefore if population is homogeneous houses are not a good consumption hedge and the prices of houses are below their expected rental prices

adjustable and fixed rate mortgages as a screening mechanism for default risk abstract this paper studies how borrowers with different levels of default risk would self select between fixed rate mortgages frms and adjustable rate mortgages arms we show that under asymmetric information where the risk type of a borrower is private information to the borrower and not known by the lender the unique equilibrium may be a separating equilibrium in which the high risk low risk borrowers choose arms frm s thus the borrower s mortgage choice will serve as a signal of default risk enabling lenders to screen high risk and low risk borrowers it is possible for the separating equilibrium to yield positive economic profits for lenders in a competitive market it is also possible to have a unique pooling equilibrium where all borrowers choose either frms or arms the model implies that an increase in the proportion of high risks will increase the likelihood of a separating equilibrium where both mortgage types are offered also a uniform downward shift in the expected change in the interest rate or an increase in borrowers current or future incomes make arms more attractive for both types of borrowers

the normative and positive aspects of the taxation of imputed rent on owner occupied housing received july 1983 revised version received march 1984 1 introduction this paper is concerned with two basic issues associated with the special income tax treatment of owner occupied housing the first is the effect of this policy on resource allocation and in particular on the rate of productive capital accumulation i e capital accumulation which contributes to the increase of the marginal and average product of labor the rate of total capital accumulation productive and residential capital and consequently on the interest rate and the wage rate the second is whether this policy can or cannot be consistent with some notions of optimality the income tax treatment of owner occupied housing is considered in the existing literature to be discriminatory in favoring this type of capital accumulation versus rental housing and productive capital such a discrimin ation is believed to attract resources from the rental housing and productive capital to owner occupied housing and thus to distort resource allocation however the literature is mainly concerned with the impact of the preferen tial treatment of owner occupied housing on income distribution the total loss of welfare and the owner occupied versus the rental market shares see for example laidler 1969 shelton 1970 aaron 1970 white and white 1977 weiss 1978 rosen 1979 and henderson and ioannides 1983 the long run impact of this policy on the allocation of resources between housing and productive capital and on the total supply of capital are only casually analyzed for example although aaron 1970 recognizes the possibility that the tax benefits to homeowners may affect the total supply of savings in his main analysis he assumes that this supply is unaffected by this financial assistance from the foerder institute for economic research is gratafully acknowledged

estimating the consumption and investment demands for housing and their effect on housing tenure status theoretical work suggests that families live in owner occupied housing if their investment demand for housing exceeds their consumption demand for housing using household data from the 1983 survey of consumer finances the authors test this theory by estimating an ordered probit model of whether families rent without owning property rent while owning property other than their home own their home without owning other properties or own their home in addition to other properties for owner occupiers who own additional property both the investment and consumption demands are directly observed enabling the authors to separately identify these functions copyright 1994 by mit press

are private markets and filtering a viable source of low income housing estimates from a repeat income model while filtering has long been considered the primary mechanism by which markets supply low income housing direct estimates of that process have been absent this has contributed to doubts about the viability of markets and to misplaced policy i fill this gap by estimating a repeat income model using 1985 2011 panel data real annual filtering rates are faster for rental housing 2 5 percent than owner occupied 0 5 percent vary inversely with the income elasticity of demand and house price inflation and are sensitive to tenure transitions as homes age for most locations filtering is robust which lends support for housing voucher programs jel r21 r31 r38

precaution and liquidity in the demand for housing we exploit cross sectional mortgage data to investigate the importance of liquidity constraints and a precautionary motive in the demand for housing households that are not liquidity constrained consume housing services essentially as the life cycle hypothesis suggests but with a significant precautionary component households that are liquidity constrained in terms of not meeting standard loan to value or payments to income constraints are similar to unconstrained households in most respects including the precautionary motive but they respond somewhat less to fluctuations in their lifetime income suggesting some influence of bank induced liquidity constraints we additionally find however that banks enforce liquidity constraints only weakly jel d91 d12 r21 i introduction the benchmark theory in the economics of consumption is the life cycle or permanent income hypothesis lcpi based on the work of modigliani and brumberg 1954 and friedman 1957 its empirical validity is sometimes questionable especially when compared against alternatives that incorporate liquidity constraints or the precautionary motive for saving see for instance deaton 1992 for a survey rejection of the lcpi may however be just a manifestation of the poor quality of consumption data at the micro level these data are typically subject to the reporting biases and omissions inherent in consumer surveys there are further difficulties in measuring a desired stream of consumption services nondurable consumption goods are a small fraction of total consumption and in the case of food essentials hardly a consumer choice variable durable consumption goods have the feature that they are lumpy and that the consumption services at any point in time are hard to measure we propose to test the lcpi at the micro level with a quite different type of data the data are obtained from the residential mortgage finance database collected by the national association of realtors they are based on actual home purchases and the associated mortgage transactions reported by realtors and thus avoid some of the reporting biases of the consumer surveys more important they allow us to accurately identify households that in principle have instantaneous access to additional liquidity by lowering the down payment for the house purchase or increasing the size of the loan further the purchase of a house provides an accurate measure of a relatively large fraction of consumption services obtained for a medium to long horizon and measured at the time of the consumption decision although our data also have some serious shortcomings they allow a look at the lcpi from an unconventional vantage point perhaps the most influential study employing the standard consumer survey in testing the lcpi at the micro level is that of hall and mishkin 1982 it examines food expenditure from the panel study of income dynamics one of their key results is that consumption tracks income more closely than would be expected under the lcpi they demonstrate that this result could be explained by assuming a group of liquidity constrained consumers consuming their income at each point in time of 20 of the total sample some of the drawbacks of this study are the use of food expenditures to represent consumption the underreporting of income and absence of proper wealth data inherent in the consumer survey and the associated inability to individually separate liquidity constrained consumers from the rest of the sample several previous studies have attempted to improve on this way of testing the lcpi by examining other data sets bernanke 1984 used data on durable consumption goods automobiles to overcome the drawbacks of using food consumption in the hall and mishkin study his results support the lcpi but are still suspect because of possible reporting biases and the lack of good wealth and savings observations

the dynamic effects of aggregate demand and supply disturbances we interpret fluctuations in gnp and unemployment as due to two types of disturbances disturbances that have a permanent effect on output and disturbances that do not we interpret the first as supply disturbances the second as demand disturbances demand disturbances have a hump shaped mirror image effect on output and unemployment the effect of supply disturbances on output increases steadily over time peaking after two years and reaching a plateau after five years

portfolio choices for homeowners abstract in this paper i show that introducing frictions associated with housing into standard life cycle models can partially resolve the portfolio choice puzzle i calibrate a model in which a representative household endogenously transits from renting to mortgage financed homeownership the household can later adjust housing status either voluntarily or because of a forced move by paying transaction costs it is shown that homeownership crowds out stock market participation risky owner occupied housing substitutes for stocks while bonds provide liquidity young and middle aged households regardless of whether they are currently homeowners hold much less stock than predicted by traditional models without housing

homeownership community interactions and segregation the authors consider a multi community city where community quality is linked to residents civic efforts such as being proactive in preventing crime and ensuring the quality of publicly provided goods homeownership increases incentives for such efforts but credit market imperfections force the poor to rent within community externalities can lead to segregated cities with the rich living with the rich in healthy homeowner communities and the poor living with the poor in dysfunctional renter communities the pattern of tenure segregation across communities in the united states accords well with the study s prediction the authors analyze alternative tax subsidy policies to alleviate inefficiencies in the housing market and identify the winners and losers under such policies

effects of urban transportation system change on land prices in the setting of owner occupied residence abstract the purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of transportation improvement on the land development process and land price structure in an owner occupied residence setting a dynamic model of household and landowner in which the role of land as an asset is explicitly considered is presented and the process of land development and land price change after the announcement of transportation improvement is investigated during the period between the announcement and the completion of urban transportation improvement it is observed that the price of the land that is presently used for agriculture but will be developed in the future is higher than the agricultural land price

security of tenure costly tenants and rent regulation many jurisdictions give residential tenants legislated packages of rights known generically as security of tenure and some protect tenants further by prohibiting unjustified rent increases the paper considers the effects of security of tenure on a competitive rental housing market to illustrate the concepts the paper describes current security of tenure and rent regulation provisions in the province of ontario canada a model of rational behaviour by landlords is then presented in which landlords choose simultaneously a rent for a standard lease and the quality of tenant to be accepted heterogeneity among landlords and tenants and imperfect information are introduced the effect of security of tenure legislation on this behaviour is assessed the paper then considers the difficulty of defining an unjustified rent increase when some tenants are more costly to serve than others and when the landlords have imperfect information about prospective tenants

cross tenure differences in home maintenance and appreciation this paper investigates the relative maintenance levels of owner and renter occupied housing by examining their short and long run appreciation rates we modify the standard repeat sales estimation procedure to test whether owner occupied housing appreciates faster than renter occupied housing this procedure holds constant all structural factors except for aging hence appreciation is estimated net of physical depreciation i e routine aging deficient and deferred maintenance we find only weak evidence to support the notion that long term rates of appreciation and maintenance levels are substantially different between owner and renter occupied housing

the effect of used markets with endogenous replacement of durable goods the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of used asset markets for a particular class of durable goods markets where replacement and trading ages are endogenous and where the imperfect substitutability between new and used goods results from the heterogeneity of buyers durable goods are assumed to be like automobiles the quality of the service declines with the age of the durable but the time at which the durable is traded and replaced with a new one is a choice variable for the owner as in my earlier work on heterogeneous buyers 3 it is assumed that the decline in service value with age is lower for some buyers so that these buyers will specialize in used assets in the presence of used markets however this paper departs from previous work by allowing the retirement age and the age at which goods are traded in the used market to be endogenously determined this extension has important implications because it will be shown that retirement age durability will be affected by the presence of used asset markets this paper examines the question of whether a competitive industry will favor a ban on used markets previous authors 2 6 8 have examined this question in markets where durable goods are like textbooks the used asset markets exist because the length of the demand for services by the purchaser is less than the lifetime of the durable in these models the presence of a used asset market is equivalent to a lengthening of the lifetime of the good however in the model of this paper the opening of a used asset market results in uniformity of the lifetime of the durable good since all of the oldest durables will be held by the user type that places the highest value on old durables this uniform retirement age with the used market will be shown to lie between the retirement ages adopted by the two user types when there are no used markets thus the average age of the stock of durables could rise or fall with the introduction of used markets second the model of this paper allows for the analysis of restrictions on used markets that raise the cost of used market transactions but do not eliminate trading it will be shown that the effects of a per unit tax on used market transactions will differ from that of an ad valorem tax because of the greater incentive created by an ad valorem tax to postpone used market transactions this result is in the spirit of barzel s 1 result that the form of the tax is important because different types of taxes may affect characteristics of the good in different ways in the present context goods

hedonic pricing with redevelopment options a new approach to estimating depreciation effects abstract the standard hedonic model of durable assets is a special case of a more general model that contains two additive terms 1 use value of the existing hedonic vector and 2 the value of the option to reconfigure hedonic characteristics one empirical implication is that the two parts of value are related e g use value increases with interior area whereas option value decreases with intensity the ratio of structure value divided by land value increases in building age reduce use value but increase option value data from greenwich connecticut indicate that intensity has the expected negative effect coefficients on building age are shown to be better measures of depreciation when intensity variables are included in the regression

measuring the external benefits of homeownership abstract the subsidization of homeownership is justified on efficiency grounds only to the extent that it provides benefits to people other than the homeowner we use the clustered neighborhoods subsample in the american housing survey to measure that benefit in the form of higher housing prices in neighborhoods with higher ownership rates and lower vacancies we attempt to account for unobservable neighborhood and house attributes that may be correlated with occupancy and ownership through instrumental variables switching regressions and panel methods estimates indicate that a housing transition from renting to owning creates approximately 1300 in measured benefits

a model of housing in the presence of adjustment costs a structural interpretation of habit persistence building on the model of sanford j grossman and guy laroque 1990 this paper provides a model of household consumption and portfolio allocation which incorporates the role of housing as both a consumption good and as a component of wealth the model captures the following features of the household s problem a utility depends probably nonseparably on two distinct goods nondurable consumption and housing b nondurable consumption can be adjusted cost lessly but housing is subject to an adjustment cost c households face housing price risk in the sense that the relative price of housing varies over time and d in addition to the house the household can invest in a wide variety of financial assets this single reasonably tractable model generates testable implications for portfolio allocation risk aversion asset pricing and the dynamics of nondurable consumption because the original grossman and laroque model considers a utility function in which the durable good is the sole argument and thus abstracts completely from nondurable consump tion their analysis cannot address either the potential spillover effects of the adjustment costs of the durable good on the dynamics of nondurable consumption or the implications for portfolio allocation of housing risk arising from variation in the relative price of housing in addition to generating implications for issues on which the original grossman and laroque model was silent the housing model delivers a strikingly different message concerning asset pricing that is in contrast to the grossman and laroque result that the consumption based capital asset pricing model consumption capm fails the housing model implies that the consumptioncapm holds we assume that the household incurs an adjustment cost when altering the holding of the dura ble good or house although financial assets can be bought and sold costlessly consumption of the nondurable good can also be adjusted costlessly when choosing a new house the consumer takes into account the fact that the consumption of housing services will be constant at the new level until the subsequent stopping time when it is again worthwhile to incur the adjustment cost thus the home purchase decision is endogenous and fully rational but because of the adjustment cost infrequent in this continuous time setting the household s decision process has a recursive structure at each instant the household first decides whether it is optimal to sell the house immediately on those rare occasions that it is optimal to incur the adjustment cost the household sells the old house and buys a new one instantaneously if the household decides that it is not optimal to sell the house immediately it then determines its optimal holdings of financial assets and optimal level of nondurable consumption conditional on the current housing stock in essence because of the adjustment costs associated with the durable good the current

housing and location choices of retiring households evidence from france in this paper a study is made of the mobility and housing choices of the elderly when retiring using household data collected in france from a theoretical viewpoint individuals are likely to decrease their housing quantity because of an income loss when retiring but they may also increase it to benefit from more housing comfort for leisure using the 1992 trois generations survey it is first shown that housing mobility at retirement is substantial in france with a variety of self reported motives then using the 1994 2001 french europanel survey evidence is found of both upsizing and downsizing for mobile recent retirees in many cases housing adjustments lead to a correction of the initial disequilibrium between the number of rooms and the number of occupants however a significant proportion of mobile recent retirees improve the quality of their dwelling

expectations heterogeneous forecast errors and consumption micro evidence from the michigan consumer sentiment surveys the household data underlying the michigan index of consumer sentiment are used to test the rationality of consumer expectations and their usefulness in forecasting expenditure the results can be interpreted as characterizing the shocks that hit different types of households over time expectations are found to be biased and inefficient at least ex post people underestimated the disinflation of the early 1980s and the severity of recent business cycles people s forecast errors are also systematically correlated with their demographic characteristics in part because of time varying group level shocks further sentiment helps forecast consumption growth some of this rejection of the permanent income hypothesis is due to the systematic demographic components in forecast errors

leasing lemons and moral hazard abstract a number of recent papers have analyzed leasing in the new car market as a response to the adverse selection problem in the used car market originally explored in the seminal 1970 paper by george akerlof in this paper we consider a model characterized by both adverse selection as in these earlier papers and moral hazard concerning the maintenance choices of new car drivers we show that this approach provides explanations for a number of empirical findings concerning real world new and used car markets including that leasing has become more popular over time very high income new car drivers lease more and used cars that were leased when new sell for more than used cars that were purchased when new we also compare and contrast our approach to new car leasing with alternative approaches

tenure neutral and equitable housing taxation equity and neutrality are distinct concepts in housing taxation and weak and strong tenure neutrality should be distinguished when a tax system is tested for those criteria the taxes paid by landlords must be included as they affect the rents renters pay this paper defines appropriate tests applies them to a stylised tax system and proposes tax changes designed to restore tenure equity and or neutrality it shows how the homeowner s implicit income should be computed for taxes to be fundamentally tenure neutral or equitable or both it also shows the key role played by the cost differential in producing housing services under owner occupation and renting

what drives aggregate investment evidence from german survey data abstract the ifo investment survey asks firms in the german manufacturing sector about the importance of sales technological factors finance return expectations and macroeconomic policy for their investment activity in a given year we show that these subjective investment determinants 1 capture economically what their labels suggest and 2 have strong explanatory power for aggregate manufacturing investment growth fluctuations in a second step we use these determinants to identify aggregate demand and aggregate technology shocks and argue that the bulk of the variance of both aggregate manufacturing investment and output growth fluctuations as much as approximately two thirds in both cases is explained by aggregate demand shocks consistent with neoclassical views however technological factors are the most important investment determinant on average

effects of homeownership on household savings abstract causal effects of homeownership decisions on the level and composition of household savings accumulation are estimated genuine positive impacts on both total and nonhousing savings as a function of house value chosen are found the findings suggest however that the homeownership decision in conjunction with choice of an average owner occupied house value does not substantially alter the total amount of accumulated household savings

sample selection and biases in local house value indices abstract analysis of cross sectional or intertemporal variations in house values among localities requires reliable house value indices however prior studies applying the hedonic method to transaction data have reported price series that may be biased our paper investigates a possible cause of bias and uses a censored regression technique extended to an intertemporal model to derive an unbiased index we apply our method to 1971 1991 data from the miami florida msa and find evidence in time varying amounts of bias our results suggest that prior studies using the hedonic method and samples consisting only of sold houses have understated the intertemporal variability of house prices

buying a home with a resale value location location location we develop a dynamic multiregion model where a household s choice of housing location depends on its current wealth and its current type and involves both consumption and investment considerations the relative strength of the consumption motive and the investment motive determines the equilibrium pattern of residential sorting a strong investment consumption motive implies sorting according to household type wealth the model predicts that large house price fluctuations are associated with a low degree of sorting by type this prediction is consistent with evidence from us metropolitan areas when income education and age are used as proxies for household type

adverse selection in a model of real estate lending we provide a rationale for the presence of points in mortgage loan contracts our analysis builds on two key features first insurance markets are unavailable for labor income second the due on sale clause allows banks to offer loan contracts which partially insure against fluctuations in labor income if explicit prepayment penalties are prohibited by law points serve effectively as prepayment penalties we also examine environments where such penalties are not prohibited and show that points will be used if interest rates cannot depend on the size of the loan conventional home mortgage contracts contain a vast array of contingent clauses the most controversial of these is the due on sale clause that gives the lender the contractual right to declare the loan fully payable if all or part of the mortgaged property is sold dunn and spatt 1985 argue that the due on sale clause can provide insurance to the borrower they consider an environment where individuals face uninsurable risk in their income if incomes are high when borrowers move they will prefer a contract which imposes a prepayment penalty when they sell their property in return for a subsidy perhaps in the form of lower interest rates when they stay dunn and spatt characterize the optimal contract when the income of borrowers is unobservable to the lender however all borrowers are ex ante identical in this paper we examine a market where individuals differ in the riskiness of their potential gains from selling their property if this information is private to the borrower the kind of insurance arrangement described above must be modified to deal with the obvious selection problems that arise any lender must therefore ensure that any insurance contract offered to individuals with riskier income streams does not offer so much insurance at such a favorable price that individuals with less risky income also accept the same contract the classic analysis of this type of problem is by rothschild and stiglitz 1976 and our analysis follows theirs in order to focus attention on the nature of the adverse selection problem we assume two types of individuals both types have the same expected income stream for simplicity we assume that type i individuals do not

read all about it what happens following a technology shock existing indicators of technical change are plagued by shortcomings i present new measures based on books published in the field of technology that resolve many of these problems and use them to identify the impact of technology shocks on economic activity they are positively linked to changes in r d and scientific knowledge and capture the new technologies commercialization dates changes in information technology are found to be important sources of economic fluctuations in the post wwii period and total factor productivity investment and to a lesser extent labor are all shown to increase following a positive technology shock jel e22 e23 e32 o33 o34 o47

homeownership in the 1980s and 1990s aggregate trends and racial gaps abstract housing policy under the clinton and bush administrations has sought to boost homeownership while also narrowing racial gaps in owner occupancy rates against that backdrop homeownership rose sharply in the 1990s but white minority gaps remain in excess of 25 percentage points we analyze these patterns using data from the 1983 to 2001 survey of consumer finances results indicate that household characteristics explain most of the increase in homeownership and roughly two thirds of the white minority homeownership gap credit barriers account for no more than 5 percentage points of the remaining gap this suggests that policy makers will need to look beyond innovations in mortgage finance if their goal is to further expand homeownership

measuring asset values for cash settlement in derivative markets hedonic repeated measures indices and perpetual futures two proposals are made that may facilitate the creation of derivative market instruments such as futures contracts cash settled based on economic indices the first proposal concerns index number construction indices based on infrequent measurements of nonstandardized items may control for quality change by using a hedonic repeated measures method an index number construction method that follows individual assets or subjects through time and also takes account of measured quality variables the second proposal is to establish markets for perpetual claims on cash flows matching indices of dividends or rents such markets may help us to measure the prices of the assets generating these dividends or rents even when the underlying asset prices are difficult or impossible to observe directly a perpetual futures contract is proposed that would cash settle every day in terms of both the change in the futures price and the dividend or rent index for that day this paper concerns problems in the measurement of asset values or present values problems that if solved may facilitate the creation of new hedging vehicles new cash settled futures options and other derivative financial products the greatest components of world wealth are not hedgeable at all and

two extensive margins of credit and loan to value policies author s gete pedro reher michael abstract we analyze a model of mortgage markets housing tenure choice heterogeneous agents and default with closed form solutions we uncover new insights which may inspire empirical work and we ground already established insights in a series of tractable expressions then we study optimal loan to value ltv regulation and show that the choice of an ltv cap should balance the opposing forces of access to homeownership and the negative externalities associated with default homeownership affordability concerns induce procyclical elements into optimal regulation which attenuate the countercyclical regulation justified by the negative default externalities

are new institutional economics enough promoting photovoltaics in india s agricultural sector solar photovoltaic pv technology can bring emissions free electricity to rural areas without access to the grid currently policymakers are seeking ways to expand markets for off grid pv from solar home systems to productive uses in order to enhance income generation and contribute to social development this paper explores the role of the state in promoting such market growth as a start the state must improve institutions thus echoing popular recommendations based in new institutional economic theory nie that are currently touted by the world bank and other large development agencies yet nie s framework may be insufficient because it fails to offer viable solutions to overcoming political barriers that contribute to technological path dependency a case study in punjab india where an agricultural pv water pumping program showed promising signs of successful market penetration in its first 3 years of operation illustrates how the nie s shortcomings manifest themselves in practice the program was beginning to penetrate market entry for pv pumps via competition between pv providers however the government of india achieved this feat by providing subsidies to wealthy farmers a move that is frowned upon by the nie school based on findings from the case study states should look beyond nie s framework to expand and improve pv markets in productive uses by accounting for political constraints assessing how pv technology can improve development goals and cultivating locally appropriate service delivery models

labor income uncertainty skewness and homeownership a panel data study for germany and spain abstract in this paper we empirically investigate the effect of labor income uncertainty on the probability of homeownership in germany and spain this study is motivated by two facts firstly theoretical models tend to provide ambiguous results on this issue secondly previous empirical evidence focuses exclusively on the us housing market to carry out our analysis we propose more precise income uncertainty measures based on panel data labor income equations we observe that households facing high levels of income uncertainty display a preference for renting while those located in more positively skewed income distributions show a greater propensity for homeownership

housing tenure choice in transitional urban china a multilevel analysis summary using a 1996 national survey of housing in china and a multilevel modelling technique we examine housing tenure choice in transitional urban china where households have been granted limited freedom of choice in the housing market since the housing reforms of 1988 we e nd that both market mechanisms and institutional forces affect households tenure choice in urban china while some socioeconomic factors such as age household size household income and housing price have similar effects on tenure choice as in the west others such as the number of workers and marital status have rather different effects in addition factors characterising institutional relationships among the state work units and households such as hukou job rank and work unit rank still play important roles in tenure choice

an econometric and cultural analysis of rent control in kumasi ghana an empirical analysis of rent control in kumasi ghana is presented based upon a consumer demand model for housing controlled rent to income ratios are exceptionally low for a developing country moreover the asante housing market exhibits unusual cultural attributes and problems in estimating the without rent control situation benefits and costs of rent control are presented by housing types and income levels and distributional impacts assessed

consumption and investment motives in housing wealth accumulation a french study abstract the dual motives of housing behavior consumption and investment make the analysis of housing purchases quite difficult nevertheless it is better to refer to a model that keeps the two dimensional aspect of housing henderson and ioannides am econ rev 73 93 111 1983 in the absence of institutional considerations this model predicts that it is the difference between the investment demand for housing and the consumption demand that explains decisions to purchase dwellings for owner occupation and for renting out we have tested the model on the french data of the survey actifs financiers 1992 results show that the difference between the two demands cannot in itself explain housing purchases transaction costs the tax system the public aid policies for home ownership and other market imperfections are inadequately dealt with moreover estimation and identification of housing demand functions both for consumption and investment tend to show that there are portfolio motives in the factors that determine housing demand for owner occupation french households behave in a different way than u s households for them the difference between the two demands for housing explains behavior and consumption motives dominate primary residence purchase ioannides and rosenthal rev econ statist xx 127 141 1994

does investment risk affect the housing decisions of families i introduction the purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of heightened price volatility in housing markets on homeownership and housing demand the literature on housing markets has recognized that buying a home involves consumption and investment motives as in ranney 1981 henderson and ioannides 1983 and fu 1995 purchasing a home requires a concentrated investment in housing stock that for most families is not easily diversified caplin et al 1997 indeed in 1995 the typical american household had most of its gross assets in real estate and held no corporate equity and only households in the top 10 of the wealth distribution held portfolios that were diversified tracy et al 1999 in 1998 despite strong stock market gains home equity was a dominant investment for most households although roughly two thirds owned their homes less than half of all households held stock of those households owning both stocks and homes 60 had more wealth in home equity than in stocks di 2001 nominal house prices in u s cities have generally risen over time with some cities experiencing periods of steep house price appreciation however homeowners in many cities have been exposed to considerable downside risk according to repeat sales price indexes published by the federal home loan mortgage corporation freddie mac significant one year declines in home prices are not uncommon for example nominal declines of 15 5 and 9 occurred in san antonio in 1985 denver in 1987 and boston in 1990 respectively sustained house price declines have occurred in texas california and the eastern states for example in the long beach los angeles metropolitan area the nominal price of single family homes declined 22 from 1990 to 1996 1 furthermore there is evidence that losses at the time of sale are surprisingly common 2 what is not clearly understood is the extent to which families are responsive to such house price risk the investment literature has demonstrated that risk averse households prefer to hold less risk at a given expected rate of return when house prices are uncertain homeownership and demand relationships depend on the distribution of the random price variable 3 fu 1991 characterizes the price distribution by its first and second moments and shows that the likelihood of homeownersbip and the demand for owner occupied housing are increasing in the expected rate of house price appreciation and decreasing in house price volatility these results do not hold however for liquidity constrained households when households cannot borrow against the expected future gains of housing investment for current consumption the theoretical effects on housing choices of the expected rate of return and house price uncertainty are ambiguous fu 1995 thus the effect of price volatility on housing choices remains to be determined empirically the empirical research on housing markets includes a number of micro level econometric studies on the determinants of homeownership and housing demand these studies provide a framework for the present study and have shown that a household s after tax relative cost of homeownership permanent and transitory income and family composition are important in explaining housing decisions e g see rosen 1979 dynarski and sheffrin 1985 henderson and ioannides 1987 1989 in addition homeownership is negatively impacted by income uncertainty haurin 1991 and by an inability to generate savings for a down payment as in henderson and ioannides 1987 linneman and wachter 1989 haurin et al 1994 and gyourko et al 1999 nevertheless despite the importance of owner occupied housing in the portfolios of homeowners surprisingly little empirical work exists on the housing choices of families in the presence of house price uncertainty rosen et al 1984 provide some empirical evidence on the question of housing choices and risk

working to improve the consumer price index he recent report of the advisory commission appointed by the u s senatefinance committee begins with one overarching recommendation thebls should establish a cost of living index coli as its objective in mea suring consumer prices u s senate 1996 p 2 this seems basically right to us indeed the bls has long said that the cost of living framework guides operationaldecisions about the construction of the index gillingham 1974 u s bureau oflabor statistics 1984 1988 1992 1997a putting things slightly differently if thebls staff or other technical experts knew how to produce a true cost of living indexon a monthly production schedule that would be what we would produce althoughwe have no fundamental disagreement with the commission about what the objec tive of the cpi program ought to be we may disagree to some extent about theapproaches and methods that are appropriate and feasible in working toward thatobjective this is a point to which we will return below our rst purpose in the present paper is to comment on the advisory com mission s report and the recommendations it contains

the social and private micro level consequences of homeownership abstract this paper reviews the literature that describes the micro level economic and social consequences of homeownership we adopt an interdisciplinary approach and include studies from economics sociology geography political science psychology and other disciplines our focus is on the set of consequences of homeownership in developed countries our list of potential outcomes of homeownership includes the impact on household wealth and portfolio choice mobility labor force participation urban structure and segregation home maintenance political and social activities health demographics self esteem and child outcomes there is substantial evidence that homeownership has important effects on some household behaviors and outcomes however we find that much of the past 30 year s literature on consequences of homeowning is deficient from a theoretical or econometric perspective we suggest solutions and identify research gaps present in the literature

surprise surprise measuring firm level investment innovations abstract using the ifo investment survey for the german manufacturing sector we construct a forty year panel of firm level investment innovations surprises we document the cross sectional and time series properties of this panel and our main findings are the cross sectional dispersion of investment surprises is countercyclical as is their average within firm time series volatility and both are highly correlated this justifies in part strategies in the literature to use cross sectional moments for the calibration of heteroscedasticity at the same time the cross sectional dispersion of investment is procyclical suggesting a nonsmooth capital adjustment friction at the micro level there is substantial dispersion in within firm volatility a feature consistent with a recent literature on information frictions at the firm level finally the aforementioned second moments of investment innovations are granger caused by recessions but not vice versa rendering simple exogenous uncertainty shocks less plausible as drivers of business cycles

the impact of rental properties on the value of single family residences abstract this study examines the effects that single family rental properties in a residential neighborhood have on the value of single family residences in that area the analysis blends real estate valuation concepts with evidence found in the housing maintenance literature and urban succession theory to develop testable hypotheses regarding the property specific proximity related and neighborhood wide impacts of rental properties on property values the data used to test the hypotheses include the tenure status of 23 119 single family residences and 1 162 single family sales regression results support all three hypotheses although numerous studies on the value impacts of other externalities have been published this is the first study to examine the separation of property rights the results of this study provide additional insights into housing maintenance and also have implications for neighborhood zoning regulations

the transition to home ownership and the black white wealth gap this paper analyzes differences in the likelihood that black and white families become homeowners by following a sample of black and white renters over time we are able to separately study racial differences in the likelihood of applying for a mortgage and in the likelihood that a mortgage application is accepted although its effect on the race gap in housing transitions is small we find strong evidence that black applicants are almost twice as likely as comparable white households to be rejected even when credit history proxies and measures of household wealth are accounted for we show that the housing transition gap exists primarily because blacks are less likely to apply for mortgages in the first place the analysis suggests that differences in income family structure and in the ability and willingness of parents to provide down payment assistance are the primary reasons for this applications gap we speculate that the portion of the gap that remains unexplained after controlling for income d

the viability of solar photovoltaics abstract this paper summarises the contributions to a special issue of energy policy aiming to assess the viability of solar photovoltaics pvs as a mainstream electricity supply technology for the 21st century it highlights the complex nature of such an assessment in which technical economic environmental social institutional and policy questions all play a part the authors summarise briefly the individual contributions to the special issue and draw out a number of common themes which emerge from them for example the vast physical potential of pvs the environmental and resource advantages of some pv technologies and the fluidity of the market most of the authors accept that the current high costs will fall substantially in the coming decade as a result of improved technologies increased integration into building structures and economies of scale in production in spite of such reassurances energy policy makers still respond to the dilemma of pvs with some hesitancy and prefer to leave its evolution mainly in the hands of the market this paper highlights two clear dangers inherent in this approach firstly that short term cost convergence may not serve long term sustainability goals and secondly that laggards in the race to develop new energy systems may find themselves faced with long term penalties

the impact of mortgage interest rate subsidies on household borrowing abstract the responsiveness of household borrowing to changes in the interest rate is a crucial parameter for assessing public policies aimed at promoting saving we estimate the effect on household borrowing of a reform of a program that subsidized interest rates on mortgages signed by medium and low income households the reform established a ceiling in the price of the house that could be financed with the program first we use triple difference estimators exploiting the fact that the reform should affect most the borrowing behavior of eligible individuals living in high price areas and estimate that the elasticity of the probability getting a loan to the interest rate lies between 2 8 and 1 3 second we document that after the reform the distribution of loan sizes became more concentrated at the discontinuity point of the budget constraint of eligible individuals both findings are consistent with a negative response of household borrowing to increases in interest rates

investment and demand uncertainty this paper investigates the effects of uncertainty on the investment decisions of a sample of italian manufacturing firms using information on the subjective probability distribution of future demand for firms products according to the entrepreneurs the results support the view that uncertainty weakens the response of investment to demand thus slowing down capital accumulation consistent with the predictions of the theory there is considerable heterogeneity in the effect of uncertainty on investment it is stronger for firms that cannot easily reverse investment decisions and for those with substantial market power we show that the negative effect of uncertainty on investment cannot be explained by uncertainty proxying for liquidity constraints

do technology shocks lead to a fall in total hours worked this paper contributes to the debate initiated by gali in 1999 i provide a theory with capital income taxation labor hoarding as well as long run shifts in the social attitudes to the workplace modelled as leisure at the workplace to argue that there are other shocks that may influence labor productivity in the long run i introduce medium run identification and show it to be superior to long run identification or standard short run identification when applied to artificial data with u s data and medium run identification i find the robust result that technology shocks lead to a hump shaped response of total hours worked which is mildly positive following a near zero initial response jel e32 e24 c32 c15 copyright c 2004 the european economic association

on the possibility of credit rationing in the stiglitz weiss model contrary to what is consistently assumed in the literature the return function cannot be hump shaped in the stiglitz weiss 1981 model this has important consequences for the possible occurrence of credit rationing and redlining with a single class of borrowers banks offer credit in two stages demand possibly exceeds supply in stage one but not in stage two with several observationally distinguishable borrower classes the firms in a borrower class are redlined only under circumstances which imply that they would not get credit in a perfect capital market either die rendite funktion kann im stiglitz weiss 1981 modell nicht so wie das in der literatur durchgangig angenommen wird hugelformig sein das hat wichtige implikationen fur die moglichkeit von kreditrationierung einerseits und fur die moglichkeit des ausschlusses ganzer kreditnehmergruppen vom kapitalmarkt andererseits mit nur einer klasse von kreditnehmern erfolgt die kreditvergabe in zwei stufen wahrend auf der ersten stufe eine ubernachfrage vorliegen kann herrscht auf der zweiten stufe marktraumung bei mehreren unterscheidbaren kreditnehmerklassen wird eine klasse nur unter den bedingungen vom kreditmarkt ausgeschlossen bei deren vorliegen sie auch in einem vollkommenen kreditmarkt keinen kredit erhalten wurde

information animal spirits and the meaning of innovations in consumer confidence we show that unexplained innovations in several variables representing survey responses to forwardlooking questions on the michigan survey of consumers have powerful prognostic implications for the future paths of macroeconomic variables we attempt to distinguish the hypothesis that these impulse responses indicate a causal channel from autonomous movements in sentiment to economic outcomes the animal spirits view from the alternative interpretation that the surprise confidence movements summarize information about future economic prospects the information view in natural rate models animal spirits shocks are associated with overshooting of among other variables consumption that attenuates when agents come to grips with their overreaction while information shocks about the long future are followed by gradual movements in macroeconomic variables that are not subsequently reversed in a baseline vector autoregression involving consumption income and confidence the data come down sharply in favor of the information view the impulse responses of consumption and gdp show no tendency to attenuate even after a number of years further confidence innovations have strong implications for labor productivity many quarters into the future in somewhat larger vars with an information block that includes inflation and or stock prices the impulse responses to confidence innovations continue to have the permanent shape that defines information shocks but they are smaller in magnitude we demonstrate that this is due to the fact that both inflation and stock price innovations have prognostic implications for future productivity that are very similar to the implications of innovations in confidence addition of unemployment to the system induces a transitory component that changes the shape of the impulse responses and somewhat weakens the previously airtight case against animal spirits but it does not provide constructive evidence of such effects

hedging house price risk in the presence of lumpy transaction costs abstract this paper presents a life cycle model of housing demand with uncertain house prices and lumpy transaction costs the paper extends the s s methodology to a non stationary discrete time framework with multivariate stochastic price processes this allows the characterization of a self hedging mechanism in an incomplete housing market households use earlier accumulated housing wealth to hedge against future housing cost risk as a result the direction of the effect of price uncertainty on housing demand depends critically on households future housing consumption plans when price uncertainty increases households consume and thereby invest in less housing if they plan to realize the housing wealth gain however they will instead take a larger housing position if they plan to move to a bigger home in a correlated housing market in the future

housing depreciation and aging bias in the consumer price index i use hedonic regression methods to estimate average rental housing physical depreciation for areas of the united states i estimate downward quality bias of the u s consumer price index cpi caused by rental housing physical depreciation and i develop methods to correct the cpi for such aging bias my physical depreciation estimates imply that recent percentage changes in the u s cpi shelter cost indexes are downward biased by 3 to 4 annually such bias is nonnegligible because recent annual changes in the cpi shelter cost indexes have ranged between 3 5 and 6 8 for various regions my results also imply that rent controlled housing has depreciated faster than other rental housing

microeconomic estimates of housing depreciation measuring economic depreciation in residential real estate is important for deepening our understanding of housing market behavior and for assessing a variety of public policies independent estimates of depreciation rates for many metropolitan areas provide a rich data base for analyzing the interaction between structure depreciation and for example suburbanization also public policies such as rent control and tax incentives for construction could be better evaluated and designed with improved estimates of depreciation for example in an attempt to stimulate construction in 1981 congress cut allowable depreciation for tax purposes from something like 30 years to 15 years then in 1986 in response to apparent over building congress raised the depreciation rate back to 27 5 years better estimates of depreciation rates could have contributed to better targeting of incentives a literature survey indicates significant variation in estimates of depreciation rates for residential real estate the variation in reported results seems to be due to differences in the definition of depreciation employed in the models and data used to estimate depreciation rates and in some cases the condition of the real estate market examined at the time of the study a primary objective of this paper is to establish that rates of economic depreciation vary spatially by using the same hedonic model and representative data from each of 59 metropolitan areas we are able to eliminate differences in models and data as the only source of variation in estimated depreciation rates and attribute some of the observed variation to differences in housing markets this paper reports estimates of metropolitan area specific rates of economic depreciation for residential real estate obtained using the hedonic pricing methodology separate h donic equations were estimated for owneroc upied and renter occupied properties for each of 59 metropolitan areas with the exception of variables that identified particular locations within the urban area the same hedonic equation was used to estimate tenure spec f c depreciation rates that is the same hedonic specification was used for each of the 59 metropolitan areas to estimate depreciation rates for owner occupied and for renteroccupied housing we define economic depreciation to be the decline in asset price or shadow price due to aging hulten and wykoff 1981 85 our hedonic equation for renter occupied housing therefore examines how the current market price of the flow of rental housing services varies with dwelling age rents might be expected to change as the flow of housing services decreases as the unit deteriorates the market value of owner occupied residential real estate on the other hand reflects the present value of future housing services as well as current services hence changes in any of the determinants of present value will have a significant impact on the current market value of owner occupied housing

upgrades switching costs and the leverage theory of tying this article investigates the role of product upgrades and consumer switching costs in the tying of complementary products previous analyses have found that a monopolist of one product will not increase its profits and reduce social welfare by tying and leveraging its monopoly position into a complementary market if the initial monopolised product is essential where essential means that all uses of the complementary good require the initial monopolised product we show that this is not true in settings characterised by product upgrades and consumer switching costs we also discuss various extensions including the role of the reversibility of tying

the effects of price risk on housing demand empirical evidence from u s markets this article examines how price risk affects housing demand it identifies two relevant channels a financial risk effect that reduces demand and a hedging effect that increases demand since current homes may hedge future housing costs the latter dominates when hedging incentives are strong namely when the likelihood of moving up the housing ladder is high and the tendency to move across markets is low for households with weak hedging incentives the article finds negative effects of price risk on the timing and size of home purchases but positive effects for households with strong hedging incentives

an analysis of the principal agent problem most analyses of the principal agent problem assume that the principal chooses an incentive scheme to maximize expected utility subject to the agent s utility being at a stationary point an important paper of mirrlees has shown that this approach is generally invalid we present an alternative procedure if the agent s preferences over income lotteries are independent of action we show that the optimal way of implementing an action by the agent can be found by solving a convex programming problem we use this to characterize the optimal incentive scheme and to analyze the determinants of the seriousness of an incentive problem

an energy pricing scheme for the diffusion of decentralized renewable technology investment in developing countries the purpose of this paper is to investigate price support for market penetration of renewable energy in developing nations through a decentralized supply process we integrate the new decentralized energy support renewable premium tariff to analyze impacts of tariff incentives on the diffusion of renewable technology in senegal based on photovoltaic and wind technologies and an assessment of renewable energy resources in senegal an optimization technique is combined with a cash flow analysis to investigate investment decisions in renewable energy sector our findings indicate that this support mechanism could strengthen the sustainable deployment of renewable energy in remote areas of senegal although different payoffs emerged profits associated with a renewable premium tariff are the highest among the set of existing payoffs moreover in analyzing impacts of price incentives on social welfare we show that price tariffing schemes must be strategically scrutinized in order to minimize welfare loss associated with price incentives finally we argue that a sustainable promotion of incentive mechanisms supporting deployment of renewable technology in developing nations should be carried out under reliable institutional structures the additional advantage of the proposed methodology is its ability to integrate different stakeholders producers investors and consumers in the planning process

the demand for housing in spain an endogenous switching regression analysis housing demand in spain has been studied by using data disaggregated into primary and secondary housing demands it is found that demand for both types of housing area indeed related and that they are both considered necessities thus suggesting that their consumption ought to be modelled as a joint decision moreover it is found that traditional determinants of housing demand affect primary and secondary home demands differently these differences are attributable to the following economic rationales need for asset holdings diversifications relative high cost of home ownership versus rental in choice locations and differences in land demand intensity across regions in sum the findings suggest that policy makers in spain contrary to popular beliefs must consider secondary homes an integral part of households accommodation need

explaining the spatial variation in homeownership rates results for german regions lerbs o w and oberst c a explaining the spatial variation in homeownership rates results for german regions regional studies this paper employs cross sectional data on ninety six german regions to investigate the interregional variability of homeownership rates among the explanatory variables the analysis includes important regional housing market indicators as well as regional socio demographic composition urbanization and labour market performance an estimation strategy is chosen which accounts for different forms of spatial dependence between the regional units it is found that regional differences in the relative price of owning versus renting and the affordability of owner occupied housing play a key role in explaining why homeownership rates vary so substantially across the country the results indicate significant neighbourhood effects for several variables

the relation between financial and housing wealth evidence from dutch households abstract we analyze households joint investment decisions for financial wealth and homes we use a bivariate censored regression model with endogenous switching fixed costs or transaction costs are captured by an unobserved nonzero censoring threshold the model allows for spillover effects of a binding threshold for one asset on the demand for the other asset we find that tenure choice affects the level of financial wealth our results do not support the view that people first accumulate financial wealth before acquiring homes this can be due to the absence of down payment constraints in the netherlands

residential solar photovoltaic market stimulation japanese and australian lessons for canada canada is a leading electricity consumer yet lags behind other industrial countries 14th out of 20 reporting iea countries in the installation of solar photovoltaic systems the factors environmental benefits health benefits network benefits need for new production capacity etc promoting solar or other renewable sources of electricity in other countries are also present in canada but effective policy mechanisms to stimulate canada s photovoltaic industry are only starting to appear discussions of policy options focused initially on renewable portfolio standards and then on feed in tariffs this paper reviews the japanese and australian experience with capital incentives to stimulate the residential market for photovoltaics it demonstrates the ability of a market sensitive program to stimulate industrial growth achieve unit cost reductions and shift the market to include a large grid tied share residential respondents to surveys report high costs as their primary barrier to installing photovoltaic systems and state a strong preference for capital incentives to reduce their investment costs the canadian government needs a market stimulation policy if it is to join those countries where a decentralized photovoltaic generation system strengthens the electricity supply system a balanced solar energy market stimulation program is proposed that combines a feed in tariff with a declining capital incentive