Arbeitspapier

Distributional effects of surging housing costs under Schwabe's Law

The upward sloping trend of rents and house prices has initiated a debate on the consequences of surging housing costs for wealth inequality and welfare. We employ a frictionless two-sectoral macroeconomic model with a housing sector to investigate the dynamics of wealth inequality and the determinants of welfare. Households have non-homothetic preferences, implying that the poor choose a higher housing expenditure share, which is compatible with Schwabe’s Law. We first examine the isolated effects of increasing housing costs in partial equilibrium. The model is closed by introducing a production sector that enables us to analyze the general equilibrium consequences of a widely discussed policy option, which aims at dampening the growth of housing costs. Abolishing zoning regulations triggers a slower rent growth and reduces wealth inequality by 0.7 percentage points (measured by the top 10 percent share). Average welfare increases by 0.5 percent. The household-specific welfare effects are asymmetric. The poor benefit more than the rich, and the richest wealth decile is even worse off.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 7684

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
General Aggregative Models: General
Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy: General (includes Measurement and Data)
Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity: General
Thema
macroeconomics and housing
long-term growth
Schwabe’s Law
wealth inequality
welfare

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Grossmann, Volker
Larin, Benjamin
Löfflad, Hans Torben
Steger, Thomas
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
(wo)
Munich
(wann)
2019

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Grossmann, Volker
  • Larin, Benjamin
  • Löfflad, Hans Torben
  • Steger, Thomas
  • Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)

Entstanden

  • 2019

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