Conference Agenda

This paper investigates the causal effect of parental homeownership on children’s housing outcomes. We employ a quasi-experimental approach utilizing Stockholm’s Right-to-Buy (RTB) policy, which created exogenous variation in homeownership among otherwise similar individuals. Leveraging comprehensive, longitudinal administrative microdata, we match residents of municipal rentals converted into tenant-owner cooperatives with similar residents in nearby non-converted properties. We find that children whose parents transitioned from renting to owning are significantly more likely to own a home themselves in both the short and long run. Furthermore, these young adults were more likely to reside in neighborhoods with higher average income and education levels than their untreated counterparts. Our results provide evidence of a strong intergenerational transmission of housing tenure driven by exogenous shifts in parental ownership.

We document patterns of inequality in housing prices and rents housing since 1930, using Census data. First, housing inequality fell from 1930 to 1970 and rose thereafter, with a sharper fall and gentler rise than income inequality. Second, home-ownership rose considerably when inequality fell, but stayed steady when it grew. Third, the fall in housing inequality was most pronounced at the lower end, as the cheapest units without water or electricity disappeared. Fourth, the post-1970 rise was driven more by owner-occupied than rented units. Fifth, rising inequality is explained more by growing spatial differences across neighborhoods than by changing structural characteristics.

This paper studies the United Kingdom's 2020-21 Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) holiday, which unexpectedly eliminated tax liability for most transactions. Using universe-level administrative data on property transfers and SDLT receipts, combined with local-authority-level measures of exposure based on pre-reform price distributions, we implement a difference-in-differences event-study design. The holiday increased transactions by about 18 percent, with around 37 percent of the tax cut capitalized into higher prices. We estimate a fiscal cost of \pounds1.6 billion (25\% of revenue) during the relief period -- with no persistent effect once the policy expired. Distributional effects were regressive: upper-middle-income households (income deciles 7--9) captured net gains of around 10 percent of annual income, while first-time and lower-income buyers benefited only marginally. Linking transactions to buyer wealth, we show that SDLT operates as a de facto regressive wealth tax that falls disproportionately on younger, middle-wealth cohorts rather than on the wealthiest households.

We examine the effects of a property transaction tax and stamp duty exemption for first-time home-buyers below 35 years old in Portugal. Leveraging administrative records covering the universe of real estate transactions merged with personal income tax records, we exploit discontinuities in the policy design to document the effects on the number of transactions and house prices. Our findings indicate that the tax exemption resulted in substantial compositional shifts in the age distribution of buyers immediately following the policy’s introduction, driven by an increase of 31% in house purchases by eligible buyers. While the prices of properties bought by young eligible buyers remained stable, we find evidence of negative spillover effects for older non-eligible buyers, with an increase of 5% in house prices in the post-reform period. We further analyze the role of income in shaping house-buying decisions and the likelihood of moving as a consequence of the tax exemption.