Income Taxes, Sorting, and the Costs of Housing: Evidence from Municipal Boundaries in Switzerland

Basten, Christoph; v. Ehrlich, Maximilian; Lassmann, Andrea (2017). Income Taxes, Sorting, and the Costs of Housing: Evidence from Municipal Boundaries in Switzerland. The economic journal, 127(601), pp. 653-687. Wiley 10.1111/ecoj.12489

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We provide novel evidence on the role of income taxes for housing rents and spatial sorting. Drawing on comprehensive micro-level data, we estimate the responsiveness of households to tax differentials across municipal boundaries. Correcting for unobservable location characteristics and isolating the residential sorting component, we identify an income tax elasticity of rents of about −0.27 to −0.35. In line with non-homothetic preferences, we find that the marginal willingness to pay for lower taxes increases with income. Counterfactual calculations show how an homogenisation of taxes across jurisdictions and an increase in variation of taxes affect rents and income stratification across space.

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