Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/46528 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 3371
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
In a number of papers A.J. Oswald (1996, 1997) argues that high rates of home ownership may imply inferior labour market outcomes. This paper tests the Oswald hypothesis in a panel of 42 Belgian districts since the 1970s. The use of data going back to 1970 allows us to embed the Oswald hypothesis in a broader model including other key determinants of employment like labour costs and productivity, the skill level of the population, and demography. Considering that ownership may be endogenous to (shocks in) employment, we use IV estimation methods. Overall, we find evidence in favour of the Oswald hypothesis. We observe that a 1 percentage point rise in the rate of home ownership in a district implies a statistically significant fall in the employment rate by about 0.3 percentage points. Our results underscore the importance of including other determinants of employment, of controlling for unobserved fixed regional and time effects, and of appropriately dealing with endogeneity. Disregarding these issues, as is often done in the macro labour literature, may imply very different estimation results. Additional estimation reveals that the size of the Oswald effect falls in the fraction of high skilled in a district.
Subjects: 
employment
home ownership
Oswald hypothesis
Belgian regions
panel data
JEL: 
E24
J61
J64
R23
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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