Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/176552 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
cege Discussion Papers No. 344
Publisher: 
University of Göttingen, Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research (cege), Göttingen
Abstract: 
There is empirical evidence that households use residential houses as status goods. In particular, people are shown to compare their houses with those at the top of the distribution. In this paper, we introduce a residential housing sector and status concerns for housing into a neoclassical model with heterogeneous agents. We find that status concerns exert a negative externality and calculate a progressive Pigovian tax schedule that corrects for the externality, implying a housing tax for rich households of 4.6%. Implementing the tax schedule is associated with a sizable welfare gain. We also find that when the utilitarian social planner is constrained to housing taxes, Pigovian taxation is not constrained efficient. Further increasing the tax for rich households to 7.9% would maximize welfare in the constrained optimum.
Subjects: 
Status Concerns
Residential Housing
Pigovian Tax
Constrained Efficiency
JEL: 
E03
O10
D10
H21
R31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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