TY - JOUR
T1 - Homeownership, housing capital gains and self-employment
AU - Harding, John P.
AU - Rosenthal, Stuart S.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2017/5/1
Y1 - 2017/5/1
N2 - This paper measures the impact of individual-level housing capital gains on transitions into and out of self-employment. Drawing on special features of the 1985–2013 American Housing Survey (AHS) panel, our most robust models control for recent expenditures on home maintenance, MSA-by-year fixed effects, lagged proxies for wealth and other household attributes. Net of home maintenance, a 20% real increase in home value over a two-year period raises the likelihood of entry into self-employment by roughly 1.5 percentage points; housing capital losses have little effect on exits. Controlling for house fixed effects, self-employed homeowners are also more likely to hold a HELOC, facilitating easy, low-cost access to home equity that could be used to cover business expenses. These and other estimates suggest that links between homeownership and self-employment are strong enough to be important when home prices are rising rapidly, but modest when housing capital gains are limited or negative.
AB - This paper measures the impact of individual-level housing capital gains on transitions into and out of self-employment. Drawing on special features of the 1985–2013 American Housing Survey (AHS) panel, our most robust models control for recent expenditures on home maintenance, MSA-by-year fixed effects, lagged proxies for wealth and other household attributes. Net of home maintenance, a 20% real increase in home value over a two-year period raises the likelihood of entry into self-employment by roughly 1.5 percentage points; housing capital losses have little effect on exits. Controlling for house fixed effects, self-employed homeowners are also more likely to hold a HELOC, facilitating easy, low-cost access to home equity that could be used to cover business expenses. These and other estimates suggest that links between homeownership and self-employment are strong enough to be important when home prices are rising rapidly, but modest when housing capital gains are limited or negative.
KW - Homeownership
KW - Housing capital gains
KW - Mortgage
KW - Self-employment
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jue.2016.12.005
DO - 10.1016/j.jue.2016.12.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85014473484
SN - 0094-1190
VL - 99
SP - 120
EP - 135
JO - Journal of Urban Economics
JF - Journal of Urban Economics
ER -