Home Ownership and Unemployment: A Panel Data Study on Australia
(2014) NEKN05 20141Department of Economics
- Abstract
- Home ownership has for long been welcomed and subsidized across most Western countries. Earlier macro studies on the linkages between home ownership rates and unemployment rates have shown a fairly strong support of the Oswald hypothesis. However, these results have been contradicted by micro level evidence on the topic. In this paper the Oswald hypothesis will be analysed by conducting a panel data study on Australia. Earlier methodological issues of endogenous home ownership rates will be reduced by using instrumental variables methods to partly control for the issues that have shed doubt in earlier findings. The obtained results are in support of the Oswald hypothesis, and indicate that a 1 % increase in home ownership rates are... (More)
- Home ownership has for long been welcomed and subsidized across most Western countries. Earlier macro studies on the linkages between home ownership rates and unemployment rates have shown a fairly strong support of the Oswald hypothesis. However, these results have been contradicted by micro level evidence on the topic. In this paper the Oswald hypothesis will be analysed by conducting a panel data study on Australia. Earlier methodological issues of endogenous home ownership rates will be reduced by using instrumental variables methods to partly control for the issues that have shed doubt in earlier findings. The obtained results are in support of the Oswald hypothesis, and indicate that a 1 % increase in home ownership rates are followed by an increase of 0.1 - 0.3 % in unemployment rates. The paper also finds evidence of a strong link between trade union membership rates and unemployment rates. The results implicate that a 1 % increase in the trade union membership rate is followed by a 0.15 - 0.25 % increase in unemployment rates. No matter what mechanisms lie behind the findings it is sufficing to say that economies benefit from a highly mobile workforce and that housing markets that are not flexible enough will prevent workers’ to be mobile and move to where the jobs are. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/4460833
- author
- Nguyen, Kerstin LU and Nilsson, Anton LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- NEKN05 20141
- year
- 2014
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- the Oswald hypothesis, home ownership, unemployment, panel data, Australia
- language
- English
- id
- 4460833
- date added to LUP
- 2014-06-26 15:02:37
- date last changed
- 2014-06-26 15:02:37
@misc{4460833,
abstract = {{Home ownership has for long been welcomed and subsidized across most Western countries. Earlier macro studies on the linkages between home ownership rates and unemployment rates have shown a fairly strong support of the Oswald hypothesis. However, these results have been contradicted by micro level evidence on the topic. In this paper the Oswald hypothesis will be analysed by conducting a panel data study on Australia. Earlier methodological issues of endogenous home ownership rates will be reduced by using instrumental variables methods to partly control for the issues that have shed doubt in earlier findings. The obtained results are in support of the Oswald hypothesis, and indicate that a 1 % increase in home ownership rates are followed by an increase of 0.1 - 0.3 % in unemployment rates. The paper also finds evidence of a strong link between trade union membership rates and unemployment rates. The results implicate that a 1 % increase in the trade union membership rate is followed by a 0.15 - 0.25 % increase in unemployment rates. No matter what mechanisms lie behind the findings it is sufficing to say that economies benefit from a highly mobile workforce and that housing markets that are not flexible enough will prevent workers’ to be mobile and move to where the jobs are.}},
author = {{Nguyen, Kerstin and Nilsson, Anton}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Home Ownership and Unemployment: A Panel Data Study on Australia}},
year = {{2014}},
}