Christian Hilber

• Professor of Economic Geography at London School of Economics and Political Science

We hypothesize that as the distance of a residential move increases, the amount and quality of information collected on the destination housing market fall. This in turn increases the chances of making an ill-informed housing purchase decision, thus reducing the likelihood of such a purchase. Using data from the Survey of English Housing from 1993...

We explore the effects of local economic conditions on the type and size of newly constructed housing units in a city. Exploiting the 1984–2004 metro area samples of the American Housing Survey and US Census building permit data from 1980 to 2018, we find that positive local income shocks (i) increase a city’s share of multi-family housing in new c...

We investigate how political backlash against wealthy second home investors in high natural amenity places affects local residents. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment: the ‘Swiss Second Home Initiative’, which banned the construction of new second homes in desirable seasonal tourist locations. Consistent with our model, we find that the ban subs...

We explore the impact of historic preservation policies on domestic energy consumption. Using panel data for England from 2006 to 2013 and employing a fixed effects strategy, we document that (i) rising national energy prices induce an increase in home energy efficiency installations and a corresponding reduction in energy consumption and (ii) this...

Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel untersucht die Auswirkungen von Angebotsbeschränkungen auf die Wachstumsrate und Zyklizität von Immobilienpreisen. Einfache Überlegungen zum Zusammenspiel von Angebot und Nachfrage lassen vermuten, dass Immobilienpreise dort stärker auf lokale Nachfrageschocks reagieren, wo es stärkere Bodennutzungsregulierungen und g...

Dieser Artikel untersucht die Auswirkungen von Angebotsbeschränkungen auf die Wachstumsrate und Zyklizität von Immobilienpreisen. Einfache Überlegungen zum Zusammenspiel von Angebot und Nachfrage lassen vermuten, dass Immobilienpreise dort stärker auf lokale Nachfrageschocks reagieren, wo es stärkere Bodennutzungsregulierungen und geografische Barr...

This article provides the introduction to the special issue on ‘Housing in Europe: a different continent – a continent of differences’ in the Journal of Housing Economics in 2018. Europe is a large continent with a long and rich history, consisting of around 50 countries with vastly different institutional settings and government policies for housi...

We often talk about 'Town Centres' (TCs), but defining their location and extent is surprisingly difficult. Their boundaries are hard to pin down and intrinsically fuzzy. Nevertheless, policymakers often speak or act as if their definition was self-evident. The Dutch and later the British governments, for example, introduced very specific policies...

We often talk about ‘Town Centres’, but defining their location and extent is surprisingly difficult. Their boundaries are hard to pin down and intrinsically fuzzy. Nevertheless, policy makers often speak or act as if their definition was self-evident. The Dutch and later the British governments, for example, introduced very specific policies for t...

This article explores the role of institutional settings in determining spatial variation in urban sprawl across Europe. We first synthesize the emerging literature that links land use policies and local fiscal incentives to urban sprawl. Next, we compile a panel dataset on various measures of urban sprawl for European countries using high-resoluti...

We investigate the impact of land use regulation on housing vacancy rates. Using a 30-year panel dataset on land use regulation for 350 English Local Authorities (LAs) and addressing potential reverse causation and other endogeneity concerns, we find that tighter local planning constraints increase local housing vacancy rates: a one standard deviat...

We study the link between mortgage debt and entrepreneurship using a model of occupational choice and housing tenure in a setting where loans are recourse—like in the UK and several US states. Our model shows that as long as the mortgage interest rate exceeds the risk-free rate: (i) mortgage debt diminishes the likelihood of entrepreneurship by amp...

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) – a transfer tax on the purchase price of property or land – on different types of household mobility using micro data. Exploiting a discontinuity in the tax schedule, we isolate the impact of the tax from other determinants of mobility. We compare homeowners with self-assessed house value...

We provide an analysis of the housing market and current housing policies in three developed countries: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the United States. We focus on these three countries mainly because of the marked differences in their institutional settings. The United Kingdom is characterized by fiscal centralization and an extraordinaril...

In this article I argue that the extent to which fiscal variables are capitalized into house prices has important economic implications. I synthesize an emerging literature that explores the conditions under which public and private investments and intergovernmental transfers are capitalized into local house prices and the broader implications of s...

We study the link between mortgage debt and entrepreneurship using a model of occupational choice and housing tenure in a setting where loans are recourse|like in the UK and several US states. Our model shows that as long as the mortgage interest rate exceeds the risk-free rate: (i) mortgage debt diminishes the likelihood of entrepreneurship by amp...

We use store-specific data for a UK supermarket chain to estimate the impact of planning on store output. Exploiting the variation in policies between England and other UK countries, we isolate the impact of Town Centre First (TCF) policies introduced in England. We find they directly reduced output by forcing stores onto less productive sites. We...

We present a modified open monocentric city model that assumes that land is available for conversion into new housing throughout the city. The model predicts that positive local income shocks (i) increase the city’s share of multi-family housing in new construction and (ii) lead to the construction of smaller units. We exploit the metro area sample...

We present a modified open monocentric city model that assumes that land is available for conversion into new housing throughout the city. The model predicts that positive local income shocks (i) increase the city’s share of multi-family housing in new construction and (ii) lead to the construction of smaller units. We exploit the metro area sample...

This paper examines the impact of the combined U.S. state and federal mortgage interest deduction (MID) on homeownership attainment, using data from 1984 to 2007 and exploiting variation in the subsidy across states, over time and due to inter-state moves. We test whether capitalization of the MID into house prices offsets the positive effect on ho...

We hypothesize that as the distance of a residential move increases, the cost of collecting information on the destination housing market rises, the amount and quality of information collected fall, and the chances of making an ill-informed housing purchase decision increases, reducing the likelihood of such a purchase. Since owning relative to ren...

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on household mobility using micro data. Exploiting a discontinuity in the tax schedule as a quasi-experimental setting, we isolate the impact of the stamp duty from other determinants of mobility. We compare homeowners with self-assessed house values on either sides of a cut-off value where the t...

We test the theoretical prediction that house prices respond more strongly to changes in local earnings in places with tight supply constraints using a unique panel dataset of 353 Local Planning Authorities in England ranging from 1974 to 2008. Exploiting exogenous variation from a policy reform, vote shares and historical density to identify the e...

We use store-specific data for a UK supermarket chain to estimate the impact of planning on store output. Exploiting the variation in policies between England and other UK countries, we isolate the impact of Town Centre First (TCF) policies introduced in England. We find they directly reduced output by forcing stores onto less productive sites. We...

We explore the impact of central government grants on local house prices in England using a panel data set of local authorities (LAs) from 2001 to 2008. Electoral targeting of grants to LAs by the incumbent national government provides an exogenous source of variation in grants that we exploit to identify their causal effect on house prices. Our re...

The restrictions that planning policies impose on retail development have significantly reduced the productivity of supermarkets, according to Paul Cheshire and colleagues.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Henry Overman and seminar participants at the "PhD in Economic Geography" work-in-progress meetings for their helpful comments and suggestions. We are responsible for any errors or omissions.

House price capitalization - the adjustment of house prices to changes in local public service and tax levels - has long been thought to be a means of testing for efficiency in the local public sector. In this article I argue that the extent of house price capitalization itself may have important economic implications. In doing so I synthesize an e...

Onderzoek naar uitkeringen van de Britse overheid aan Local Authorities (LA’s), vergelijkbaar met de algemene en doeluitkeringen aan de Nederlandse gemeenten, wijst uit dat extra geld van het Rijk leidt tot hogere woningprijzen. Zo kan steun aan probleemgebieden uiteindelijk terechtkomen bij grondeigenaren.

Few studies conceive of land as a productive factor but British land use policies may lower total factor productivity (TFP) in the retailing industry by (i) restricting the total availability of land for retail, thereby increasing space costs (ii) directly limiting store size and (iii) concentrating retail development on specific central locations....

Retailing is a sizable sector of the economy – on a reasonable measure of employment the second largest industry in the UK. Land use policies in the UK have the effect of restricting the availability of land for retail; in addition 'town-centre-first' policy are designed to concentrate retail development on expensive central land and so increases t...

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints benefit the former group (via increasing property prices) but hurt the latter (via increasing development costs). More desirable locations are more developed and, as a consequence of p...

Office space in Britain is the most expensive in the world and regulatory constraints are the obvious explanation. We estimate the 'regulatory tax' for 14 British and 8 continental European office locations. The values for Britain are substantially greater than elsewhere. Exploiting panel data, we provide strong support for our hypothesis that the...

HILBER C. A. L. and VOICU I. Agglomeration economies and the location of foreign direct investment: empirical evidence from Romania, Regional Studies. The large inflow of foreign direct investment into Romania, after the revolution in 1989, is exploited to study the determinants of foreign direct investment location in transition economies. Using a...

This paper examines the role of local housing supply conditions for social capital investment. Using an instrumental variables approach and data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, it is documented that the positive link between homeownership and individual social capital investment is largely confined to more built-up neighborhoods...

African Americans in the United States are considerably less likely to own their homes compared to Whites. Differences in household income and other socio-economic and demographic characteristics can only partially explain this gap and previous studies suggest that the ‘unexplained’ gap has increased over time. In this paper we use the Panel Study...

This paper examines the role of local housing market conditions for social capital accumulation and neighborhood club good provision. A model of individual investment decisions predicts that in a setting with high property transaction costs (i) homeowners are more likely to invest in social capital than renters and (ii) the positive link between ho...

Dieser Beitrag diskutiert den Einfluss von Boden- und Immobilienpreisen auf das Verhalten von Anbietern und Nachfragern auf den entsprechenden Märkten. Aus theoretischer Sicht ist zwar klar, dass Preisanstiege das Angebot positiv und die Nachfrage negativ beeinflussen; wie sensitiv kurz-, mittel- und langfristig Angebot und Nachfrage auf Preisänder...

This paper exploits the panel structure of the ECHP micro data and uses fixed effects-specifications to identify the main determinants of equilibrium housing tenure outcomes across Europe between 1994 and 2001. The accommodation type which affects both the relative supply of and demand for owner-occupied housing has the strongest impact. Holding oc...

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints are interpreted as shadow taxes that increase the land rent of already developed plots and reduce the amount of new housing developments. In general equilibrium, locations with nicer a...

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints are interpreted as shadow taxes that increase the land rent of already developed plots and reduce the amount of new housing developments. In general equilibrium, locations with nicer a...

How important are agglomeration economies for the location of foreign manufacturing plants? We investigate this question by combining innovations from previous studies and by taking advantage of a quasi-experimental setting: the political and economic transition in Romania. The recent, sudden and sustained influx of foreign investors into Romania p...

We revisit and test Salop and Stiglitz (1982) Theory of Sales. Equilibrium comparative static predictions are that greater consumer storage constraints lead to: (1) higher average prices, (2) fewer promotions, and (3) shallower promotions. In equilibrium, price dispersion is nonlinear in storage constraints, first increasing then decreasing. Empiri...

In contrast to corporate and institutional investors, single owner-occupiers cannot adequately diversify housing investment risk. Consequently, homeownership should be relatively less likely in places with higher housing investment risk. Using the American Housing Survey, it is documented that neighborhood externality risk, a major component of hou...

While residents receive similar benefits from many local government programs, only about one-third of all households have children in public schools. We argue that capitalization of school spending into house prices can encourage residents to support spending on schools, even if the residents themselves will never have children in schools. We ident...

We revisit and test Salop and Stiglitz (1982) Theory of Sales. Equilibrium predictions are that higher consumer storage costs lead to: (1) higher average prices, (2) fewer promotions, and (3) shallower promotions. Empirical estimates of storage cost are developed for approximately 1,000 households using the American Housing Survey (1989), United St...

Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs 2004 (2004) 107-148 The share of elderly households is expected to grow strongly in the United States during the next decades. Conventional wisdom, supported by recent research, suggests that spending on local public schools may decline in real terms as a growing percentage of elderly voters becomes more in...

While residents receive similar benefits from many local government programs, only about one-third of all households have children in public schools. We argue that capitalization of school spending into house prices can encourage even childless residents to support spending on schools. We identify a proxy for the extent of capitalization—the supply...

Many researchers have noted that house prices reflect the capitalized value of local public services and amenities on house prices, but few empirical papers link the extent of house price capitalization to local spending decisions. In this paper we show that the causality indeed runs in both directions; in particular, local spending is higher in pl...

Attractiveness of locations, property values, and rents.

Umweltpolitische Massnahmen haben immer auch Verteilungswirkungen zur Folge. Die Kosten müssen von bestimmten Gruppen getragen werden und die Nutzen der verbesserten Umweltqualität sind (je nach Abgrenzung der betrachteten Gruppen) nicht gleichmässig verteilt. Verteilungsanalysen identifizieren Gewinner und Verlierer in der Umweltpolitik und erlaub...

Lenkungsabgaben im Umweltschutz werden von den Ökonomen seit geraumer Zeit vehement gefordert. Im Vergleich zu polizeirechtlichen Verbots- und Auflagenlösungen können bei Lenkungsabgaben die unterschiedlichen Grenzvermeidungskosten berücksichtigt werden. Unabhängig davon, ob die vollständige Internalisierungsstragie (Internalisierung der externen K...

Auf dem höchsten politischen Parkett werden Begriffe wie Öko-Effizienz (eco-efficiency) und nachhaltige Entwicklung (sustainable development) herumgereicht, während sich die Umweltbehörden mit detaillierten Grenzwerten zu einer Vielzahl einzelner Umwelteinwirkungen befassen. Effizienter Umweltschutz erfordert eine Verbindung dieser «Welten» sowie d...

Politische Gebietskörperschaften sind i.d.R. entweder deutlich grösser (z.B. bei lokalen Umweltproblemen) oder kleiner (z.B. bezüglich des Treibhauseffekts) als die räumliche Ausdehnung von Umweltproblemen. Die grossen Gebietskörperschaften, die über geeignete Möglichkeiten und Mittel zur Lösung verfügen würden, sind von den Umweltproblemen häufig...

Eine moderne Umweltpolitik erfordert, dass diejenigen Instrumente eingesetzt werden, die mit gegebenen Kosten eine möglichst grosse Reduktion der Schadschöpfung (oder mit möglichst geringen Kosten eine vorgegebene Reduktion der Schadschöpfung) bewirken. Hierzu müssen mit Kostenwirksamkeitsanalysen die verschiedenen umweltpolitischen Instrumente unt...

Der Emissions-Zertifikatshandel sowie verwandte Formen der Regulierung (Bubble Policy, Netting, Offset-Policy, Emissions Banking usw.) entsprechen weitgehend der Idealvorstellung des marktwirtschaftlichen Umweltschutzes. Dabei dürfen Unternehmungen nur dann den regulierten Schadstoff (z.B. SO2) emittieren, wenn sie über entsprechende Emissionszerti...

Ein wesentlicher Schritt zur Revitalisierung der staatlichen Umweltpolitik ist die Einführung von Managementinstrumenten in Politik und Verwaltung. Zentrales Führungsinstrument in der Privatwirtschaft ist das Controlling. Es gibt keinen Grund, weshalb dieses erfolgreich angewandte Instrument nicht auch auf staatlicher Ebene eingesetzt werden sollte...

Sollen umweltpolitische Instrumente problemorientiert eingesetzt werden, so sind Informationen notwendig, die die Wechselbeziehung zwischen ökonomischem Handeln und den damit verbundenen ökonomischen und ökologischen Folgen dokumentieren. Weil die traditionellen ökonomischen Erfassungsinstrumente wie die Volkswirtschaftliche Gesamtrechnung dazu nic...

Mit dem Konzept des New Public Environmental Management (NPEM) werden die bisher diskutierten Methoden innovativen Managements staatlicher Umweltpolitik mit dem Ansatz des New Public Management (NPM) verbunden und zu einem strategischen Programm für die Politik und Verwaltung entwickelt. Mit dem NPEM wird postuliert, dass die Behörden die staatlich...

We explore the impact of central government grants on local house prices in England using a panel data set of local authorities (LAs) from 2001 to 2008.Electoral targeting of grants to LAs by the incumbent national government provides an exogenous source of variation in grants that we exploit to identify their causal effect on house prices. Our res...

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on household mobility using micro data. Exploiting a discontinuity in the tax schedule as a quasi-experimental setting, we isolate the impact of the stamp duty from other determinants of mobility. Our empirical strategy essentially compares similar households with self-assessed house values on ei...

We study the link between homeownership and entrepreneurship by exploiting the longitudinal dimension of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and constructing a detailed monthly-spell dataset that tracks individuals‟ job history and tenure choice, coupled with other time-varying characteristics. Our fixed-effects estimates show that purchasing...

Homeowners have incentives to control and limit local land development and anecdotic evidence suggests that ‘homevoters’ indeed actively support restrictive measures. Yet, US metro area level homeownership rates are strongly negatively related to corresponding measures of the restrictiveness of land use regulation. To shed light on these seemingly...