TY  - UNPB
ID  - eprints1484
EP  - 41
T2  - XXV National Conference of Labour Economics
M2  - Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano
A1  - Morescalchi, Andrea
N2  - This paper attempts to reconcile the empirical evidence with the argument in favour of a positive effect of homeownership on exit rates from unemployment, known as \Oswald's thesis". While the theory would suggest that
homeowners experience more difficulties than renters to exit unemployment due to lower residential mobility, the empirical literature has typically found lower unemployed duration for homeowners. Taking into account some of
the reasons for the falsification of the Oswald's thesis, we provide evidence which supports it. At first, in a theoretical model of endogenous job search we show that
homeowners' higher moving costs imply unambiguously lower search and lower job finding rates, even though an opposite effect works for jobs which do not require a move. Then, in the empirical analysis we make use of data drawn from the British Household Panel Survey to compare job search intensity measures by housing tenure. We find that, controlling for housing costs and for different residential statuses, non-employed outright owners have definitely a lower attachment to the labour market than renters, and that this effect is even more evident when we compare them to private renters.
SP  - 1
TI  - The Puzzle of Job Search and Housing Tenure: a Reconciliation of Theory and Empirical Evidence
AV  - public
Y1  - 2011/11//
KW  - JEL Classification: J61
KW  -  J64
KW  -  R2. Keywords: Job Search
KW  -  Housing Tenure
KW  -  Oswald Effect.
UR  - http://www.aiel.it/bacheca/milano/papers/Morescalchi.pdf
ER  -