The Impact of Real Estate Ownership on Labour Market Behaviour: Evidence from the Natural Experiment of the German Reunification

金融危机使人们关注真实的房地产和劳动力市场之间的相互作用。财富损失（通常以房价下跌的形式出现）是否会阻止人们成为个体户？高住房拥有率是否阻碍了受危机影响最严重地区的移民？这些问题背后的理论机制是很好理解的，也是合理的，但它们与经验相关吗？在回答这个问题时，我们面临的问题是，真实的房地产和劳动力市场的结果同时内生决定。为了识别这些内生问题中的因果关系，我们需要真实的房地产所有权的合理的外生变化。该项目的主要目标是利用德国统一的自然实验，特别是东德时期房屋所有权的准随机分配，调查房屋所有权对劳动力市场结果的影响，如就业和自营职业。在Gebhardt（2013）我认为，业主的财产权是如此稀释在民主德国，住房所有权变得几乎无关紧要，因此，准随机地获得作为居住选择的副产品。房主在没有政府许可的情况下既不能出售也不能出租他们的房子，他们甚至不能搬进自己的房子。一旦他们住在自己的财产，他们确实控制它的事实上，但也有租户。住房成本，无论是租金还是房价，在东德都可以忽略不计。然而，在统一后，所有者被赋予了西德法律的制度的全部财产权，所有价格开始上涨并向市场水平靠拢。在这个项目中，我们比较了在民主德国期间碰巧获得或保留真实的房地产的家庭与最终租房的家庭的劳动力市场结果。例如，民主德国的所有者在统一后变得更加富有。这种财富的变化是一种区域内的变化，因此我们可以比较面临相同宏观经济环境但具有不同真实的房地产财富禀赋的个人。如果我们发现这些禀赋与自营职业之间存在相关性，我们就可以令人信服地说，我们发现了一种因果关系。同样，民主德国的房屋所有权增加了几年后拥有房屋的可能性。如果我们发现这些房主与在民主德国租房的人在劳动力市场上的结果显著不同，我们就可以令人信服地认为这是一种没有受到选择效应影响的因果效应，因为人们在民主德国选择住房所有权肯定不是基于他们无法预料或想象的未来统一的德国的劳动力市场状况。

The financial crisis has cast a spotlight on the interaction of real estate and labour markets. Do wealth losses, often in the form of reduced house prices, prevent people from becoming self-employed? Do high rates of home ownership impede migration out of the areas hardest hit by the crisis? The theoretical mechanisms underlying these questions are well understood and plausible, but are they empirically relevant?In answering this question we face the problem that real estate and labour market outcomes are simultaneously endogenously determined. To identify causal relationships despite these endogeneity problems, we need credibly exogenous variation of real estate ownership. It is the main goal of this project to employ the natural experiment of the German reunification and, in particular, the quasi-random allocation of home ownership during the GDR, to investigate the impact of home ownership on labour market outcomes such as employment and self-employment.In Gebhardt (2013) I argue that the property rights of homeowners were so diluted in the GDR that homeownership became practically irrelevant and was, therefore, acquired quasi-randomly as a by-product of dwelling choice. Homeowners could neither sell nor rent their homes without government permission, they could not even move into their own property. Once they lived in their property, they did control it de facto, but so did renters. Housing costs, be it rents or house prices, were negligible in the GDR. After the re-unification, however, the owners were bestowed upon the full range of property rights of the West German legal system and all prices started to increase and converge to market levels. In this project, we compare the labour market outcomes of households that happened to acquire or retain real estate property during the years of the GDR with those households that ended up renting. GDR owners, for example, turned out to be much wealthier after re-unification. This variation of wealth is a within region variation so that we can compare individuals that face the same macroeconomic environment, but have different real estate wealth endowments. If we find a correlation of these endowments with self-employment, we can convincingly argue that we found a causal relationship. Similarly, GDR homeownership increases the probability to own your home even years later. If we find that these homeowners have significantly different labour market outcomes from people who rented during the GDR, we can convincingly argue that this is a causal effect untainted by a selection effect, as people surely did not choose homeownership during the GDR based on the perceived labour market conditions in a future reunited Germany that they could not anticipate or imagine.