Anchoring and housing choice: Results of a natural policy experiment

Yuval Arbel, Danny Ben-Shahar and Stuart Gabriel

Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2014, vol. 49, issue C, 68-83

Abstract: This research employs data from a natural experiment to assess the effects of behavioral heuristics on housing choice and public program management. The analysis focuses on programs designed to privatize public housing in Israel. The government programs provided the tenants with a call (real) option to purchase their rental unit at a discounted exercise price. We employ a large panel of transactions over the 1999–2008 period to evaluate whether the tenants used prior program price reductions as anchors in their purchase decisions. The results of hazard model estimation provide strong evidence of anchoring in the timing of home purchase. Further, model simulation suggests that by accounting for the anchoring heuristic, program managers could have both accelerated purchases and significantly increased government revenues associated with privatization. We also find evidence that anchoring varies with individual and market characteristics.

Keywords: Behavioral economics; Anchoring; Housing choice; Public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 D03 R38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166046214000738
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:regeco:v:49:y:2014:i:c:p:68-83

DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2014.07.004

Access Statistics for this article

Regional Science and Urban Economics is currently edited by D.P McMillen and Y. Zenou

More articles in Regional Science and Urban Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().