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Consequences of Debt Capitalization: Property Ownership and Debt versus Tax Choice
Author(s) -
Stadelmann David,
Eichenberger Reiner
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.4284/0038-4038-78.3.976
Subject(s) - property tax , debt , capitalization , monetary economics , business , jurisdiction , economics , property (philosophy) , public economics , finance , tax reform , political science , linguistics , philosophy , law , epistemology
Public debts capitalize into property prices. Thus, they are a burden to the present generation who owns the devalued property. This largely neglected fact has important consequences for the tax versus debt choice. Property owners suffer more from the debt burden and, thus, have a stronger preference for tax financing of government spending than tenants. As a consequence of the resulting democratic struggle between property owners and tenants, higher property ownership rates in a jurisdiction lead to less debt financing. We provide empirical support for this hypothesis by analyzing a cross section of the 171 communities in the Swiss Canton of Zurich in the year 2000.