Immigration and Housing Rents: Evidence from German Reunification

ISBN-13: 9783658120603 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 115 str.

Kathleen Kurschner

Opis

This work exploits the natural experiment provided by the unexpected disintegration of socialist East Germany to study the impact of the mass immigration of East Germans on housing rents in West German metropolitan areas. Using a spatial correlation approach, annual district-level migration data for 1991 and 1992 and unique rental price indicators from Germany's major regional property market information system, Kathleen Kurschner finds strong evidence for a positive and sizeable effect of immigration on rental prices of residential housing. Additional explorations that employ an IV approach based on various exogenous origin-region push factors related to the deteriorating economic conditions in East Germany yield estimates of even larger magnitude. These results suggest that immigration has important economic effects outside the labour market, traditionally the prime domain of economic enquiries into the consequences of immigration. The author's findings cast doubt on the appropriateness of this bias in focus.

Spis treści

German East-West Migration.- West German Property Market.- Origin Characteristics and Instrument Construction.

O autorze

Kathleen Kürschner (M.Sc.) has studied International Economics and Finance and is currently research associate at the Chair of Applied Economics (Faculty of Economics and Management) at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg.

Blurb

This work exploits the natural experiment provided by the unexpected disintegration of socialist East Germany to study the impact of the mass immigration of East Germans on housing rents in West German metropolitan areas. Using a spatial correlation approach, annual district-level migration data for 1991 and 1992 and unique rental price indicators from Germany’s major regional property market information system, Kathleen Kürschner finds strong evidence for a positive and sizeable effect of immigration on rental prices of residential housing. Additional explorations that employ an IV approach based on various exogenous origin-region push factors related to the deteriorating economic conditions in East Germany yield estimates of even larger magnitude. These results suggest that immigration has important economic effects outside the labour market, traditionally the prime domain of economic enquiries into the consequences of immigration. The author’s findings cast doubt on the appropriateness of this bias in focus.

Contents

• German East-West Migration

• West German Property Market

• Origin Characteristics and Instrument Construction

Target Groups

• Teachers and students of economics and social science

• Executives and consultants in the field of research, economics and social science

About the Author

Kathleen Kürschner (M.Sc.) has studied International Economics and Finance and is currently research associate at the Chair of Applied Economics (Faculty of Economics and Management) at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg.