DOES RELATIONSHIP SPECIFIC INVESTMENT DEPEND ON ASSET OWNERSHIP? EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT IN THE HOUSING MARKET

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gebhardt, Georg
• 署名单位: Ulm University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1542-4774.2012.01106.x
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 201-227
• 关键词: PROPERTY-RIGHTS; contractibility

摘要

In this paper, I test the most basic prediction of Grossman and Hart (1986, The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration. Journal of Political Economy, 691719): allocations of asset ownership that expose a party to ex-post expropriation reduce this partys ex-ante relationship-specific investments. In the empirical context of the German housing market, I find that relationship-specific investments, such as bathroom renovations, are more frequent if the occupant is protected against expropriation because he owns his home. To avoid the endogeneity of the homeownership allocation, I rely on the natural experiment of the German reunification: under the communist regime, ownership existed but was economically meaningless; yet after reunification, ownership unexpectedly reacquired legal force.