【正文】 也許會削減借貸和支出。如果股票下跌 10%，則損失 10%；如果房價下滑 10%，損失的則是全部存款。許多人已總結(jié)出，用克魯格曼的話說就是 “ 不是每個人都可有自有住房。過去幾周來，大西洋兩岸的房地產(chǎn)市場已現(xiàn)曙光，但房價在最終觸底前隨時有進(jìn)一步走跌的可能。盎格魯 撒克遜世界外的尼古拉 這如何影響支持自有住宅的論點？還應(yīng)認(rèn)為它對公眾有利？幾名經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家和評論家對此持否 定態(tài)度。在美國、愛爾蘭和西班牙，房主可將所支付的抵押借款利息從其須納稅的收入中扣除。 and Michigan, New Hampshire, Delaware, West Virginia and Mississippi, which have the highest homeownership rates. People are not, in fact, moving as frequently as they used to: the share of those moving house in 202108—% of the population—was the lowest since records began. So labour markets look less flexible than they were. Negative equity exacerbates immobility because people are reluctant to move if it means selling at a loss. Researchers at the Wharton School reckon that people in negative equity are only half as likely to move as those who are not. In all these ways, high home ownership may prolong and deepen a recession. The problem remains of how to weigh the economic costs against the social benefits of home ownership. There can be no easy judgment about this but the recent rise and fall of house prices suggests both that the costs are greater and the benefits smaller than once thought. If owning were such a boon, you would expect neighbourhoods with lots of owners to have done better than those with lots of renters during the boom years. That does not seem to have happened What has happened, though, is that above a certain level, foreclosures have done a lot of damage during the bad years. Recent studies of New York and Cleveland find that, if lenders foreclose on 34% of properties in an area, local prices fall even faster and further than average. Rows of For Sale signs almost certainly have the same effect in Britain. In other words, ownership can sometimes be worse for a neighbourhood than renting. A shelter— for your money Lastly, and perversely, the decade of obsession with expanding home ownership may actually have reduced neighbourhood stability. Nicolas Retsinas, the director of the Joint Centre for Housing Studies at Harvard University, suggests that, until the crash in 2021, Americans were ing to see their homes as financial investments rather than as places to live. That is true in other countries. Negam mortgages in America and buytorent arrangements in Britain were based on the assumption that houses were primarily investments. As a result, people seem to have started to buy and sell homes more frequently. Between the mid1990s and mid2021s, the number of new houses sold almost doubled in America, from just over 600,000 to over in 2021. Perhaps that made labour markets more mobile, but it was certainly not what policymakers were aiming for when they set out to increase home ownership. Their efforts in the past few years seem to have weakened, though not destroyed, the best arguments for treating home ownership as something to be encouraged: that it increases people’s savings and creates better neighbourhoods for everyone. But perhaps you should not be surprised by that. As Adam Smith wrote in “The Wealth of Nations” two centuries ago, “a dwellinghouse, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitants.” 自有住房 是避難營還是重?fù)?dān)？ 自有住房帶來的社會利益中看不中用，而且經(jīng)濟(jì)成本高昂 。 From The Economist Home ownership Shelter, or burden? The social benefits of home ownership look more modest than they did and the economic costs much higher In a scene from the film “It’s a Wonderful Life”, a happy couple is about to enter their new home. Jimmy Stewart, whose firm has sold them the mortgage, reflects that there is “a fundamental urge…for a man to have his own roof, walls and fireplace.” He offers them bread, salt and wine so “joy and prosperity may reign for ever”. That embodies the AngloSaxon world’s attitude to home ownership. Owning your own roof, walls and fireplace, it is thought, is good for householders because it helps them accumulate wealth. It is good for the economy because it encourages people to save. And it is good for society because homeowners invest more in their neighbourhoods, engage more in civic activities and encourage their children to do better at school than do renters. Home ownership, in short, benefits everyone—not just the homeowner—and the more there is of it, the better. Which is why it is usually encouraged by the government. In America, Ireland and Spain, homeowners can deduct mortgageinterest payments from taxable ine. Yet the worldwide crash was bound up in this supposed miracle of social policy. The disaster began with defaults on American subprime mortgages, a fin