³ÉÈË´óƬ

Stamp Duty and housing transaction volumes in Australia Nick Garvin is a Research Manager at the e61 institute. He specialises in micro econometrics for Australian economic and financial policy.

We study the effect of housing transaction taxes (stamp duty) on housing transaction volumes and person mobility. We use property transactions data and individual administrative data from 2009 to 2012 to exploit a quasi-experimental variation in tax rates using a triple difference-in-differences research design. In mid 2011, the Queensland state government hiked stamp duty for owner-occupier purchases, while stamp duty remained broadly unchanged in the rest of Australia and for investors in Queensland. We find that, after adjusting for intertemporal substitution, a 1 percentage point rise in the stamp duty rate decreases the number of housing transactions by 7.2% and the number of individual relocations by a similar magnitude. We find relatively homogenous effects across purchase prices, housing types, location and distance of moves.

Zoom Meeting ID: 828 4717 3580; Passcode: 921 907