Which is the appropriate administrative level to promote home ownership?

Philippe Thalmann
Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft und Statistik / Revue Suisse d'Economie politique et de Statistique / Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Volume 135, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 3-20
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Abstract

The proportion of Swiss households that own their home has always been in the vicinity of 30 percent, the lowest proportion in the OECD. Clearly the existing, essentially federal, policy for promoting home ownership has not been very aggressive. A survey allows us to understand what households wish and why they are so few to own a home. Those observations, in particular the fact that households wish to buy a single family home rather than an apartment, have consequences for the optimal allocation of the responsibility for promoting home ownership. I conclude that the responsibility should be passed down to the cantons.