Price Behavior and Capital Gains on Residential Real Estate: The Case of Sweden

During most of the postwar period the increase of the prices of single-family homes in Sweden have exceeded the general inflation, while for several years the opposite is true of apartment houses. We discuss the reasons and present estimates of capital gains attached to this price behavior. It turns out that apartment houses have often yielded nominal but no real capital gains. Single-family homes have yielded real "accrued" capital gains amounting to approximately 3% of GNP during the period 1963-1976. We also present a rough indirect method of estimating "realized" capital gains, first disregarding, and then including the effects of loans. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

ON THE WEALTH DYNAMICS OF SWEDISH FAMILIES, 1984-98

This paper focuses on three issues. First, it analyzes the increasing inequality of wealth in Sweden in terms of percentile age and birth cohort differences, and finds very weak evidence of life-cycle savings. There are rather strong birth cohort differences in wealth accumulation. Second, it is shown that bequests and inter vivo gifts contribute to the age and cohort differences in wealth, but do not increase the inequality of wealth. The third theme is mobility of wealth as a function of bequests, age, period, length of the transition period, and the magnitude of quantile differences. Copyright 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.