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Do Foreigners Pay Higher Rents for the Same Quality of Housing in Geneva and Zurich?

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics volume 144, pages 703–730 (2008)Cite this article

Summary

The Geneva and Zurich housing markets are characterised by high proportions of foreigners and a large share of rental housing. This provides ideal conditions for testing whether foreigners pay more for the same quality of housing than Swiss households and whether flats in neighbourhoods with higher proportions of foreigners rent at a discount. Hedonic price equations using a rich dataset on dwellings and their occupants yield evidence of such discrimination and prejudice. They also suggest more complex relationships between tenant nationality, housing and neighbourhood quality, and rents.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geneva School of Business Administration (HEG-Ge), Center for Applied Research in Management (CRAG), University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (HES-SO), 7 route de Drize, CH-1227, Carouge, Geneva, Switzerland

    Andrea Baranzini, Caroline Schaerer & José V. Ramirez

  2. Research Group on the Economics and Management of the Environment (REME), Swiss Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Station 16, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Philippe Thalmann

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  1. Andrea Baranzini
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  2. Caroline Schaerer
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  3. José V. Ramirez
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  4. Philippe Thalmann
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Correspondence to Andrea Baranzini.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Baranzini, A., Schaerer, C., Ramirez, J.V. et al. Do Foreigners Pay Higher Rents for the Same Quality of Housing in Geneva and Zurich?. Swiss J Economics Statistics 144, 703–730 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399272

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