This paper considers three tenure modes -owner-owned housing, tenant-owned housing, and landlord-owned housing -and models the effect of the rental externality and tenure security on housing quality. We show theoretically that the rental externality has no impact on the housing quality of tenant-owned housing, but tenure security has an ambiguous effect when the user's utilization and the owner's maintenance are complements.We also show that the rental externality and tenure security both reduce landlord-owned housing quality when the user's utilization and the owner's maintenance are substitutes.Empirical investigation yields results that are consistent with the theoretical predictions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine theoretically and empirically whether the commute times of married women follow a backward-bending pattern with respect to wage rates. The existing literature has shown that married women tend to choose short commutes because of their relatively low wages combined with comparatively heavy household responsibilities. However, a work-leisure model, which includes the simultaneous decision wives take regarding commute times and wage rates, suggests that married women employed in highly paid positions also undertake short commutes, while married women with wage rates in the middle range choose long commutes. These results suggest that the commute times of married women display a backward-bending pattern. Applying an instrumental variable strategy that accounts for the endogeneity of wage rates, the empirical results for employed married women in Japan appear to support this …nding. Moreover, one of our results suggests that highly paid married women can still secure greater leisure time with short commutes, despite retaining a heavy load of domestic responsibilities.

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To consider the policy event of a gift tax reduction earmarked for housing acquisition, the interdependence of parental gifts and children's housing investments is modeled, considering an informal care issue behind such decision making. The empirical results, which use a sample of households who purchased a house in Japan, demonstrate that such a tax cut would appear to have the following limited e¤ects on boosting housing investment in equilibrium. First, even though transfers are encouraged, they consequently reduce housing investment because the housing investment function is negatively related to gifts. Second, increments in housing investment are further discouraged because the slopes of the gift and housing investment functions have opposite signs.JEL classi…cation: D11, D12, H14, J14, R21

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