Benedetta Vernuccio
Title
M.A.
Last Name
Vernuccio
First name
Benedetta
Email
benedetta.vernuccio@unisg.ch
1 results
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
- Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, The Cross-Section of the Price-to-Rent Ratios(2026-03-26); ; This paper studies the cross-sectional variation in price-to-rent ratios across Swiss municipalities. Combining the user-cost-of-housing framework with the asset-pricing decomposition of the price-to-rent ratio, it analyzes how housing valuations are affected by expected rent growth, financing conditions, and local risk aversion. The analysis uses municipality-quarter data from Wüest Partner for 2011–2022 together with Swiss federal referendum outcomes to construct a municipality-level proxy for risk aversion. This proxy is constructed from the standardized residuals of first-stage cross-sectional regressions of referendum outcomes on political, socio-economic, and cultural characteristics. Estimates from two-way fixed-effects panel regressions show that higher expected rent growth is associated with higher price-to-rent ratios, while higher local risk aversion is associated with lower price-to-rent ratios. In addition, tighter financing conditions amplify the negative effect of local risk aversion on valuation multiples. These patterns also hold in the 2.5-room market segment, while in the 5.5-room segment, the baseline effect of local risk aversion is no longer statistically significant, consistent with the idea that the valuation of more expensive units is less sensitive to local household risk attitudes. The results are robust to alternative specifications of the risk-aversion measure and highlight the importance of behavioral heterogeneity for understanding housing-market valuation.Type:conference paper