Work in Progress
Work in Progress
My current research interests are real estate finance, household finance, real estate economics, and alternative investments.
● Residential Rent Externalities of Photovoltaic Systems: The Relevance of View, joint with Roland Füss and Kathleen Kürschner Rauck
Revise & Resubmit at Regional Science and Urban Economics (Second Round)
Abstract: We study how photovoltaic (PV) systems externally affect the rents of residential dwellings. By creating a three-dimensional topographical model of our study areas in Switzerland, we model each building’s view at surrounding PV installations and merge this data with rental price observations. In the hedonic difference-in-differences regressions, we provide evidence of how this view (impaired or unimpaired) on a PV system is associated with lower residential rents. This effect is stronger for the view at multiple PV systems rather than at a single one, in situations where seeing is more likely, and where PV installations disrupt a scenic view. However, price penalties are attenuated if rental dwellings have their own PV system or if neighboring properties have large PV systems, which may benefit surrounding tenants in terms of electricity provision. Furthermore, by using municipal voting results on the Swiss Energy Act 2017 and the Swiss CO2 Act in 2021, we show how stated preferences for sustainability drive the external effects of PV systems on rents. We document a similar causal pathway for lived preferences measured by the number and change in electric vehicles in Swiss municipalities.
Talks: 2022 NTNU Business School Conference, 2023 NHH Brown Bag Seminar Series, 2023 HSG Econ-Finance Seminar, 2024 Cambridge Land Economy Research Seminar, 2024 ARES Conference, 2024 AREUEA International Conference, 2024 CRED-MIT Workshop on Real Estate Economics, 2024 GRASFI Conference, and 2025 AREUEA-ASSA Conference.
● Heterogeneous Housing Valuation
Abstract: The pricing of residential real estate is driven by individual households’ preferences for housing services. In this study, I show how households with different sociodemographic characteristics value specific housing attributes heterogeneously. In doing so, I make use of a special auction design and a novel measure of private preference pressure, which reflects a household’s necessity to reveal its true private value estimate when buying a dwelling. Based on this economic mechanism, I use a threefold decomposition technique to show how a high and low amount of sociodemographic characteristics in a neighborhood, like income, education, age, and family status, lead to varying private value estimates of specific housing attributes. Creating a typical low- and high-characteristic buyer in a neighborhood further proves our main finding. Additionally, I exploit the introduction of stricter lending rules in a triple difference-in-difference setting to show how an asymmetric shock to the budget constraint of one of two buyer groups causally increases heterogeneous housing valuation in light of high preference pressure in an auction.
Talks: 2022 HSG Econ-Finance Seminar, 2023 NTNU Business School Conference, and 2025 ARES Conference.
● Digital Location Matters: A Spatial Analysis of Virtual Real Estate Pricing in the Metaverse, joint with Roland Füss and Benedetta Vernuccio
● Revenue Versus Reputation: Warring Incentives in the Rating Industry, joint with Roland Füss, Stefan Morkötter, Roman Stebler, and Simone Westerfeld
● High-Frequency Residential Offer Price Indices, joint with Thies Lindenthal
● Where Homes Get Built: Local Determinants of Housing Construction Activity, joint with Roland Füss, Jörg Schläpfer, and Marco Schmid
Alois Weigand, Ph.D.
University of St.Gallen
Swiss Institute of Banking and Finance
Unterer Graben 21
CH-9010 St.Gallen