This paper investigates the effects of home-ownership on labour mobility and unemployment
duration. We distinguish between finding employment locally or by being geographically
mobile. We find that home ownership hampers the propensity to move for job reasons but
improves the chances of finding local jobs, which is in accordance with the predictions from
our theoretical model. The overall hazard rate into employment is higher for home owners,
such that there is a negative correlation between home-ownership and unemployment
duration. Our empirical findings thus lend some support for the main mechanism behind the
so-called Oswald hypothesis, even if it does not find positive correlation between
unemployment duration and home ownership at the individual level.