IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/col/000094/003528.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Stratification and Public Utility Services in Colombia: Subsidies to Households or Distortions on Housing Prices?

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Medina
  • Leonardo Morales

Abstract

Domiciliary public utility services in Colombia have a cross subsidy system which charges subsidized rates to the households who live in houses located in strata associated to low wealth levels, and taxed rates to the better off. We assesses the hypothesis that the flow of subsidies that potentially come from a particular house, are discounted by housing market agents so that most of them are transferred to the prices of the houses that generate the subsidies. By estimating a hedonic prices model applying a regression discontinuity approach, we find that the increment in house value estimated because of subsidies is similar in magnitude to the present value of the flow of subsidies. Likely effects are found on the rent amount. We conclude that subsidies to the poor population through public spending in domiciliary public utility services in Colombia is being achieved, if anything, in a very limited way. Most of the financial effort on this subject ends up distorting housing relative prices according to socioeconomic strata, with an annual cost of up to 0.7% of GDP in supposed gross subsidies to domiciliary public utility services.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Medina & Leonardo Morales, 2006. "Stratification and Public Utility Services in Colombia: Subsidies to Households or Distortions on Housing Prices?," Borradores de Economia 3528, Banco de la Republica.
    • Handle: RePEc:col:000094:003528
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.banrep.gov.co/docum/ftp/borra422.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maddock, Rodney & Castano, Elkin & Vella, Frank, 1992. "Estimating Electricity Demand: The Cost of Linearising the Budget Constraint," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(2), pages 350-354, May.
    2. Sandra E. Black, 1999. "Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 577-599.
    3. Michael Kremer, 1997. "How Much does Sorting Increase Inequality?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 115-139.
    4. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb..
    5. David M. Cutler & Edward L. Glaeser, 1997. "Are Ghettos Good or Bad?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 827-872.
    6. Oates, Wallace E, 1969. "The Effects of Property Taxes and Local Public Spending on Property Values: An Empirical Study of Tax Capitalization and the Tiebout Hypothesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 77(6), pages 957-971, Nov./Dec..
    7. P. C. Cheshire & E. S. Mills (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlos Medina & Leonardo Morales & Jairo Nuñez, 2008. "Quality of Life in Urban Neighborhoods in Colombia:The Cases of Bogotá and Medellín," Borradores de Economia 5126, Banco de la Republica.
    2. Carlos Medina & Leonardo Fabio Morales, 2007. "Demanda por Servicios Públicos Domiciliarios en Colombia y Subsidios: Implicaciones sobre el Bienestar," Borradores de Economia 467, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    3. Alejandro Gaviria & Carlos Medina & Leonardo Morales & Jairo Núñez, 2010. "The Cost of Avoiding Crime: The Case of Bogotá," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Crime: Lessons For and From Latin America, pages 101-132, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Lina Cardona-Sosa & Carlos Medina & Jairo Nuñez Méndez, 2017. "Impacto de las Transferencias Condicionadas sobre el Mercado de Crédito El caso de Familias en Acción en Colombia," Borradores de Economia 995, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    5. Camila Casas, 2014. "Subsidies to Electricity Consumption and Housing Demand in Bogotá," Borradores de Economia 12230, Banco de la Republica.
    6. Fan Li & Wenche Wang & Zelong Yi, 2018. "Cross-Subsidies and Government Transfers: Impacts on Electricity Service Quality in Colombia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-15, May.
    7. Medina Carlos & Leonardo Morales, 2008. "Demanda por servicios públicos domiciliarios y pérdida irrecuperable de los subsidios: el caso colombiano," Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad, Universidad de los Andes,Facultad de Economía, CEDE, February.
    8. Leonardo Fabio Morales, 2015. "Peer Effects on a Fertility Decision: an Application for Medellín, Colombia," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Spring 20), pages 119-159, February.
    9. Shaun McRae, 2015. "Infrastructure Quality and the Subsidy Trap," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 35-66, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sylvie Charlot & Sonia Paty & Michel Visalli, 2013. "Assessing the impact of local taxation on property prices: a spatial matching contribution," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(9), pages 1151-1166, March.
    2. Paul Cheshire, 2009. "Policies for Mixed Communities," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 32(3), pages 343-375, July.
    3. Carlos Medina & Leonardo Morales & Jairo Nuñez, 2008. "Quality of Life in Urban Neighborhoods in Colombia: The Cases of Bogotá and Medellín," Borradores de Economia 536, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    4. Sylvie Charlot & Sonia Paty & Michel Visalli, 2008. "Assessing the impact of local taxation on property prices: a spatial matching contribution / Evaluer l'impact de la fiscalité locale sur les prix immobiliers : une contribution de l'appariement spatia," INRA UMR CESAER Working Papers 2008/3, INRA UMR CESAER, Centre d'’Economie et Sociologie appliquées à l'’Agriculture et aux Espaces Ruraux.
    5. Yinger, John, 2015. "Hedonic markets and sorting equilibria: Bid-function envelopes for public services and neighborhood amenities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 9-25.
    6. Cheshire, Paul, 2009. "Policies for mixed communities: faith-based displacement activity?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 30783, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. David Brasington & Don Haurin, 2005. "Capitalization of Parent, School, and Peer Group Components of School Quality into House Price," Departmental Working Papers 2005-04, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    8. Theodore M. Crone, 2006. "Capitalization of the quality of local public schools: what do home buyers value?," Working Papers 06-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    9. Livy, Mitchell R., 2018. "Intra-school district capitalization of property tax rates," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 227-236.
    10. Peng, Ying & Tian, Chuanhao & Wen, Haizhen, 2021. "How does school district adjustment affect housing prices: An empirical investigation from Hangzhou, China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    11. Margaret Brehm & Scott A. Imberman & Michael Naretta, 2017. "Capitalization of Charter Schools into Residential Property Values," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 12(1), pages 1-27, Winter.
    12. repec:pri:cepsud:180rothstein is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Patrick Bayer & Robert McMillan & Kim Rueben, 2004. "Residential Segregation in General Equilibrium," Working Papers 885, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    14. Christoph Basten & Maximilian von Ehrlich & Andrea Lassmann, 2014. "Income Taxes, Sorting, and the Costs of Housing," KOF Working papers 14-362, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    15. Davidoff, Thomas, 2005. "Income sorting: Measurement and decomposition," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 289-303, September.
    16. Paolo Buonanno & Daniel Montolio & Josep Raya-Vílchez, 2013. "Housing prices and crime perception," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 305-321, August.
    17. Yannis M. Ioannides, 2010. "Neighborhood Effects and Housing," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0747, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    18. Bayer, Patrick & McMillan, Robert, 2012. "Tiebout sorting and neighborhood stratification," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1129-1143.
    19. Albouy, David & Lue, Bert, 2015. "Driving to opportunity: Local rents, wages, commuting, and sub-metropolitan quality of life," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 74-92.
    20. Paul Cheshire & Stephen Sheppard, 2004. "Capitalising the Value of Free Schools: The Impact of Supply Characteristics and Uncertainty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(499), pages 397-424, November.
    21. Stadelmann, David, 2010. "Which factors capitalize into house prices? A Bayesian averaging approach," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 180-204, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    targeting of subsidies; Incidence; stratification; segregation; hedonic price models; regression discontinuity design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C0 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:col:000094:003528. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Clorith Angelica Bahos Olivera (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.