IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecm/wc2000/0952.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Home Ownership, Local Interactions and Segregation

Author

Listed:
  • Karla Hoff

    (World Bank)

  • Arijit Sen

    (Indian Statistical Institute)

Abstract

There is substantial evidence that home-ownership changes behavior and creates local spillovers. But theoretical research on the decision to own or rent a home has ignored such spillovers and does not confront the issue of the determination of the quality and composition of neighborhoods. This paper constructs a simple theory that can explain the quality and composition of a community as the outcome of the decisions of all households in a metropolitan area, taking into account the general equilibrium effects that are inherent in the problem. We study a model with spillovers, in which the appreciation of the price of a home depends on the investments that other community residents make in their homes. We assume that capital markets are imperfect, so that it is more costly for a low-income household to purchase a home than for a high-income household to do so. We obtain two main results. First, there may be multiple, Pareto-ranked equilibria in the fraction of homeowners in a community; hence, any housing policy analysis has to recognize the problem of co-ordination failure. Second, we establish condition under which market forces will lead home-owners and renters to live in separate communities. We show that even if the poor do not have different preferences for housing than the rich and even if they internalize externalities no less than the rich do, under plausible conditions rich and poor households may live in communities that exhibit very different social characteristics- -the rich in a community with high levels of home-ownership and high levels of civic engagement, and the poor in a community with low levels of both. The model provides a framework for studying the effects on community quality of changes in the distribution of income and changes in policy towards home-ownership.

Suggested Citation

  • Karla Hoff & Arijit Sen, 2000. "Home Ownership, Local Interactions and Segregation," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 0952, Econometric Society.
  • Handle: RePEc:ecm:wc2000:0952
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/es2000/0952.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cooper,Russell, 1999. "Coordination Games," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521578967, September.
    2. Ioannides, Yannis M., 2002. "Residential neighborhood effects," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 145-165, March.
    3. Rosen, Harvey S., 1985. "Housing subsidies: Effects on housing decisions, efficiency, and equity," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 375-420, Elsevier.
    4. Roland Bénabou, 1996. "Equity and Efficiency in Human Capital Investment: The Local Connection," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(2), pages 237-264.
    5. DiPasquale, Denise & Glaeser, Edward L., 1999. "Incentives and Social Capital: Are Homeowners Better Citizens?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 354-384, March.
    6. Legros, Patrick & Newman, Andrew F., 1996. "Wealth Effects, Distribution, and the Theory of Organization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 312-341, August.
    7. Henderson, Vernon & Kuncoro, Ari & Turner, Matt, 1995. "Industrial Development in Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(5), pages 1067-1090, October.
    8. Schall, Lawrence D, 1976. "Urban Renewal Policy and Economic Efficiency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(4), pages 612-628, September.
    9. Henderson, J Vernon & Ioannides, Yannis M, 1983. "A Model of Housing Tenure Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 98-113, March.
    10. Roland Benabou, 1993. "Workings of a City: Location, Education, and Production," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 619-652.
    11. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Rosenthal, Howard, 1984. "Participation and the provision of discrete public goods: a strategic analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 171-193, July.
    12. Banerjee, Abhijit V & Newman, Andrew F, 1993. "Occupational Choice and the Process of Development," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(2), pages 274-298, April.
    13. Andrew Caplin & Sewin Chan & Charles Freeman & Joseph Tracy, 1997. "Housing Partnerships: A New Approach to a Market at a Crossroads," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262032430, April.
    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. M. S. Deshmukh, 2013. "Conditions Of Slum Population Of Major Sub-Urban Wards Of Mumbai In Maharashtra," Working papers 2013-9-9, Voice of Research.

    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. Karla Hoff & Arijit Sen, 2005. "Homeownership, Community Interactions, and Segregation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1167-1189, September.
    2. Dietz, Robert D. & Haurin, Donald R., 2003. "The social and private micro-level consequences of homeownership," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 401-450, November.
    3. Lanny Arvan & David Nickerson, 2006. "Private Investment, Public Aid and Endogenous Divergence in the Evolution of Urban Neighborhoods," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 83-100, February.
    4. Grossmann, Volker, 2008. "Risky human capital investment, income distribution, and macroeconomic dynamics," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 19-42, March.
    5. Piketty, Thomas, 2000. "Theories of persistent inequality and intergenerational mobility," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 429-476, Elsevier.
    6. Dilip Mookherjee & Debraj Ray, 2002. "Contractual Structure and Wealth Accumulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 818-849, September.
    7. Hilber, Christian A.L., 2005. "Neighborhood externality risk and the homeownership status of properties," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 213-241, March.
    8. Bardhan, Pranab & Bowles, Samuel & Gintis, Herbert, 2000. "Wealth inequality, wealth constraints and economic performance," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 10, pages 541-603, Elsevier.
    9. Brock,W.A. & Durlauf,S.N., 2003. "Multinomial choice with social interactions," Working papers 1, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    10. Patrick Legros & Andrew F. Newman, 2002. "Monotone Matching in Perfect and Imperfect Worlds," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(4), pages 925-942.
    11. Nathalie Chusseau & Joël Hellier & B. Ben-Halima, 2013. "Education, Intergenerational Mobility and Inequality," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Joël Hellier & Nathalie Chusseau (ed.), Growing Income Inequalities, chapter 8, pages 227-273, Palgrave Macmillan.
    12. Asli Demirgüç-Kunt & Ross Levine, 2009. "Finance and Inequality: Theory and Evidence," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 287-318, November.
    13. Brock, William A. & Durlauf, Steven N., 2007. "Identification of binary choice models with social interactions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 52-75, September.
    14. Miquel Pellicer & Vimal Ranchhod, 2012. "Inequality Traps and Human Capital Accumulation in South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 86, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    15. Lombardo, Vincenzo, 2008. "Poor’s behaviour and inequality traps: the role of human capital," MPRA Paper 14511, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Engelhardt, Gary V. & Eriksen, Michael D. & Gale, William G. & Mills, Gregory B., 2010. "What are the social benefits of homeownership? Experimental evidence for low-income households," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 249-258, May.
    17. Benabou, Roland, 2005. "Inequality, Technology and the Social Contract," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1595-1638, Elsevier.
    18. Steven N. Durlauf, 1996. "Statistical Mechanics Approaches to Socioeconomic Behavior," NBER Technical Working Papers 0203, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Schünemann, Johannes & Trimborn, Timo, 2023. "Boosting taxes for boasting about houses? Status concerns in the housing market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 120-143.
    20. Finneran, Lisa & Kelly, Morgan, 2003. "Social networks and inequality," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 282-299, March.

    More about this item

    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:ecm:wc2000:0952. 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: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.html .

    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.