IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/ifsewp/16-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Right to Buy public housing in Britain: a welfare analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Disney

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Sussex)

  • Guannan Luo

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and City University of Hong Kong)

Abstract

We investigate the impact on social welfare of the United Kingdom (UK) policy introduced in 1980 by which public housing tenants (council housing in UK parlance) had the right to purchase their houses at heavily discounted prices. This was known as the Right to Buy (RTB) policy. Although this internationally-unique policy was the largest source of public privatization revenue in the UK and raised home ownership as a share of housing tenure by around 15%, the policy has been little analyzed by economists. We investigate the equilibrium housing policy of the public authority in terms of quality and quantity of publicly-provided housing both in the absence and presence of a RTB policy. We find that RTB can improve the aggregate welfare of low-income households only if the council housing quality is sufficiently low such that middle-wealth households have no incentive to exercise RTB. We also explore the welfare effects of various adjustments to the policy, in particular (i) reduce discounts on RTB sales; (ii) loosen restrictions on resale; (iii) return the proceeds from RTB sales to local authorities to construct new public properties; and (iv) replace RTB with rent subsidies in cash.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Disney & Guannan Luo, 2016. "The Right to Buy public housing in Britain: a welfare analysis," IFS Working Papers W16/20, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:16/20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/wps/WP201620.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce, Neil & Waldman, Michael, 1991. "Transfers in Kind: Why They Can Be Efficient and Nonpaternalistic," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1345-1351, December.
    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. Marta Schoch, 2020. "Essays on political economy, inequality and development," Economics PhD Theses 0120, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.

    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. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2014. "Toward an efficiency rationale for the public provision of private goods," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(2), pages 375-408, June.
    2. William S. Schulze & Michael H. Lubatkin & Richard N. Dino, 2002. "Altruism, agency, and the competitiveness of family firms," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4-5), pages 247-259.
    3. Alan B. Krueger, 2002. "Inequality, Too Much of a Good Thing," Working Papers 845, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    4. Vicky Barham & Rose Anne Devlin & Olga Milliken, 2016. "Genetic Health Risks: The Case for Universal Public Health Insurance," Working Papers 1605E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    5. Johan Lagerl–f, 2004. "Efficiency-enhancing signalling in the Samaritan's dilemma," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(492), pages 55-69, January.
    6. Hidrobo, Melissa & Hoddinott, John & Peterman, Amber & Margolies, Amy & Moreira, Vanessa, 2014. "Cash, food, or vouchers? Evidence from a randomized experiment in northern Ecuador," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 144-156.
    7. Jeremy Clark & Bonggeun Kim, 2007. "Paying vs. waiting in the pursuit of specific egalitarianism," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 59(3), pages 486-512, July.
    8. Donald Cox & Oded Stark, 2007. "On the Demand for Grandchildren: Tied Transfers and the Demonstration Effect," Chapters, in: Luigino Bruni & Pier Luigi Porta (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Happiness, chapter 18, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Tatyana Deryugina & Barrett Kirwan, 2018. "Does The Samaritan'S Dilemma Matter? Evidence From U.S. Agriculture," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(2), pages 983-1006, April.
    10. repec:pri:cepsud:87krueger is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Masakazu Kumakura & Daizo Kojima, 2018. "Japan’s Inequality and Redistribution: The Perspectives of Human Capital and Taxation/Social Insurance," Public Policy Review, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, vol. 14(4), pages 663-690, July.
    12. Sören Blomquist & Luca Micheletto, 2009. "Nonlinear Income Taxation And Matching Grants In A Federation With Decentralized In-Kind Transfers," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(2), pages 543-575, May.
    13. Disney, Richard & Luo, Guannan, 2017. "The Right to Buy public housing in Britain: A welfare analysis," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 51-68.
    14. Charles F. Manski, 2010. "When consensus choice dominates individualism: Jensen's inequality and collective decisions under uncertainty," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(1), pages 187-202, July.
    15. Gwosć Christoph, 2019. "Die Finanzsituation von Studierenden unter verschiedenen Institutionen der Studienfinanzierung – ein internationaler Vergleich," Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 68(3), pages 278-308, December.
    16. Jes Winther Hansen, 2005. "Present-Biased Individuals, Optimal Paternalism, and Transfers in Kind," EPRU Working Paper Series 05-11, Economic Policy Research Unit (EPRU), University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    17. Dijkstra, Bouwe R., 2007. "Samaritan versus rotten kid: Another look," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 91-110, September.
    18. Maria G. Perozek, 2005. "Escaping the Samaritan's Dilemma: implications of a dynamic model of altruistic intergenerational transfers," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-67, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    19. Lagomarsino, Bruno Cardinale & Rossi, Martin A., 2024. "JUE insight: The unintended effect of Argentina's subsidized homeownership lottery program on intimate partner violence," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    20. Duncan, Brian, 2004. "A theory of impact philanthropy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 2159-2180, August.
    21. William Easterly, 2003. "Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(3), pages 23-48, Summer.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    housing policy; Right to Buy; social welfare;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • R38 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ifs:ifsewp:16/20. 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: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.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.