Access to the City Center and Housing Vacancies in the Suburbs

Brahim Boualam

Annals of Economics and Statistics, 2018, issue 130, 39-100

Abstract: How does access to the center of a city affect the housing vacancy rate in the suburbs? Using data on housing for French municipalities, I first document the disparities and evolution of housing vacancy rates in France. A particular attention is paid on the Paris metropolitan area, where housing vacancies are surprisingly large. Next, I develop a theoretical model which emphasizes the link between proximity to the city center and housing vacancies in suburban locations. Finally, I empirically test the predictions of the model using information on transport and housing in the Paris urban area. The findings show that proximity to the city is associated with lower vacancy rates. This result is consistent with a positive association between distance and frictions in the real estate market.

Keywords: Housing Market; Residential Vacancy Rates; Transport Infrastructure; Spatial Frictions. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J6 R21 R4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.15609/annaeconstat2009.130.0069 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:adr:anecst:y:2018:i:130:p:39-100

DOI: 10.15609/annaeconstat2009.130.0069

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Laurent Linnemer

More articles in Annals of Economics and Statistics from GENES Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Secretariat General () and Laurent Linnemer ().