 Estimating the distortionary effects of ethnic quotas in Singapore using housing transactionsJournal of Public Economics, 2014, vol. 115, issue C, 131-145 Abstract: Desegregation is a key policy issue in many countries. I investigate a residential desegregation program in Singapore — the ethnic housing quotas. I show that choice restrictions imposed on apartment blocks above the quota limits (constrained) could have distortionary effects, causing price and quantity differences for constrained versus unconstrained blocks. I test these predictions by hand-matching more than 500,000 names in the phonebook to ethnicities, to calculate ethnic proportions at the apartment block level. I can then investigate differences for constrained and unconstrained blocks close to the quota limits and test for sorting around the limits. I find that price differences are between 3% and 5%. Quantity effects are economically significant, translating to longer time-on-market durations. Selection cannot fully explain these results. My results point to challenges in achieving desegregation using quantity restrictions. Keywords: Segregation; Regulation; Ethnic; Quotas (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:115:y:2014:i:c:p:131-145 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.04.006 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier |
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