Estimating the Distortionary Effects of Ethnic Quotas in Singapore Using Housing Transactions

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

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 price differences are between 3% and 5%. Quantity effects are economically significant, translating to longer time-on-market durations by 1 to 1.4 months. Selection cannot fully explain these results. My results point to challenges in achieving desegregation using quantity restrictions.

Keywords: Desegregation; quota; distortionary effects; housing transactions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 R31 R38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sea and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/51217/2/MaisyWong_QuotaRF.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Estimating the distortionary effects of ethnic quotas in Singapore using housing transactions (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:51217

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