the determinants of housing tenure choice in ibadan nigeria this paper estimates housing tenure choice models for the ibadan housing market in nigeria the empirical analysis based on a logit regression model reveals that the key determi i nants of the probability of home ownership are income the investment motive for home ownership number of children in the house gender of the head of household stage in family life cycle length of stay in the city and access to land on the basis of ethnic qualification access to institutional sources of housing finance is selective and as such has not been effective in enhancing home ownership across the city

state misallocation and housing prices theory and evidence from china this paper examines the equilibrium price effects of the privatization of housing assets that were previously owned and allocated by the state i develop a theoretical framework that shows that privatization can have ambiguous effects on prices in the private market and that the degree of misallocation of the assets prior to privatization deter mines the subsequent price effects i test the predictions of the model using a large scale housing reform in china the results suggest that the removal of price distortions allowed households to increase their consumption of housing and led to an increase in equilibrium hous ing prices jel l33 018 p25 r31 r38 state participation in the housing market occurs in several forms in countries throughout the world the provision of subsidized housing as a welfare benefit to low income households is common throughout the western hemisphere in addition local governments in several cities in the united states have implemented regula tions that limit the increase of rents charged by landlords 1 this paper focuses on a form of state intervention in housing that occurs through the provision of subsidized homes to state employees the economic consequences of this area of research are potentially large as employer provided housing in the state sector is common throughout the developing world particularly in asia and sub saharan africa government regulation of the private market or the creation of a separate mar ket ensures that certain households have access to housing at prices that are below market value state interventions that aim to bring affordable housing to particu lar subsegments of the population can create economic inefficiencies they distort the decisions that individuals make regarding residential mobility joseph gyourko and peter linneman 1989 gordon a hughes and barry mccormick 1987 and employment michael svarer michael rosholm and jakob roland munch 2005 wang forthcoming and they lead to underinvestment in the construction and main

a search theoretic approach to monetary economics the essential function of money is its role as a medium of exchange the authors formalize this idea using a search theoretic equilibrium model of the exchange process that captures the double coincidence of wants problem with pure barter one advantage of the framework described here is that it is very tractable the authors also show that the model can be used to addre ss some substantive issues in monetary economics including the potenti al welfare enhancing role of money the interaction between specializat ion and monetary exchange and the possibility of equilibria with multip le fiat currencies copyright 1993 by american economic association

demand for housing attributes in developing countries a study of pakistan the paper has applied a conventional framework of analysis of implicit markets to determine the characteristics of demand for housing attributes of quantity and quality in the urban areas of a larg

search bargaining money and prices the goal of this paper is to extend existing search theoretic models of fiat money which until now have assumed that the price level is exogenous by explicitly incorporating bilateral bargaining this allows us to determine the price level endogenously and leads to additional insights concerning the role of money for example we find that monetary equilibria are generally inefficient in the sense that output and prices differ from the solution to a social planner s problem although the difference can become small as the discount rate or search friction vanishes we also find that there exist nonstationary inflationary equilibria

search evolution and money abstract this paper describes a search theoretic model that can be used to determine which objects serve as media of exchange or money existing versions of the model are generalized to allow arbitrary distributions of agents who specialize in different consumption production activities i characterize the way the numbers of consumers and producers of the various goods help determine which goods serve as money the distribution is then endogenized so that agents can choose their type this generates a unique equilibrium outcome ideas from evolutionary dynamics are employed as a way to interpret the model and to compute equilibria

housing markets in third world cities research and policy into the 1990s abstract a review of analyses of urban housing markets is timely to suggest directions for research and policy in the next decade the neoclassical approach to housing economics is contrasted with a political economy framework with respect to the production or supply of housing and consumption or demand an argument is advanced for increased attention to the analysis of citywide housing markets using insights from both theoretical approaches and for research into processes of exchange such analyses should form the basis for policies which focus neither on selected income groups or residential areas in isolation from wider housing market processes nor on housing output targets but primarily on ensuring the provision of essential inputs

indirect reciprocity and money using an experimental analysis of a simple monetary economy as a basis we argue that a monetary system can be more stable than one would expect from individual rationality we show that positive reciprocity stabilizes the monetary system provided every participant considers the feedback of his choice to the stationary equilibrium if however the participants do not play stationary strategies and some participants notoriously refuse to accept money then due to negative reciprocity their behavior will eventually induce a break down of the monetary system

the demand for housing and permanent income in indonesia this study reports the results and conclusions derived from a data analysis of urban household expenditure on housing in indonesia the urban households were stratified by income group urban size and urban location in these respects this study is unique household expenditures on housing were computed for each income group and subgroup by urban size and location expenditure on housing is increasing at a faster rate than income except in the very low income groups the proportion of income allocated by the average household to housing ranges from less than 15 per cent to close to 25 per cent the latter being found in the upper income group similarly significant variations in household expenditures on housing are observed for urban size and location in jakarta for example the average household expenditure on housing is almost twice as much as in the small urban localities fewer than 20000 inhabitants this observation however must be mitigated by income distribution average household inc

real estate regulations in accra some macroeconomic consequences ghana has been one of the most rapidly growing economies in sub saharan africa this growth has been aided by ghana s improving policy environment in light of this the paper addresses the question of why given its higher level of per capita income and relatively strong growth the housing conditions of the poor in accra are considerably worse than those in a number of other african cities with lower incomes there are not many data available to answer this question so the method is indirect and takes two approaches first a variant of the monocentric city model is used to calculate accra s housing supply elasticity relative to those of other similarly sized african cities the model suggests that housing supply responsiveness is considerably lower in accra a result consistent with the observed higher housing costs secondly a number of traditional housing demand and reduced form equations are estimated for accra and the other cities this allows the formation of a quantitative judgment about accra

conditional cooperation and voluntary contributions to public goods we compare a partners condition where the same small group of subjects plays a repeated publi c good game to a strangers condition where subjects play this game in changing group formations subjects in the partners conditi on contribute from t he first period on significantly more to the publi c good than subjects in the strangers conditi on in the strangers conditi on contributions show a continual decay whil e in the partners conditi on contributions fluctuate on a high level until t hey decrease in the final periods we interpret subjects behavior in terms of conditional cooperation which is characterized by both future oriented and reactive behavior

on money as a medium of exchange we analyze economies in which individuals specialize in consumption and production and meet randomly over time in a way that implies that trade must be bilateral and quid pro quo nash equilibria in trading strategies are characterized certain goods emerge endogenously as media of exchange or commodity money depending both on their intrinsic properties and on extrinsic beliefs there are also equilibria with genuine fiat currency circulating as the general medium of exchange we find that equilibria are not generally pareto optimal and that introducing fiat currency into a commodity money economy may unambiguously improve welfare velocity acceptability and liquidity are discussed

housing demand and housing policy in urban bangladesh this paper estimates demand for housing and its attributes in urban bangladesh using a survey of 4400 owner renter and squatter households the results revealed that housing demand is inelastic with respect to income and price and price elasticity is less than income elasticity in absolute terms estimates of demand for housing attributes showed that owner and renter households value structural quality sanitation and electricity as well as a living room and dining room kitchen squatter households value living space pit latrine water supply and electricity but place less emphasis on structural quality irrespective of these submarkets income improvement strategies are likely to be the most effective means of enhancing housing consumption the rental submarket might be improved by rent liberalisation while slum improvement strategies should focus on tenure security and incremental improvement however contrary to current practice the emphasis should be on the size of squatter dwellings rather than on their structural quality

indirect reciprocity and strategic reputation building in an experimental helping game abstract we study indirect reciprocity and strategic reputation building in an experimental helping game at any time only half of the subjects can build a reputation this allows us to study both pure indirect reciprocity that is not contaminated by strategic reputation building and the impact of incentives for strategic reputation building on the helping rate we find that pure indirect reciprocity exists but also that the helping decisions are substantially affected by strategic considerations finally we find that strategic do better than non strategic players and non reciprocal do better than reciprocal players casting doubt on previously proposed evolutionary explanations for indirect reciprocity

an empirical analysis of the demand for housing attributes in a third world city this paper presents estimates of the demand for a set of housing attributes using data drawn from the renter and owner occupier housing submarkets for ibadan nigeria the empirical analysis based on an adaptation of rosen s two step model reveals that the most important determinants of the demand for housing attributes are income price of the attribute in question household size and the occupational status of the head of household the paper further indicates that the demand for housing attributes is inelastic since all estimated coefficients are below unity

urban rural cost of living differentials in a developing economy abstract casual observations suggest that the cost of living is substantially greater in urban than rural areas of developing economies with implications for sectoral welfare comparisons an aids demand model for housing and foodgrains is estimated on a household level data set for java after adjusting housing rents for heterogeneity in quality the retrieved cost function indicates that the cost of utility at the urban price vector exceeds its rural value although the differential has been substantially overestimated in the past the relative cost of urban living is found to increase as reference rural income increases

a contribution to the pure theory of money abstract this article analyzes a general equilibrium model with search frictions and differentiated commodities because of the many differentiated commodities barter is difficult in that it requires a double coincidence of wants and this provides a medium of exchange role for fiat currency we prove the existence of equilibrium with valued fiat money and show it is robust to certain changes in the environment rate of return dominance liquidity and the welfare implications of fiat money are discussed

the demand for housing in developing countries empirical estimates from household data cities in developing countries are growing at extraordinary rates often compressing into decades the urbanization process that has taken centuries in developed countries in coping with this growth public authorities have devised a wide range of policy instruments to influence the rate and character of city expansion to meet the needs of people for shelter and urban services and to allocate resources in ways that redistribute both the costs and benefits of urban growth ideally such policy formulation should be informed by a careful understanding of the behavior of urban markets in fact little information on market behavior is available to the policymakers of developing countries such basic information is needed for improved project design and even more important for improved sector wide policies this paper reports on research conducted at the world bank to increase understanding of developing country housing markets in particular of housing demand behavior while the overall project examines both the demand for housing characteristics and the demand for housing as a composite good this paper addresses only the latter the objectives of this paper are 1 to review briefly previous evidence on housing demand parameters in developing countries 2 to present new evidence on housing demand parameters based on application of standardized models and comparable variable definitions in 16 cities in eight developing countries colombia egypt el salvador ghana india jamaica korea and the philippines and 3 to examine similarities and differences among cities in housing demand and in a preliminary way offer explanations for place to place differences limited comparisons are also made to two u s cities in order to begin comparison of developing and developed country market behavior

emergence of money as a medium of exchange an experimental study findings are reported from an experiment that implements a search theoretic model of money as a medium of exchange the question is whether subjects learn to adopt the same commodities as media of exchange that the model predicts will be used in equilibrium it is reported that subjects have a strong tendency to play fundamental rather than speculative strategies even in environments where speculative strategies yield higher payoffs some possible motivations for subjects behavior are examined and it is concluded that subjects are mainly motivated by past payoff experience as opposed to the marketability considerations that the theory emphasizes

housing demand in the united states in the late nineteenth century evidence from the commissioner of labor survey 1889 1890 abstract this paper examines homeownership and housing demand for a sample of approximately 6800 urban industrial workers in the united states for the period 1889 1890 using data from the sixth and seventh annual reports of the u s commissioner of labor tenure choice and renter demand equations are estimated using both permanent and current income data limitations did not permit estimation of owner demand the results indicate lower homeownership rates among american workers circa 1890 than later and significant effects on ownership of income age of household head region industry occupation ethnicity and family size and composition rental prices and value rent ratios had effects in the expected directions partial and full elasticities calculated for renter demand reveal downward biases if only current income is used to estimate housing demand comparisons of these historical data to contemporary housing information reveal greater similarities to present day developing nations than to recent u s data the results indicate that modern housing demand theory performs well with historical data

gradualism in aid and reforms abstract dynamic strategic interaction between an international donor and a recipient government is analyzed to review the efficacy of aid conditionality for governance reforms in ldcs it is shown that irrespective of whether the donor can fully commit to the aid program or not for maximal improvement in governance the aid should be disbursed in increments with each subsequent tranche being conditional on prior reforms demonstrating aid gradualism while the attraction of future aid incentivizes authorities to push through reforms these reforms in turn also make aid diversion less feasible further under full commitment the optimal aid package may involve offering scope for interim aid diversion to the elite for long term improvement in governance with such aid diversion being more likely to happen when the total aid budget is large with only partial commitment so that time consistency requires the donor to reconfigure aid in each round it is shown that a interim aid diversion is no longer viable and b both aid and reforms exhibit strong gradualism or what is known as the starting small and grow later principle in commitment models

a dynamic equilibrium model of search production and exchange we study a general equilibrium model where agents search for production and trading opportunities that generalizes the existing literature by considering a large number of differentiated commodities and agents with idiosyncratic tastes thus agents must choose nontrivial exchange as well as production strategies we consider decreasing constant and increasing returns to scale in the matching technology and characterize the circumstances under which there exist multiple steady state equilibria or multiple dynamic equilibria for given initial conditions we also characterize the existence of dynamic equilibria that are limit cycles equilibria are not generally optimal and when multiple equilibria coexist they may be ranked we analyze comparative statics and find that certain intuitive results do not necessarily hold without restrictions on the stochastic structure

world product and income international comparisons of real gross product the volume reports on the third phase of the united nations international comparison project icp the main results provide comparisons of real gross domestic product gdp per capita for thirty four countries in 1975 quantity and price comparisons are given also for personal consumption capital formation and public consumption and further subdivisions of final expenditures on gdp are estimated

hedonic prices and the demand for housing attributes in a third world city the case of ibadan nigeria this paper estimates the demand functions for a set of housing attributes for the city of ibadan nigeria using rosen s two step estimation procedure the empirical results reveal that the most im