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Abstract:
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"Housing is one of the most important goods we consume daily. Most people spend most their time in their houses each day. The location of your house affects many other aspects of your life. It constrains your choice of your children's schools. It also determines how much time you have to spend commuting to your place of work everyday. In most market-oriented societies, the bulk of housing is provided by the private sectors. However, in most of these societies, governments also play an important role in regulating the housing markets. Some government even directly provide housing for part of their populations. This paper aims at examining the proper role of collective or governmental actions in housing. It is the basic contention of this paper that housing is a good with multiple characteristics, such as structural features, locations and neighborhood. Different households may have different preference orderings of these characteristics. Since demands for some of these characteristics of housing may not be best satisfied through markets, some collective or governmental actions may be necessary. However, since the nature of each of these characteristics may differ from the others, complex institutional arrangements may be required to satisfy housing needs and demands. This paper First discusses some characteristics of housing. Next, some institutional considerations regarding housing are introduced. Then three housing issues ? building regulations, housing subsidies and urban renewal -- are discussed briefly to highlight how different institutional arrangements may be used to tackle different kinds of housing problems."
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