IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/juecon/v134y2023ics0094119022001036.html

Public housing spillovers: Evidence from South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Bradlow, Benjamin H.
  • Polloni, Stefano
  • Violette, William

Abstract

Can place-based policies promote urban development beyond their footprints? We estimate the spillover effects of public housing projects in South Africa by comparing changes near 166 projects that were successfully constructed to changes near 140 projects that were planned but not constructed. Constructed projects triple the amount of formal housing inside their footprints and lead to one new informal house being built for every three new formal houses. These effects extend beyond project footprints, with small increases in both formal and informal housing detected up to 500m from the targeted areas. The findings are consistent with projects generating positive housing externalities.

Suggested Citation

  • Bradlow, Benjamin H. & Polloni, Stefano & Violette, William, 2023. "Public housing spillovers: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:134:y:2023:i:c:s0094119022001036
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2022.103527
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001036
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jue.2022.103527?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Hornbeck & Daniel Keniston, 2017. "Creative Destruction: Barriers to Urban Growth and the Great Boston Fire of 1872," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(6), pages 1365-1398, June.
    2. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Pierre-Daniel Sarte & Raymond Owens, 2010. "Housing Externalities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(3), pages 485-535, June.
    3. repec:oup:qjecon:v:129:y:2013:i:1:p:275-331 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. David H. Autor & Christopher J. Palmer & Parag A. Pathak, 2014. "Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(3), pages 661-717.
    5. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Marion, Justin, 2009. "The effects of low income housing tax credit developments on neighborhoods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(5-6), pages 654-666, June.
    6. Matias Busso & Jesse Gregory & Patrick Kline, 2013. "Assessing the Incidence and Efficiency of a Prominent Place Based Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 897-947, April.
    7. Neumark, David & Simpson, Helen, 2015. "Place-Based Policies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1197-1287, Elsevier.
    8. Benjamin Marx & Thomas Stoker & Tavneet Suri, 2013. "The Economics of Slums in the Developing World," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(4), pages 187-210, Fall.
    9. Franklin, Simon, 2020. "Enabled to work: The impact of government housing on slum dwellers in South Africa," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    10. Picarelli, Nathalie, 2019. "There Is No Free House," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 35-52.
    11. Enrico Moretti, 2014. "Local Economic Development, Agglomeration Economies, and the Big Push: 100 Years of Evidence from the Tennessee Valley Authority," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 275-331.
    12. Mariaflavia Harari & Maisy Wong, 2018. "Slum Upgrading and Long-run Urban Development: Evidence from Indonesia," 2018 Meeting Papers 367, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. El-hadj M. Bah & Issa Faye & Zekebweliwai F. Geh, 2018. "Housing Market Dynamics in Africa," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-137-59792-2, April.
    14. Rebecca Diamond & Tim McQuade, 2019. "Who Wants Affordable Housing in Their Backyard? An Equilibrium Analysis of Low-Income Property Development," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1063-1117.
    15. Brueckner,Jan K. & Rabe,Claus & Selod,Harris, 2018. "Backyarding : Theory and Evidence for South Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8636, The World Bank.
    16. Guy Michaels & Dzhamilya Nigmatulina & Ferdinand Rauch & Tanner Regan & Neeraj Baruah & Amanda Dahlstrand, 2021. "Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long-Run Evidence from Tanzania," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(7), pages 2112-2156.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daiji Kawaguchi & Keisuke Kawata & Chigusa Okamoto, 2024. "Urban Redevelopment Program and Demand Externality," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-1227, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    2. Li, Keyang & Su, Shidong & Zhang, Fan & Zhang, Yanjiang, 2026. "Public housing and market segmentation: Evidence from the Joint Property Ownership scheme in China," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    3. Hofer, Katrin & Wicki, Michael & Kaufmann, David, 2024. "Public support for participation in local development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephen J. Redding & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2017. "Quantitative Spatial Economics," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 9(1), pages 21-58, September.
    2. Quincy, Sarah, 2022. "Income shocks and housing spillovers: Evidence from the World War I Veterans’ Bonus," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    3. Nicolás González-Pampillón & Jordi Jofre-Monseny & Elisabet Viladecans-Marsal, 2020. "Can urban renewal policies reverse neighborhood ethnic dynamics? [Urban renewal after the Berlin Wall: a place-based policy evaluation]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 419-457.
    4. Goeyvaerts, Geert, 2023. "Reconstructing cities: Stimulating redevelopment through the tax code," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    5. Ambrose, Brent W. & Valentin, Maxence, 2025. "Federal tax policy and the capitalization of local public goods," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    6. Guy Michaels & Dzhamilya Nigmatulina & Ferdinand Rauch & Tanner Regan & Neeraj Baruah & Amanda Dahlstrand, 2021. "Planning Ahead for Better Neighborhoods: Long-Run Evidence from Tanzania," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(7), pages 2112-2156.
    7. Divya Singh, 2020. "Do Property Tax Incentives for New Construction Spur Gentrification? Evidence from New York City," 2020 Papers psi856, Job Market Papers.
    8. Franklin, Simon, 2020. "Enabled to work: The impact of government housing on slum dwellers in South Africa," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    9. Blanco, Hector & Neri, Lorenzo, 2023. "Knocking It Down and Mixing It Up: The Impact of Public Housing Regenerations," IZA Discussion Papers 15855, IZA Network @ LISER.
    10. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Ferreira, Fernando, 2015. "Causal Inference in Urban and Regional Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 3-68, Elsevier.
    11. Jack Favilukis & Pierre Mabille & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2023. "Affordable Housing and City Welfare," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(1), pages 293-330.
    12. H. M. Posada & A. F. Garc�a & D Londo�o, 2022. "The external effects of public housing developments on informal housing: The case of Medellín, Colombia," Documentos de Trabajo 20416, Universidad del Rosario.
    13. Posada, Hector M. & García-Suaza, Andrés & Londoño, David, 2022. "The external effects of public housing developments on informal housing: The case of Medellín, Colombia," Working papers 98, Red Investigadores de Economía.
    14. González-Pampillón, Nicolás, 2022. "Spillover effects from new housing supply," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    15. Givord, Pauline & Quantin, Simon & Trevien, Corentin, 2018. "A long-term evaluation of the first generation of French urban enterprise zones," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 149-161.
    16. Hasan, Rana & Jiang, Yi & Rafols, Radine Michelle, 2021. "Place-based preferential tax policy and industrial development: Evidence from India’s program on industrially backward districts," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    17. Kitchens, Carl & Wallace, Cullen T., 2022. "The impact of place-based poverty relief: Evidence from the Federal Promise Zone Program," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    18. Tanrisever, Idil, 2025. "Spillover effects of accessory dwelling unit development," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    19. Steve Gibbons & Max Nathan & Henry G. Overman, 2014. "Evaluating Spatial Policies," SERC Policy Papers 012, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    20. Stephen J. Redding & Daniel M. Sturm, 2024. "Neighborhood Effects: Evidence from Wartime Destruction in London," Working Papers 322, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • O22 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Project Analysis
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • R3 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:juecon:v:134:y:2023:i:c:s0094119022001036. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622905 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.