Is Accra a Superstar City?

Buckley, Robert M. ; Mathema, Ashna S.

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ADVERSE EFFECTS;    ADVERSE SELECTION;    AFFORDABLE HOUSING;    ANNUAL INFLATION RATE;    ASSET PRICING;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4453
RP-ID  :  WPS4453

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

A recent study of house price behaviorin U.S. cities by Gyourko, Mayer, and Sinai (2006) raisesquestions about so-called superstar cities in which housingis so inelastically supplied that it becomes unaffordable,as higher-income families outbid residents.We consider thecase of Accra, Ghana, in this light, estimating theelasticity of housing supply and discussing the implicationsfor growth and income distribution. There is not a greatdeal of data available to examine trends in Accra, so ourmethod is indirect.First, we use a variant of thetraditional monocentric city model to calculate theelasticity of Accra's housing supply relative to thoseof other similarly-sized African cities.This suggests thathousing supply responsiveness is much higher elsewhere.This muted supply responsiveness is consistent with theobserved higher housing prices.Second, we estimate anumber of traditional housing demand equations and reducedform equations.Placing a number of restrictions on theequations allows us to infer Accra's housing supplyelasticity. Taken together, our approaches suggest thatlower-income families in Accra have such poor housingconditions because the market is extremely unresponsive todemand.Although the outcomes we have traced-high housingprices and low quality-are not unusual relative to the otherdeveloped country superstar cities, they are extreme.Thewelfare costs are considerable, so much so that in additionto direct housing market effects, these policies also appearto have potentially significant implications for theachievement of more equitable growth.