Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T01:43:17.683Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Housing Policy: Towards a Public Choice Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Martin Ricketts
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Economics, The University College at Buckingham

Extract

Few commentators on the state of the housing market in the UK express satisfaction at the outcome of public policy in this field. From widely differing ideological presuppositions and with divergent views as to causes and cures, researchers nevertheless tend to agree that past policies have failed. This dissatisfaction arguably stems from the departure of housing policy from commonly held views about appropriate objectives. Housing policy is usually viewed as a response to some variety of ‘market failure’ or as a means of income redistribution. In the nineteenth century, externalities of a public health nature were important in encouraging the state to concern itself in the housing market, while the twentieth century has seen growing state involvement ostensibly as a response to so-called ‘distributional externalities’ or possibly on the grounds that housing service represents a ‘merit good’.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aaron, H. J. (1966) Rent controls and urban development: a case study of Mexico City, Social and Economic Studies, 12, 314–28.Google Scholar
Aaron, H. J. (1972) Shelter and Subsidies; Who Benefits from Federal Housing Policies? Washington DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Barlow, R. (1970) Efficiency aspects of local school finance, Journal of Political Economy, 78, 1028–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, J. and Davis, O. A. (1966) An elementary political and economic theory of expenditures of local governments, Southern Economic Journal, 33, 149–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barzel, Y. (1973) Private schools and public school finance, Journal of Political Economy, 33, 149–65.Google Scholar
Bergstrom, T. C. and Goodman, R. P. (1973) Private demands for public goods, American Economic Review, 63, 280–96.Google Scholar
Bernholz, P. (1966) Economic policies in a democracy, Kyklos, 19, 4880.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boaden, N. (1971) Urban Policy Making. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bowley, M. E. A. (1945) Housing and the State. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Breton, A. (1974) The Economic Theory of Representative Government. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Breton, A. and Scott, A. (1978) The Economic Constitution of Federal States. Canberra: Australian National University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crosland, A. (1975) The finance of housing, Housing Review, September-October.Google Scholar
Cullingworth, J. B. (1979) Essays on Housing Policy: The British Scene. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Downs, A. (1957) An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Fiorina, M. P. and Noll, R. G. (1978) Voters, bureaucrats and legislators: a rational choice perspective on the growth of bureaucracy, Journal of Public Economics, 9, 239–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankena, M. (1975) Alternative models of rent control, Urban Studies, 12, 303–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Housing Policy: A Consultative Document (1977) Cmnd 6851. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Laidler, D. (1969) Income tax incentives for owner-occupied housing. In Harberger, A. C. and Bailey, M. J. (eds.), The Taxation of Income from Capital. Washington: Brookings Institution, 5076.Google Scholar
Macrae, N. (1960) To Let?, Hobart Paper 2. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.Google Scholar
Merrett, S. (1979) State Housing in Britain, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Mueller, D. C. (1979) Public Choice. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nevitt, A. A. (1966) Housing, Taxation and Subsidies. London: Nelson.Google Scholar
Niskanen, W. A. (1971) Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.Google Scholar
Olsen, E. O. (1969) A competitive theory of the housing market, American Economic Review, 59, 612–22.Google Scholar
Olsen, E. O. (1972) An econometric analysis of rent control, Journal of Political Economy, 12, 1081–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olson, M. (1965) The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phelps, Brown E. H. and Wiseman, J. (1964) A Course in Applied Economics, 2nd Edition. London: Pitman.Google Scholar
Pommerehne, W. W. (1978) Institutional approaches to public expenditure: empirical evidence from Swiss municipalities, Journal of Public Economics, 9, 255–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pommerehne, W. W. and Frey, B. S. (1976) Two approaches to estimating public expenditures, Public Finance Quarterly, 4, 395407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ricketts, M. J. (1980) The Political Economy of Rented Housing in the U.K. Unpublished D. Phil. Thesis, University of York.Google Scholar
Robinson, R. (1979) Housing Economics and Public Policy. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, L. (1975) The Nature of Council House Subsidies. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. University of Essex.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, L. (1977) The regional and income distribution of the council house subsidy in the United Kingdom, The Manchester School, 45, 127–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stafford, C. (1978) The Economics of Housing Policy. London: Croom-Helm.Google Scholar
Starratt, P. E. and Spann, R. M. (1974) Dealing with the U.S. natural gas shortage. In Erickson, E. W. and Waverman, L. (eds.), The Energy Question, 2546. University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Turvey, Ralph (1957) The Economics of Real Property. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
White, M. J. and White, L. J. (1977) The tax subsidy to owner-occupied housing: who benefits?, Journal of Public Economics, 3, 111–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar