Abstract
Economists define market failure in a very specific way: market failure occurs when the allocation of a good or service by the free market is inefficient. In theory, competitive markets provide the conditions required for economic efficiency in production and consumption, as well as in exchange. Cities are generally viewed as being subject to market failures, with numerous situations where competitive markets do not work and where natural monopoly, externalities and public goods are commonly found. Government intervention, which is often justified on the grounds of efficiency, is supposed to result in an improvement in welfare for each of these traditional instances of market failure. Cities are also locations where poverty is often concentrated and where government intervention on grounds of equity, human rights and social justice is often called for. However, the presence of some form of market failure does not always justify government intervention. Taking into account regulatory, administrative and compliance costs, as well as the possibility of government failure, the outcome of an intervention may not always be superior to nonintervention.
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Notes
Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier (London: Macmillan, 2011), p. 148.
For literature review, see Sock-Yong Phang, “Affordable Homeownership Policy: Implications for Housing Markets”, International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2010, pp. 38–52. 3. From President George W. Bush’s address at the White House Conference, “Increasing Minority Homeownership”, George Washington University, 15 October 2002 (http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news /releases/2002/10/20021015–7.html).
Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story 1965–2000 (Singapore Press Holdings, 2000), p. 117. 5. For a review of the US literature linking homeownership to social outcomes, see Dwight Jaffee and John Quigley, “The Future of the Government Sponsored Enterprises: The Role of Government in the US Mortgage Market” (NBER working paper 17685, 2011). Most of the research supports some positive effects but does not conclude that the effect is very large.
Richard Groves, Alan Murie and Christopher Watson (eds.), Housing and the New Welfare State (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007).
See, for example, William Wheaton, “Vacancy, Search and Prices in a Housing Market Matching Model”, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 98, No. 6, 1990, pp. 1270–1292.
Koichi Mera and Bertrand Renaud (eds.), Asia’s Financial Crisis and the Role of Real Estate (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), p. 285.
Steven C. Bourassa and Martin Hoesli, “Why Do the Swiss Rent?” Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Vol. 40, No. 3, 2010, pp. 286–309.
For a comparative study of rental market, see Jim Kemeny, From Public Housing to the Social Market (London: Routledge, 1994).
Dan Hara, “Market Failures and the Optimal Use of Brownfield Redevelopment Policy Instruments” (Hara Associates Reference 1435, paper presented at the Canadian Economics Association 37th annual meeting, 2003).
Eddo Coiacetto, “Real Estate Development Industry: Is It Competitive and Why?” (Griffith University, Brisbane, Urban Research Program Research Paper 10, 2006).
James D. Shilling and Tien Foo Sing, “Why Is the Real Estate Market an Oligopoly?” (paper presented at the Annual ASSA-AREUEA Conference, Boston, 2006).
Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879, reprinted London: Kegan Paul, Tench & Co., 1886).
The distinction between the two is made by Karl E. Case, “Taxes and Speculative Behavior in Land and Real Estate Markets”, Review of Urban and Regional Development Studies, Vol. 4, 1992, pp. 226–239.
See Sock-Yong Phang, “Hong Kong and Singapore”. In Robert V. Andelson (ed.), Land Value Taxation Around the World, 3rd ed., (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 337–352.
Garrett J. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”, Science, Vol. 162, No. 3859, 1968, pp. 1243–1248.
The book by Andrew Alpern and Seymour Durst, New York’s Architectural Holdouts (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1997), examines over 50 examples of New York City holdouts.
Thomas J. Miceli and C. F. Sirmans, “The Holdout Problem, Urban Sprawl, and Eminent Domain”, Journal of Housing Economics, Vol. 16, 2007, pp. 309–319.
See an insightful treatment of gridlock in sectors requiring the assembly of separately owned resources — high tech, biomedicine, music, film, and real estate — by Michael Heller, The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives (New York: Basic Books, 2008). Chapter 5 provides details as to how the New York Times obtained its Times Square site.
Ibid., pp. 118–121 for Heller’s proposal of land assembly districts as a solution to real estate gridlock.
Ibid., pp. 131–141.
For details, see generally Ole Johan Dale, Urban Planning in Singapore: The Transformation of a City (Malaysia: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Ibid.
Sock-Yong Phang, “Government and Private Sector Roles in Inner City Redevelopment: The Case of Singapore” (paper presented at Seoul International Seminar on Real Estate, 7–8 December 2005, organized by the Korea Housing Association and Korean Ministry of Construction and Transportation).
Alice Christudason, “Private Sector Housing Redevelopment in Singapore: A Review of the Effectiveness of Radical Strata Title Legislation” (paper presented at the ENHR Conference, Cambridge, UK, July 2004).
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Phang, SY. (2013). Market Failures. In: Housing Finance Systems. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137014030_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137014030_3
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