Estimating Ethnic Preferences Using Ethnic Housing Quotas in Singapore

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wong, Maisy
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdt002
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 1178-1214
• 关键词: discrete-choice; models; identification; neighborhood; segregation; PRODUCTS; enclaves; location; moments; demand

摘要

This article estimates people's taste for living with own-ethnic-group neighbours using variation from a natural experiment in Singapore: ethnic housing quotas. I develop a location choice model that informs the use of policy variation from the quotas to address endogeneity issues well known in the social interactions literature. I assembled a dataset on neighbourhood-level ethnic proportions by matching more than 500,000 names in the phonebook to ethnicities. I find that all groups want to live with some own-ethnic-group neighbours but they also exhibit inverted U-shaped preferences so that once a neighbourhood has enough own ethnic neighbours, they would rather add a new neighbour from other groups. Welfare simulations show that about 30% of the neighbourhoods are within one standard deviation of the first-best allocation of ethnic groups.