TY - BOOK ID - 134357232 TI - Is Accra A Superstar City? AU - Buckley, Robert M. AU - Mathema, Ashna S. PY - 2008 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Adverse Effects KW - Banks and Banking Reform KW - Communities & Human Settlements KW - Development Economics KW - Economic Theory and Research KW - Economics KW - Elasticity KW - Equations KW - Gross Domestic Product KW - Housing and Human Habitats KW - Income KW - Income Groups KW - Inflation Rate KW - Macroeconomics and Economic Growth KW - Markets and Market Access KW - Public Sector Management and Reform KW - Underestimates UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:134357232 AB - A recent study of house price behavior in U.S. cities by Gyourko, Mayer, and Sinai (2006) raises questions about so-called superstar cities in which housing is so inelastically supplied that it becomes unaffordable, as higher-income families outbid residents. We consider the case of Accra, Ghana, in this light, estimating the elasticity of housing supply and discussing the implications for growth and income distribution. There is not a great deal of data available to examine trends in Accra, so our method is indirect. First, we use a variant of the traditional monocentric city model to calculate the elasticity of Accra's housing supply relative to those of other similarly-sized African cities. This suggests that housing supply responsiveness is much higher elsewhere. This muted supply responsiveness is consistent with the observed higher housing prices. Second, we estimate a number of traditional housing demand equations and reduced form equations. Placing a number of restrictions on the equations allows us to infer Accra's housing supply elasticity. Taken together, our approaches suggest that lower-income families in Accra have such poor housing conditions because the market is extremely unresponsive to demand. Although the outcomes we have traced-high housing prices and low quality-are not unusual relative to the other developed country superstar cities, they are extreme. The welfare costs are considerable, so much so that in addition to direct housing market effects, these policies also appear to have potentially significant implications for the achievement of more equitable growth. ER -