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By Maisy Wong

 
There are many policies around the world designed to encourage ethnic desegregation in housing markets. In Chicago, the Gautreaux Project (the predecessor of the Moving To Opportunity program) offered rent subsidies to African American residents of public housing who wanted to move to desegregated areas. Germany, the United Kingdom, and Netherlands, impose strict restrictions on where refugee immigrants can settle. Many countries also have “integration maintenance programs” or “neighborhood stabilization programs” to encourage desegregation. These policies are often controversial as they are alleged to favor some ethnic groups at the expense of others. Regardless of the motivation behind these policies, knowing the welfare effects is important because these desegregation policies affect the location choices of many individuals.

I am interested in one such desegregation policy in Singapore: the ethnic housing quotas. Using location choices, I analyzed how heterogeneous households sort into neighborhoods as the ethnic proportions in the neighborhood change. To do this at such a local level I had to assemble a dataset of ethnic proportions by hand-matching more than 500,000 names to ethnicities using the Singapore residential phonebook.

The ethnic housing quotas policy in Singapore is a fascinating natural experiment. It was implemented in public housing estates in 1989 to encourage residential desegregation amongst the three major ethnic groups in Singapore: Chinese (77%), Malays (14%), and Indians (8%). The quotas are upper limits on the proportions of Chinese, Malays, and Indians at a location. Locations with ethnic proportions that are at or above the quota limits are subjected to restrictions designed to prevent these locations from becoming more segregated. For example, non-Chinese sellers living in Chinese-constrained locations are not allowed to sell to Chinese buyers because this transaction increases the Chinese proportion and makes the location more segregated.

Using transactions data close to the quota limits and controlling for polynomials of ethnic proportions calculated using the phonebook, I documented price dispersion across ethnic groups that is consistent with theoretical predictions of the policy’s impact. The findings suggest a model where Chinese and non-Chinese buyers have different preferences for Chinese neighborhoods.

Indeed, my estimates show that all groups have strong preferences for living with members of their own ethnic group but the shapes of the preferences are very different across the three ethnic groups. All groups have ethnic preferences that are inverted U-shaped but with different turning points. This means that once a neighborhood has enough members of their own ethnic group, households want new neighbors from other ethnic groups. Finding tastes for diversity and differences in the shapes of ethnic preferences is consistent with previous research using data on racial attitudes from the General Social Survey in the United States and also surveys of ethnic relations in Singapore.

I used these estimates of ethnic preferences to perform welfare simulations. The seminal work by Thomas Schelling on tipping showed that externalities exist in a model with ethnic preferences because a mover affects the utility of his current and future neighbors by changing the ethnic composition of the neighborhood. Due to these externalities, Schelling showed that policies such as the ethnic quotas could potentially be used as a coordination mechanism to achieve equilibrium with integrated neighborhoods. My welfare estimates show that under the quota policy, about one-third of neighborhoods are close to the optimal allocation of Chinese, Malays, and Indians respectively.

Maisy Wong is Assistant Professor in Real Estate at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania. Her paper, ‘Estimating Ethnic Preferences Using Ethnic Housing Quotas in Singapore’ can be read in full and for free in The Review of Economic Studies.

The Review of Economic Studies aims to encourage research in theoretical and applied economics, especially by young economists. It is widely recognised as one of the core top-five economics journal, with a reputation for publishing path-breaking papers, and is essential reading for economists.

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Image credit: HDB flats at Tampines New Town. By Terence Ong. [Creative Commons], via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Do people tend to live within their own ethnic groups? appeared first on OUPblog.

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By Christine Mallin

In late February, Lord Davies’ report on ‘Women on Boards’ was published.

The report was awaited with much speculation especially as to whether he would recommend quotas whereby listed companies would have to have a certain proportion of female board members.  Brian Groom reported that Lord Davies, had rejected quotas and that ‘only 11 per cent of submissions were in favour of quotas and the vast majority of women were vehemently opposed’ to quotas.  The report stated that ‘we have chosen not to recommend quotas because we believe that board appointments should be made on the basis of business needs, skills and ability’.

From their consultation, the report identified that ‘the informal networks influential in board appointments, the lack of transparency around selection criteria and the way in which executive search firms operate, were together considered to make up a significant barrier to women reaching boards.’ Aiming to improve the situation and increase the number of women on boards, the report has made ten recommendations including, inter alia, that FTSE 100 companies should aim for a minimum of 25% female representation by 2015 and that all Chairman of FTSE 350 companies should set out the percentage of women they aim to have on their boards in 2013 and 2015; quoted companies should be required to disclose each year the proportion of women on the board, women in senior executive positions and female employees in the whole organisation; the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) should amend the UK Corporate Governance Code to require listed companies to establish a policy concerning boardroom diversity, including measurable objectives for implementing the policy, and disclose annually a summary of the policy and the progress made in achieving the objectives; investors to pay attention to the report’s recommendations as part of their central role in engaging with companies; and executive search firms should draw up a Voluntary Code of Conduct addressing gender diversity and best practice which covers the relevant search criteria and processes relating to FTSE 350 board level appointments. Moreover this steering board led by Lord Davies will meet every six months to consider progress against these measures and will report annually with an assessment of whether sufficient progress is being made.

Companies themselves can provide support and encouragement through mentoring schemes.  Executive recruiters (or ‘headhunters’) also have a role to play as Gill Plimmer and Alison Smith report in their article ‘Agencies to help break glass ceiling’.  The pressure is on for headhunters to put forward more women candidates to companies for consideration for board positions.

Internationally, some countries have quotas, others do not.  As Joe Leahy reports, women executives may find it easier to climb up the corporate promotions ladder in Brazil but getting to the top rung can still be very difficult. For example, in Brazil the percentage of women board directors is only 8%, and to be appointed to the CEO position is even more difficult. In the European context, Daniel Schäfer and Peggy Hollinger point out that in 2010 only 2.2 per cent of executive board members at Germany’s 30 blue-chip DAX companies were women. They also highlight that in Germa