Cronin, Francis J. 1983. "The Efficiency of Demand-Orientated Housing Programs: Generalizing from Experimental Findings." Journal of Human Resources 18(1):100-125.

Typical production-oriented housing programs offer potential recipients a highly limited set of previously unattainable commodity bundles. From the household's viewpoint, such programs have been highly inefficient. From society's viewpoint, such housing programs are generally horizontally inequitable and inefficient. Given that housing programs are not likely to be fully cashed out and incorporated into general income maintenance, could housing programs be restructured to increase their efficiency? This paper examines this question. Results indicate that demand-oriented housing programs are substantially more efficient than are production-oriented programs. In fact, in the aggregate, the former programs approach unrestricted cash payments in their transfer efficiency.

The author is Senior Research Economist, Batelle, Pacific Northwest Laboratory.
Research for this paper was completed while the author was a Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Funds were provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (Contract 2162R-T030), the Urban Institute, and the Pacific Northwest Laboratory. The author thanks Douglas Brown and Edgar O. Olsen for their insights on earlier versions of this work and three anonymous referees for their many helpful comments on this manuscript. In addition, the author thanks Susan Dubin and David Toney, Group Operations, Inc., for their expert programming assistance.

© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

US ISSN 0022-166X

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