• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.159-175
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• 2007

It is widely accepted that public rental housing programs affect both the allocation of resources and the distribution of welfare. This paper explains institutional arrangements of public housing program in Korea and assesses the benefits of the program. In contrast to the previous studies which employed homothetic preferences, the benefits of the public housing were estimated based on non-homothetic preferences to allow for different income effects across households. Empirical results suggest that average benefit-cost ratio of public housing program is 0.91, and hence, the deadweight loss seems to be well-contained in Korean public housing program compared to other countries. However, the distribution of the benefits reveals that the transmission of the benefits should be improved to achieve the desired goals of residential welfare for low income families.