This dissertation examines the impact of homeowners' associations, an increasingly
popular innovation in public service provision, on local governments and city residents.
An introductory chapter (Chapter 2) outlines the increasing role of the homeowners'
association in urban housing development. It overviews the history, motivation and
governance of homeowners' associations in American housing markets, and it compares
them to other methods of collective decision-making. As local governments have transferred
public authority to these private associations, homeowners' associations can be'
considered a form of residential private government.
The goal of the three papers of the thesis is to examine the interactions between residential
private governments, traditional local governments and city, residents. The first
paper (Chapter 3) identifies the impact that homeowners' association membership has
on local government expenditures. A key contribution is the construction of a thirty-year
panel data set of homeowners' associations in California. Estimation results suggest that
local governments have lowered their expenditures in response to the increasing membership
in private governments. However, the response differs depending on the public
service considered. Local governments download services that are highly substitutable
by private providers, such as garbage collection and parks, but they do not download
services with public good aspects, such as roads and government administration.
The second paper (Chapter 4) studies property tax limitations as a motivation for
why homeowners' associations have become so popular. The paper is structured in two
parts. In the first part, a theoretical model examines how the decision of whether to join
a homeowners' association may be altered by the imposition of a property tax limitation.
In the second part, an empirical model tests the theoretical implications by using data
on homeowners' associations in the era of California's Proposition 13.
The third paper (Chapter 5) extends the canonical theoretical model of private government
by introducing a housing market. Equilibrium is described in terms of the interaction
between homeowners, the homeowners' association and the local government.
The relative elasticities of housing and of public goods play a key role in interpreting
the equilibrium conditions. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/18524 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Cheung, Ronnie King Gi |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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