Much empirical work has been undertaken on housing production, investment levels and on the changes necessary to increase the supply of housing at a national level. The implicit assumption in these perspectives, that owners buy and sell housing as an adjustment process, is not realised in all housing markets around the world. In fact, in a number of developing countries houses are seldom bought or sold: one such country is Ghana. Here traditional economic perspectives on modelling an owner's decision to extend by comparing it with his decision to sell and move are largely irrelevant. This paper seeks to make a contribution to the analysis of housing supply by developing a housing extension model for the Asante culture in Ghana. The model is evaluated in a two-step econometric analysis of the decision to extend. In the first stage the probability of extending is modelled as a function of household characteristics, while the second stage predicts the amount spent on the extension.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Amole, B., Korboe, D.T. and Tipple, A.G. (1993) The family house in West Africa: a forgotten resource for policy makers?, Third World Planning Review, 15, pp. 355-372.
2.
De Dombal, F.T. (1984) Computer-aided diagnosis of acute abdominal pain: the British experience, Revue d'Epidemiologie et de Sant'e Publique, 32 pp. 50-56.
3.
Goodman, J.L. (1976) Housing consumption disequilibrium and local residential mobility, Environment and Planning A, 8, pp. 855-874.
4.
Greene, W.H. (1989) LIMDEP Version 5.1. New York : Econometric Software, Inc.
5.
Heckman, J.J. (1976) The common structure of statistical models of truncation, sample selection and limited dependent variables and a simple estimator for such models, Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, 5, pp. 475-492.
6.
Heckman, J.J. (1979) Sample selection bias as a specification error , Econometrica, 47, pp. 153-160.
7.
Jibir, S. (1985) Housing provision and housing needs in Abuja, Nigeria. Unpublished MPhil dissertation, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
8.
Korboe, D.T. (1993) The low-income housing system in Kumasi: an empirical examination of two neighbourhoods. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
9.
McCaskie, T.C. (1986) Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history: the twentieth century, Africa, 56, pp. 3-23.
10.
Malpezzi, S.J., Tipple, A.G. and Willis, K.G. (1990) Costs and benefits of rent control: a case study in Kumasi, Ghana. World Bank Discussion Paper No. 74, The World Bank, Washington, DC.
11.
Manski, C. and McFadden, D. (Eds) (1981) Structural Analysis of Discrete Data with Econometric Applications. Boston: MIT Press.
12.
Mendelsohn, R. (1977) Empirical evidence on home improvements, Journal of Urban Economics, 4, pp. 459-468.
13.
Potepan, M.J. (1989) Interest rates, income, and home improvement decisions , Journal of Urban Economics, 25, pp. 282-294.
14.
Price, R.M. (1974) Politics and culture in contemporary Ghana: the big-man, small-boy syndrome, Journal of African Studies, 1, pp. 175 et seq.
15.
Seek, N.H. (1983) Adjusting housing consumption: improve or move, UrbanStudies, 20, pp. 455-469.
16.
Shear, W.B. (1983) Urban housing rehabilitation and move decisions , Southern Economic Journal, 49, pp. 1030-1052.
17.
Storey, D., Keasey, K., Watson, R. and Wy-Narczyk, P. (1987) The Performance of Small Firms. London: Croom Helm.
18.
Tipple, A.G. (1984) Towards a culturally acceptable housing strategy: the case of Kumasi, Ghana. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
19.
Tipple, A.G. (1987) Housing policy and culture in Kumasi, Ghana: a study of constraints and resources, Environment and Behavior , 19, pp. 331-352.
20.
Tipple, A.G. and Willis, K.G. (1991) Tenure choice in a West African city, Third World Planning Review, 13, pp. 27-45.
21.
Tipple, A.G. and Willis, K.G. (1992) Why should Ghanaians build houses in urban areas?Cities, February, pp. 60-74.
22.
Wilks, I. (1975) Asante in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23.
Willis, K.G. and Tipple, A.G. (1991) Economics of multihabitation: housing conditions, household occupancy and household structure under rent control, inflation and nonmarketability of ownership rights, World Development , 19, pp. 1705-1720.
24.
Ziegert, A.L. (1988) The demand for housing additions: an empirical analysis, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association , 16, pp. 479-492.
