Can Public Housing Trigger Industrialization?

Abstract

The impact of public housing plans on local development is a neglected, although potentially important, issue. Here, we consider the impact of a public housing supply shock in a spatial equilibrium model and show that a larger local availability of houses can trigger industrialization by raising the number of residents. Also, the model suggests that this mechanism is stronger in places that exhibited, prior to the public housing plan, relatively higher population density. These implications are confirmed by the evidence we find from the INA-Casa plan, a program implemented by the Italian government in the aftermath of WWII.