The effects of public housing on internal mobility in Hong Kong

The rationing of public housing reduces the efficiency of the match between public housing units and their occupants, as competing users cannot effectively convey their preferences through a price mechanism. This study investigates the costs of public housing from the perspective of the misallocation of housing units to households and examines how this misallocation affects their lives. We show that public housing occupants are less mobile than private housing occupants, but conditional on moving, they are more likely to relocate farther away from their original place of residence. They are also less likely to work in the same place as they live.