10. This is the case even though all the quantity changes described here are direct effects. If the project were to trigger new investments in the area, then making these projections would become harder and projections would be subject to greater uncertainty. 11. This refers to involuntary unemployment, so is not analogous to underdeveloped land. The labor market analogue of bringing unutilized land into use would be an increase in the labor force participation rate. 12. The discussion is based on a Project Performance Evaluation Report (PPER) prepared by the African Development Bank for the AfDB-funded Trans-Kgalagadi Road Project (AfDB 2011). 13. World Bank staff, personal communication. 14. See Duranton and Puga (2014) for an extensive review of this literature. 15. Many countries do not have a uniform system of land rights. In some African countries, they are administered by customary chiefs, many systems of rights coexist uneasily, and the trade of property assets is heavily restricted within a group (Durand-Lasserve, Durand-Lasserve, and Selod 2015). 16. Using national accounts for a large cross-section of countries, Dasgupta, Lall, and Lorenzo-Gracia (2014) show that housing investment as a fraction of GDP per capita is S-shaped and takes off at about $3,000, before tapering off at about $36,000. Low-income countries invest only about half what upper-middle-income countries invest in housing as a fraction of their GDP. Housing is often considered to be a normal good that experiences an increase in its demand due to a rise in consumers’ income. However, it appears to be a luxury good at low levels of development. Thus, a 2 percent increase per year for housing expenditure at the household level is perhaps a conservative estimate in a low-income but growing economy. A 2 percent per year growth in population exceeds the level observed in the recent past in Latin America but seems very conservative for large African cities and some parts of Asia, including India.
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