In whose backyards has D.C. built new housing?
Like many large metropolitan areas, the Washington D.C. region faces a housing supply crunch. From 2010 to 2016, the population grew roughly twice as fast as the number of housing [...]
Perspectives: Practitioners Weigh in on Drivers of Rising Housing Construction Costs in San Francisco
In this brief, we present findings from interviews and focus groups with developers, general contractors, architects and nonprofits working to build both affordable and market-rate housing in San Francisco. The [...]
The Steep Cost of Using Noncumulative Zoning to Preserve Land for Urban Manufacturing
In this Article, we argue that non-cumulative zoning is an idea whose time has passed, if there ever was a convincing case for it at all. The two major justifications [...]
Removing Barriers to Accessing High-Productivity Places
Regulatory constraints on housing production have shut millions of Americans out of the country’s most productive labor markets. Historically, Americans have moved to the parts of the country that offered [...]
The Effect of High-Tech Clusters on the Productivity of Top Inventors
The high-tech sector is increasingly concentrated in a small number of expensive cities, with the top ten cities in “Computer Science”, “Semiconductors” and “Biology and Chemistry”, accounting for 70%, 79% [...]
Who Benefits From Productivity Growth? Direct and Indirect Effects of Local TFP Growth on Wages, Rents, and Inequality
We estimate the local and aggregate effects of total factor productivity growth on US workers' earnings, housing costs, and purchasing power. Drawing on four alternative instrumental variables, we consistently find [...]
Location as an Asset
The location of individuals determines their job opportunities, living amenities, and housing costs. We argue that it is useful to conceptualize the location choice of individuals as a decision to [...]
The Economic Costs of Land Use Regulations
Land is among the most valuable assets in the United States, and its value is a function of how we use land and what we build on it. According to [...]
Improving America’s Housing, 2019
The U.S. market for home improvement and repair is now well over $400 billion annually as the housing stock faces pressure to meet the nation's growing and changing housing needs. [...]
Homelessness and Housing Market Regulation
This chapter explores the potential importance of local housing market regulation in determining homelessness in the U.S. I begin with a theoretical discussion of the connection between the operation of [...]