Urban Density and Covid-19
This paper estimates the link between population density and COVID-19 spread and severity in the contiguous United States. To overcome confounding factors, we use two Instrumental Variable (IV) strategies that [...]
The New State Zoning: Land Use Preemption Amid a Housing Crisis
Commentators have long decried the pernicious effects that overly restrictive land use regulations, which stifle new development, have on housing supply and affordability, regional and national economic growth, social mobility, [...]
Zoned Out: How Zoning Law Undermines Family Law’s Functional Turn
A fatal conflict in the legal definition of family lurks at the intersection of family law and zoning law. Family law doctrines have increasingly embraced the claims of “functional families”—those [...]
Do the Poor Pay More for Housing? Exploitation, Profit and Risk in Rental Markets
This article examines tenant exploitation and landlord profit margins within residential rental markets. Defining exploitation as being overcharged relative to the market value of a property, the authors find exploitation [...]
Gentrification and pioneer businesses
We study gentrification at a micro-geographic scale using information on residents and businesses in New York from 1990 to 2010. We exploit atypical location decisions of businesses to identify the [...]
Do Land Use Restrictions Increase Restaurant Quality and Diversity?
There is significant evidence that restrictions on residential land use reduce housing supply, increase house prices, and limit inflows of low‐income households. Local decision‐makers often argue that their efforts are [...]
Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability
Growing numbers of affordable housing advocates and community members are questioning the premise that increasing the supply of market-rate housing will result in housing that is more affordable. This article [...]
Upzoning Chicago: Impacts of a Zoning Reform on Property Values and Housing Construction
What are the local-level impacts of zoning change? I study recent Chicago upzonings that increased allowed densities and reduced parking requirements in a manner exogenous of development plans and neighborhood [...]
Beyond the Double Veto: Land Use Plans as Preemptive Intergovernmental Compacts
The problem of local-government barriers to housing supply is finally enjoying its moment in the sun. For decades, the states did little to remedy this problem and arguably they made [...]
Reducing and Preventing Homelessness: A Review of the Evidence and Charting a Research Agenda
Homelessness may be both a cause of and one of the more extreme outcomes of poverty. Governments at all levels have a variety of tools to combat homelessness, and these [...]