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Paul Cheshire.

Paul Cheshire

Associate

Expertise: urban economics, real estate economics, economics of land use

Telephone:
020 7955 7586
Email:
p.cheshire@lse.ac.uk
Links:
CEP Community Wellbeing
CEP Urban
LSE Department of Geography and Environment

Biography

Professor Paul Cheshire, CBE, is Professor Emeritus of Economic Geography at LSE. He was a member of the Board of the National Housing & Planning Advice Unit and of two of the DCLG former Expert Panels and continues to act regularly as a consultant to the MHCLG. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics and won the Royal Economic Society's Best Paper prize in 2005 and the EIB-ERSA Prize in 2009.

Current areas of research include:

  • Economics effects of land use regulation: the determinants of the rate of site-build out
  • COVID, the housing market and inequality

Publications

CEP discussion papers
Valuing consumption services as technology transforms accessibility: Evidence from Beijing

Home delivery reduced the value of cities as locations to access variety in durable consumption goods. Food delivery services (FDS) are doing the same for restaurants. Home-streaming of sports or home-delivered restauran... Read more...

Ying Chen, Paul Cheshire, Xiangqing Wang and You-Sin Wang

11 September 2024

Blog
Labour's planning reforms - how to make housing targets work

Labour promised serious reforms to the planning system while in opposition. What it has proposed now that it's in Government, including reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework, is very far from a fundamental re... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

19 August 2024

Blog
Labour's planning reforms - building on grey belts and missed opportunities

Perhaps the proposal that people are most aware of when it comes to Labour's planning reform plans, the one that hit the headlines, is the idea of potentially re-defining small areas of green belts as "grey belt land". T... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

19 August 2024

Blog
The Green Belt: Fields forever? (podcast)

Ros Taylor talks to LSE professor Paul Cheshire and journalist Jonn Elledge about the problems facing Labour as it tries to persuade Britons of the need for more housing and infrastructure. And Paul Cheshire sets out a p... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Jonn Elledge and Ros Taylor

16 July 2024

CEP election analysis papers
Housing and planning

The housing affordability crisis not only restricts access to decent housing, or housing at all, but it has adverse effects on equality, social cohesion, retirement planning, productivity and economic growth.... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

25 June 2024

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
The economic costs of the failing planning system

Paul Cheshire began to investigate the economic effects of the UK’s planning system 40 years ago. Here he draws on a recent public lecture – and panel discussion with Stephen Aldridge, Kate Barker and Simon Wolfson – to ... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

20 June 2024

External publications
Labour Economics: Thinking through Labour's economic agenda

With the Labour Party having vowed to achieve the fastest growth in the G7, the Social Market Foundation has brought together leading economic experts to provide independent analysis of the party's proposed approach - an... Read more...

Timothy Besley, Aveek Bhattacharya, Jagjit Chadha, Paul Cheshire, Neil Lee, Alan Manning, Andrew McNeil, Margarida Bandeira Morais, Henry G. Overman, David Soskice, Anna Valero, Giles Wilkes and Alison Wolf

22 April 2024

CEP discussion papers
Why delay? Understanding the construction lag, aka the build out rate

We explore the determinants of the speed of residential development after dwelling construction starts. Using a sample of over 140,000 residential developments in England from 1996 to 2015 and employing an instrumental v... Read more...

Michael Ball, Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Xiaolun Yu

15 April 2024

Journal article
An International Perspective on the U.S. Zoning System

Zoning (or planning) has important functions. Markets play a fundamental role in efficiently allocating urban land (Bertaud, 2018), but there are endemic problems of market failure. There are also conflicts of interest i... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

01 January 2024

Blog
Planning may be a political hot potato but radical reform cannot wait

Planning - largely because of the cruel growth in the unaffordability of housing - has risen up the political agenda. Reforms are urgently needed to allow more homes to be built, but change is notoriously difficult. Ahea... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

15 November 2023

Blog
A true housing crisis needs more than post-truth politicians

The UK's housing crisis is particularly acute by international standards. Instead of identifying real solutions, argues Paul Cheshire, policy-makers have offered only rhetorical devices, ineffective local mechanisms, and... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

05 September 2023

Chapter
Housing

What are the public policy challenges confronting the UK? What plans do the parties have for addressing them? To what extent are these plans fit for purpose? As Parliament returns from its summer recess, Full Fact and U... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

05 September 2023

CEP discussion papers
(In)convenient stores? What do policies pushing stores to town centres actually do?

England's Town Centre First Policy, introduced in 1996, restricted the opening of new retail and other 'traditional town centre activities' to 'Town Centre' (TC) locations. The aim was to halt the decay of high streets. ... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber, Piero Montebruno and Rosa Sanchis-Guarner

12 December 2022

External publications
Housing and Planning

With the Conservative leadership contest underway, what is the country as a whole to make of the various pledges being made by the remaining candidates? What promises are credible? What will be the impact of the policies... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

28 July 2022

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
UK house prices in Covid-19 times

The pandemic lead to increased demand for bigger homes and gardens. With housing supply limited by strict UK planning regulations and the market propped up by a stamp duty waiver and the furlough scheme, prices of detach... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

15 June 2021

Blog
The answer to housing's stubborn carbon emissions problem: green offsets

Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber propose 'green offsets' to reduce property taxes in a way that is strictly scaled to energy efficiency, as a simple intervention to address the UK's urgent need to reduce its residentia... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

07 June 2021

Blog
Why central London has seen the biggest rises in house prices, despite Covid

As many predicted, the pandemic led to a demand for bigger homes and gardens. But with supply limited by Britain's strict planning regulations, and the market propped up by a stamp duty waiver and the furlough scheme, pr... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

31 March 2021

CEP Covid-19 analyses
The pandemic and the housing market: a British story

When Covid-19 struck, the British housing market went into free-fall. Land Registry data show prices, transactions and construction all tumbled. But demand was boosted both by the general measures taken to support the ec... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Olivier Schöni

30 March 2021

Journal article - forthcoming
Offices scarce but housing scarcer: Estimating the premium for London office conversions

British planning is among the most restrictive in the world and has been restrictive for longer than elsewhere. Restrictive regulation substantially increases the costs of office space and, especially in London, increase... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Katerina Kaimakamis

11 March 2021

Blog
The use of designer reputation to build tall in London

Height exemptions are made easier when a world-famous architect is involved, but the process carries hidden costs, writes Paul Cheshire.... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

27 October 2020

Blog
Planning for the future: some solutions for our housing crisis at last?

The white paper, Planning for the future, published in early August 2020 represents the first serious attempt to reform our dysfunctional land use planning system since its inception. Although the Barker report’s diagnos... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

01 October 2020

Journal article
'Trophy architects' and design as rent-seeking: quantifying deadweight losses in a tightly regulated office market

Britain tightly restricts the supply of office space, creating substantial economic rents, but its development restrictions are politically administered and therefore gameable, inducing rent-seeking activity. We find tha... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Gerard H. Dericks

01 September 2020

CEP discussion papers
Offices scarce but housing scarcer: estimating the premium for London office conversions

The British system of land use planning is one of the most restrictive in the world. It substantially increases the costs of office space (Cheshire & Hilber, 2008; Cheshire & Dericks, 2020) and, especially in London, inc... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Katerina Kaimakamis

29 June 2020

Blog
Covid-19: crashing the economy so what will it do for the housing market?

To speculate usefully about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Britain's housing markets one needs a clear analytical understanding of how our housing markets work and what forces cause them to change. Given the ext... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

17 April 2020

Blog
Covid-19 and housing: while prices may fall, homes will remain unaffordable

Discussing the potential effects of COVID-19 on housing, Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber write that real house prices and rents may initially fall. Yet housing will remain unaffordable for the young and those on lower... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

06 April 2020

Blog
Housing: 'no shortage' - is it nonsense?

Paul Cheshire questions arguments that Britain is not suffering from a housing shortage, pointing out errors in common understanding.... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

01 December 2019

Blog
The UK’s housing crisis: what should the next government do?

Since 2015, neither the government nor any opposition party has had any effective policy to tackle our housing crisis symbolised most starkly by Starter Homes. To the extent there has been action, it is largely ineffecti... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

29 November 2019

CEP election analysis papers
Housing

Housing affordability is a key concern of an ever-larger fraction of UK voters who are crammed into artificially limited space. It also underlies the sense of being shut out of prosperity and unable to escape declining l... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

27 November 2019

External publications
Homes on the right tracks

Technically, there is an easy solution to the UK crisis of housing supply: find more land for housing. This is not a physical problem but a political one. The land is there but policies and habits of thought prevent its ... Read more...

Boyana Buyuklieva and Paul Cheshire

22 September 2019

Journal article
Housing in Europe: A different continent – A continent of differences

This article provides the introduction to the special issue on ‘Housing in Europe: a different continent – a continent of differences’ in the Journal of Housing Economics in 2018. Europe is a large continent with a long ... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Christian A. L. Hilber

01 December 2018

Journal article
Broken Market or Broken Policy? The Unintended Consequences of Restrictive Planning

This paper summarises the evidence from recent research relating to the British Planning system's impact on the supply of development. Planning serves important economic and social purposes but it is essential to disting... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

01 August 2018

Journal article
Take me to the Centre of your Town! Using micro-geographical data to identify Town Centres

© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Ifo Institute, Munich. All rights reserved. We often talk about 'Town Centres' (TCs), but defining their location and extent is surprisingly difficu... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber, Piero Montebruno and Rosa Sanchis-Guarner

01 June 2018

Blog
Housing: the happy self-delusion of ‘no shortage’

Read more...

Paul Cheshire

29 March 2018

Blog
Empty homes, longer commutes: the unintended consequences of more restrictive local planning

Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Hans R. A. Koster

12 March 2018

Journal article
Social tenants' health: Evaluating the effectiveness of landlord interventions

Background: The National Health Service (NHS) scores well internationally on access to healthcare. But access has been measured on methods likely to undersample the more disadvantaged. Social landlords have access to mor... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Stephen Gibbons and Jemma Mouland

08 March 2018

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
In brief... Empty homes, longer commutes

In areas of Britain where there are empty houses, planners typically allocate less land for development and make it more difficult to build or adapt houses. Research by Paul Cheshire, Christian Hilber and Hans Koster exp... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Hans R. A. Koster

01 March 2018

Journal article
Empty homes, longer commutes: The unintended consequences of more restrictive local planning

We investigate the impact of land use regulation on housing vacancy rates. Using a 30-year panel dataset on land use regulation for 350 English Local Authorities (LAs) and addressing potential reverse causation and other... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Hans R. A. Koster

01 February 2018

SERC Discussion Papers
Social Tenants' Health: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Landlord Interventions

Objectives: To test whether a social landlord can improve health outcomes for older tenants and reduce their NHS usage by simple interventions. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting: Social housing in five London ... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Stephen Gibbons and Jemma Mouland

14 August 2017

SERC Discussion Papers
Using Micro-Geography Data to Identify Town-Centre Space in Great Britain

We often talk about ‘Town Centres’, but defining their location and extent is surprisingly difficult. Their boundaries are hard to pin down and intrinsically fuzzy. Nevertheless, the British government introduced very sp... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber, Piero Montebruno and Rosa Sanchis-Guarner

10 May 2017

SERC Discussion Papers
Regulating Housing Vacancies Away? The Paradoxical Effects of Mismatch

Policy makers agree that vacant houses are undesirable. Moreover the existence of empty houses is used as an argument for allocating less land for new construction. So higher vacancy rates tend to trigger tighter restric... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Hans R. A. Koster

17 July 2015

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
Trophy architects and the ‘dark matter' of London’s planning system

A quarter of London’s skyscrapers are designed by architects who have already won a lifetime achievement award and whose work thus has the imprimatur of ‘iconic design’; this compares with just 3% in Chicago. According t... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Gerard H. Dericks

03 October 2014

Books
Urban Economics and Urban Policy

In this bold, exciting and readable volume, Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry Overman illustrate the insights that recent economic research brings to our understanding of cities, and the lessons for urban policy-making... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Max Nathan and Henry G. Overman

30 May 2014

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
Turning houses into gold: the failure of British planning

Britain’s crisis of housing affordability is nothing to do with foreign speculators, according to Paul Cheshire. Rather, it is a result of decades of misguided planning policies that constrain the supply of land and turn... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

08 May 2014

SERC Discussion Papers
'Iconic Design' as Deadweight Loss: Rent Acquisition by Design in the Constrained London Office Market

Britain’s land use regulation (planning) system imposes very tight restrictions on the supply of office space so creating substantial rents. An unmeasured part of the costs associated with these restrictions likely comes... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Gerard H. Dericks

23 January 2014

SERC Discussion Papers
Land Use Regulation and Productivity - Land Matters: Evidence from a UK Supermarket Chain

We use store-specific data for a UK supermarket chain to estimate the impact of planning on store output. Exploiting the variation in policies between England and other UK countries, we isolate the impact of Town Centre ... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Ioannis Kaplanis

20 August 2013

CentrePiece - The magazine of the Centre for Economic Performance
Land use planning: the impact on retail productivity

The restrictions that planning policies impose on retail development have significantly reduced the productivity of supermarkets, according to Paul Cheshire and colleagues.... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Ioannis Kaplanis

21 June 2011

SERC Discussion Papers
Evaluating the Effects of Planning Policies on the Retail Sector: Or do Town Centre First Policies Deliver the Goods?

Few studies conceive of land as a productive factor but British land use policies may lower total factor productivity (TFP) in the retailing industry by (i) restricting the total availability of land for retail, thereby ... Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Christian A. L. Hilber and Ioannis Kaplanis

01 January 2011

SERC Policy Papers
Urban Containment, Housing Affordability and Price Stability - Irreconcilable Goals

The planning goals of urban containment and now densification conceive of houses in terms of physical units and of land ‘supply’ as the area allocated for housing by the planning system; estimates of ‘demand’ are driven ... Read more...

Paul Cheshire

01 September 2009

SERC Discussion Papers
Urban Growth Drivers in a Europe of Sticky People and Implicit Boundaries

We investigate urban GDP pc growth across the EU12 using data for functionally defined cities - rather than administrative regions. We test hypotheses on the role of human capital, EU integration and fragmentation of urb... Read more...

Paul Cheshire and Stefano Magrini

01 November 2008

SERC Policy Papers
Policies for 'Mixed Communities': A Critical Evaluation

Read more...

Paul Cheshire, Stephen Gibbons and Ian Gordon

01 June 2008

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