Results

CEP discussion paper

Why have house prices risen so much more than rents in superstar cities?

In most countries – particularly in supply constrained superstar cities – house prices have risen much more strongly than rents over the last two decades. We provide an explanation that does not rely on falling interest ...Read more...

Journal article

Economica:

'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...

CEP discussion paper

Center-based care and parenting activities

We estimate the effects of center-based care on parenting activities with children using data from time diaries and a family survey for Germany. Our estimates imply that usage of center-based care reduces the amount of t...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

The role of demand in land re-development

Vacant, previously-developed land in cities can generate negative externalities on surrounding areas, and is often the target of policies to promote re-development. This paper provides estimates of the price sensitivity ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the economic impacts of mortgage credit expansion policies: evidence from help to buy

Mortgage credit expansion policies – such as UK’s Help to Buy (HtB) – aim to increase access to and affordability of owner-occupied housing and are widespread around the world. We take advantage of spatial discontinuitie...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ease versus noise: long-run changes in the value of transport (dis)amenities

For a complete cost-benefit analysis of durable infrastructures, it is important to understand how the value of non-market goods such as transit time and environmental quality changes as incomes rise in the long-run. We ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Geography:

The preservation of historic districts - Is it worth it?

Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Tall buildings and land values: Height and construction cost elasticities in Chicago, 1870-2010

Despite unprecedented vertical growth in large cities, the economics of skyscrapers remain understudied. We combine data on tall buildings with a panel of land prices covering 140 years to analyze the determinants of urb...Read more...

Journal article

National Institute Economic Review:

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...

CEP discussion paper

The economic impacts of constraining home investments

We investigate how political backlash against wealthy investors in high-amenity places affects local residents. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment: the ‘Swiss Second Home Initiative’, which banned the construction of ...Read more...

Journal article

CESifo Economic Studies:

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...

Journal article

CESifo Economic Studies:

Weights to address non-parallel trends in panel difference-in-differences models

Causal inference using the difference-in-differences (DD) method relies on the untestable assumption of parallel counterfactual trends across units that are assigned to different treatments. To facilitate the application...Read more...

CentrePiece article

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...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Energy Costs of Historic Preservation

We explore the impact of historical preservation policies on domestic energy consumption. Using panel data for England from 2006 to 2013 and employing a fixed effects-strategy, we document that (i) rising national energy...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Housing Market Impacts of Constraining Second Home Investments

We investigate how political backlash against wealthy second home investors in high-amenity places – tourist areas or superstar cities – affects local residents. We develop a general equilibrium model and exploit a quasi...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Preservation of Historic Districts - Is it Worth it?

I investigate the welfare effect of conservation areas that preserve historic districts by regulating development. Such regulation may improve quality of life but does so by reducing housing productivity – the efficiency...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Geography of City Liveliness and Land Use Configurations: Evidence from Location-Based Big Data in Beijing

This paper explores the complexity in the connection between city liveliness and land use configurations for housing and consumption amenities. The sources of this complexity are captured by an integrated spatial and tem...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Take What You Can: Property Rights, Contestability and Conflict

Weak property rights are strongly associated with underdevelopment, low state capacity and civil conflict. In economic models of conflict, outbreaks of violence require two things: the prize must be both valuable and con...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Vertical City: The Price of Land and the Height of Buildings in Chicago 1870-2010

We analyze the determinants of building heights in Chicago by combining a micro-geographic data set on tall buildings with a unique panel of land prices covering 140 years. Consistent with the predictions of classic urba...Read more...

CentrePiece article

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...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

The impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing: Evidence from microdata

We estimate the impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to the full tax and p...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Local Economic Conditions and the Nature of New Housing Supply

We present a modified open monocentric city model that assumes that land is available for conversion into new housing throughout the city. The model predicts that positive local income shocks (i) increase the city’s shar...Read more...

CentrePiece article

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Chicken or Egg? The PVAR Econometrics of Transportation

To analyze the mutually dependent relationship between local economic performance and the demand for and supply of transport services, we employ the structural panel VAR method that is popular in the macroeconomic litera...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

'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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Importance of Time Zone Assignment: Evidence from Residential Electricity Consumption

This paper presents the first nationwide empirical assessment of residential electricity use in response to the timing of daylight. Employing Geographical Information Systems (GIS) solar times of sunrise and sunset are c...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Impact of Supply Constraints on House Prices in England

i) This discussion paper, originally published September 2012, is a completely revised version from April 2014. ...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Does Public Investment Spur the Land Market?: Evidence from Transport Improvement in Beijing

Over 140 billion CNY (1GBP=10CNY) has been spent between 2000 and 2012 in Beijing on the construction of new rail transit lines. This massive public investment allows me to examine the consequences of transport improveme...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spatial Variations in Amenity Values: New Evidence from Beijing, China

Using parks as an example, this paper explores the robustness and sources of spatial variation in the estimated amenity values using an extended geographically weighted regression (GWR) technique. This analysis, illustra...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

What Do CEOs Do?

We develop a methodology to collect and analyze data on CEOs’ time use. The idea - sketched out in a simple theoretical set-up - is that CEO time is a scarce resource and its allocation can help us identify the firm’s pr...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

External Benefits of Brownfield Redevelopment: An Applied Urban General Equilbirum Analysis

Does brownfield redevelopment warrant government support? We explore several external benefits in an urban general equilibrium framework. Preferences are modelled such that demand for housing units in the city is downwar...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Economics Implications of House Price Capitalization: A Synthesis

In this article I argue that the extent to which fiscal variables are capitalized into house prices has important economic implications. I synthesize an emerging literature that explores the conditions under which public...Read more...

CentrePiece article

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Mortgage Interest Deduction and its Impact on Homeownership Decisions

This paper examines the impact of the combined U.S. state and federal mortgage interest deduction (MID) on homeownership attainment, using data from 1984 to 2007 and exploiting variation in the subsidy across states, ove...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

New Housing Supply and the Dilution of Social Capital

This paper examines the role of local housing supply conditions for social capital investment. Using an instrumental variables approach and data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, it is documented that t...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

On the Origins of Land Use Regulations: Theory and Evidence from US Metro Areas

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints benefit the former group (via increasing property pric...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the Origins of Land Use Regulations: Theory and Evidence from US Metro Areas

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints benefit the former group (via increasing property pric...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Decomposing the Growth in Residential Land in the United States

This paper decomposes the growth in land occupied by residences in the United States to give the relative contributions of changing demographics versus increases in the land area used by individual households. Between 19...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Owners of Developed Land versus Owners of Undeveloped Land: Why Land Use is More Constrained in the Bay Area than in Pittsburgh

We model residential land use constraints as the outcome of a political economy game between owners of developed and owners of undeveloped land. Land use constraints are interpreted as shadow taxes that increase the land...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Agricultural Returns and Conflict: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from a Policy Intervention Programme in Rwanda

In 1997 Rwanda introduced a re-settlement policy for refugees displaced during previous conflicts. We exploit geographic variation in the speed of implementation of this policy to investigate the impact of conflict-induc...Read more...