Results

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

Only the super rich need fear the farmers' inheritance tax

Protesters and high-profile individuals like James Dyson argued that ending the inheritance tax exemption for farmers will spell the end of the family farmer. Paul Cheshire argues that's not the case, and that the introd...Read more...

Submission to a parliamentary inquiry and government consultation

Built Environment Committee - The Grey Belt

Paul Cheshire gave oral evidence to the committee as part of its short inquiry into the government's policy to introduce a grey-belt concept into the planning system....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

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...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

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...

Blog

LSE Politics and Policy:

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...

Blog

Jam Tomorrow (Podcast):

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...

CEP election analysis

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...

CentrePiece article

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...

Journal article

Town Planning Review:

Pushing water uphill: containment policies doomed to fail

London has had a green belt for seventy years making it the ‘canary in the coal mine’ for ‘zero land take’. Because of strong demand for housing space, rising prosperity underlies rising urban land demand so rigid physic...Read more...

External publication

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...

CEP discussion paper

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...

Journal article

Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research:

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...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

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...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

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...

Chapter

Housing

in Policy Landscape 2023

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...

CEP discussion paper

(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...

External publication

The Conservative leadership contest: a guide to the policy landscape:

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...

CentrePiece article

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...

Blog

Grantham Institute blogs:

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...

Blog

LSE Covid-19:

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...

CEP Covid-19 analysis

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...

Journal article

Real Estate Economics: 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...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

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...

Blog

CEP Urban and Spatial Programme 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...

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

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...

Blog

CEP Urban and Spatial Programme:

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...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

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...

Blog

CEP Urban and Spatial Programme 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...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

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...

CEP election analysis

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...

External publication

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...

Journal article

Journal of Housing Economics:

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...

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...

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...

Blog

CEP Urban and Spatial Programme Blog:

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

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Blog

CEP Urban and Spatial Programme Blog:

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

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Journal article

Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health:

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...

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

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...

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

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...

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...

Book

Urban Economics and Urban Policy
Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom Hardcover

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...

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

'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...

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 Policy Paper

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

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...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Policy Paper

Policies for 'Mixed Communities': A Critical Evaluation

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