Comprehensive zoning is ubiquitous in U.S. cities, yet we know surprisingly little about its long-run impacts. We provide the first attempt to measure the causal effect of land use regulation over the long term, using as our setting Chicago's first (1923) comprehensive zoning ordinance. Our...

More than 17 percent of households in American central cities live in poverty; in American suburbs, just 7.4 percent of households live in poverty. The income elasticity of demand for land is too low for urban poverty to be the result of wealthy individuals' wanting to live where land is cheap...

Urban density boosts productivity and innovation, improves access to goods and services, reduces typical travel distances, encourages energy-efficient construction and transport, and facilitates sharing scarce amenities. However, density is also synonymous with crowding, makes living and moving...

We document a Kuznets curve for construction productivity in 20th-century America. Homes built per construction worker remained stagnant between 1900 and 1940, boomed after World War II, and then plummeted after 1970. The productivity boom from 1940 to 1970 shows that nothing makes technological...

Much of the property damage from wildfires occurs when fires spread into built up areas, the wildland urban interface. Fire spread within such areas occurs from house to house, as embers from one burning structure ignite neighboring ones. Actions can be taken to mitigate the chances that a given...

We report results from a new survey of local residential land use regulatory regimes for over 2,450 primarily suburban communities across the U.S. The most highly regulated markets are on the two coasts, with the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan areas being the most highly regulated...

We provide estimates of the impact of restrictive residential land use environments on the price of land across major American housing markets. Using micro data on vacant land purchased to develop single family housing, we implement a new empirical strategy for estimating so-called 'zoning...

Recent work has argued that zoning is responsible for racial segregation, disparities in public goods provision, growing regional inequality, and exploding housing costs in productive areas. However, the slow-moving nature of land regulation's effects suggests a crucial need for historical...

Biofuel production is being promoted through various policies such as mandates and tax credits. This paper uses a dynamic, spatial, multi-market equilibrium model, Biofuel and Environmental Policy Analysis Model (BEPAM), to estimate the effects of these policies on cropland allocation, food and...

Land and capital serve not only as factors of production but as assets which households use as stores of value. Standard trade models typically recognize only the first role. In its role as an asset land reduces the amount of national savings available for capital investment. Foreign investment...