Given high rents and prices in California, housing production is at a relative historic low. Scholarship has connected restrictive land use regulations to high prices, with limitations on new construction being the assumed mechanism. Less research has focused on which regulations are most...

We introduce a new way to measure the stringency of housing regulation. In lieu of a standard regulatory index or a single aspect of regulation like Floor Area Ratio, we draw on California cities’ estimates of their own total capacity for new housing. This measure of regulatory buildout...