Following popular discourse, we abuse economic terminology by defining the housing shortage in the United States as the difference between the number of homes that would be built in the absence of supply constraints and the actual number of homes. The magnitude of the housing shortage is...

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...

Following popular discourse, we abuse economic terminology by defining the "housing shortage" in the United States as the difference between the number of homes that would be built in the absence of supply constraints and the actual number of homes. The magnitude of the housing shortage is...

Michael Eriksen's “The Location of Affordable and Subsidized Rental Housing Across and Within the Largest Cities in the United States” (March 2021) provides evidence on changes in rent levels and the availability of subsidized rental housing for LMI households over the last two decades in...

In municipalities on the urban fringe in the United States, large-lot zoning is commonly thought of as a rural preservation tool. It could preserve rural landscapes by making residential lots too expensive for most homebuyers; or it could simply lead to estates that resemble farms or retain...

We provide an analysis of the housing market and current housing policies in three developed countries: the United Kingdom (UK), Switzerland, and the United States (US). We focus on these three countries mainly due to the marked differences in their institutional settings. The UK is...

We provide an analysis of the housing market and current housing policies in three developed countries: the United Kingdom (UK), Switzerland, and the United States (US). We focus on these three countries mainly due to the marked differences in their institutional settings. The UK is...

The U.S. population is becoming increasingly urban and has gradually shifted to the south and west. Policy restrictions have played a role in preventing dynamic areas expanding, and when they do expand it can be through low-density housing sprawl. Land use restrictions and a sluggish housing...

The standard view of housing markets holds that the flexibility of local housing supply-shaped by factors like geography and regulation-strongly affects the response of house prices, house quantities and population to rising housing demand. However, from 2000 to 2020, we find that higher income...

Current sources of data on rental housing – such as the census or commercial databases that focus on large apartment complexes – do not reflect recent market activity or the full scope of the U.S. rental market. To address this gap, we collected, cleaned, analyzed, mapped, and visualized 11...