This report provides an overview of spatial and land-use planning systems in OECD countries1 focusing on: (i) the governance systems across countries, (ii) the institutional and legal frameworks for spatial planning, and (iii) the various policy instruments used at different levels of...

This paper analyses land policy when the state lacks the monopoly of legitimate violence (MLV) through a territory. I use historical data for Colombia to empirically assess the dynamics through which the central state allocates land in such a scenario. I argue that colonization processes...

We study whether local land use policies are modified in response to enhanced demand for building generated by a new highway, and examine the extent to which this effect of land use regulations affects building activity. We focus on the case of Spain during the last housing boom (1995-2007). We...

We study whether local land use policies are modified in response to enhanced demand for building generated by a new highway. We also examine the extent to which this effect affects building activity. We focus on the case of Spain during the last housing boom (1995-2007). We assembled a new...

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 prices but hurt the latter via increasing development costs. In this setting,...

This paper examines the causal effect of land use policy on employment growth in Chinese cities. We find that a stricter Floor Area Ratio Regulation (FARR) leads to a reduction in employment growth in Chinese cities- a one standard deviation reduction in FARR leads to a concurrent reduction of...

Despite interest in the impact of land use regulations on housing construction and housing prices, little is known about the drivers of these policies. The conventional wisdom holds that homeowners have an influence on restrictive local zoning. In this paper, we contend that the party...

In China, as in many developing countries, poverty is primarily a rural phenomenon. Considerable efforts have been made over the last few decades to reduce poverty in China's rural areas; and indeed, the poverty rate in these areas has fallen from 30.7% in 1978 to 3.8% in 2009. This paper begins...

This paper investigates the relationship between the three forms of social capital, i.e., social norms, social network, and trust, on the effectiveness of land use policies. Both long-term and short-term policy outcomes are considered in the proposed analytical framework. Benefiting from a...

We study how place-based land allocation policy can create spatial misallocation. Combining microdata and a spatial equilibrium model, we investigate a major policy change of distributing more land to underdeveloped inland regions in China. First, by a method combining RD and DID, we show causal...