Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/228431 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
Upjohn Institute Working Paper No. 20-330
Publisher: 
W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Kalamazoo, MI
Abstract: 
Local control of land-use regulation creates a not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) problem that can suppress housing construction, contributing to rising prices and potentially slowing economic growth. I study how increased local control affects housing production by exploiting a common electoral reform-changing from "at-large" to "ward" elections for town council. These reforms, which are not typically motivated by housing markets, shrink each representative's constituency from the entire town to one ward. Difference-in-differences estimates show that this decentralization decreases housing units permitted by 24 percent, with 47 percent and 12 percent effects on multi- and single-family units. The effect on multifamily is larger in high-homeownership towns.
Subjects: 
Housing supply
land-use regulation
NIMBYism
JEL: 
R31
R38
H77
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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