Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/339476 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
IFS Working Papers No. 25/04
Publisher: 
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), London
Abstract: 
We estimate local housing supply elasticities for 325 local authorities and 6,788 census tract areas in England. We examine how housing supply responds to price changes across small areas and how this varies according to a rich set of geographic and policy constraints. Our central estimate for the average elasticity of relative local supply with respect to price across local authorities is 0.14 over a period of 25 years between 1996 and 2021. This is low compared to estimates from other countries. Elasticities are lower in areas with less land available for development, greater differences in elevation, higher historical population density and in areas where local planning authorities had a greater historic tendency to reject new developments. We also find that urban density and constraints on the amount of available land have stronger negative effects on the supply of larger properties than properties with fewer bedrooms. Finally, we show that housing supply constraints substantially reduce the growth in local workforces conditional on a given growth in local labour demand, with implications for national productivity growth.
Subjects: 
housing supply elasticities
land-use restrictions
productivity
JEL: 
R12
R31
R38
O18
O20
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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