Very pleased that my paper w/ @ClaytonNall & @stan_okl, "The Folk Economics of Housing," has been published in the excellent new JEP symposium on housing markets. ⤵️
🧵/10.
link:
The tl,dr is that housing supply skepticism--which we operationalize as the belief that a large, positive, exogenous regional supply shock would not reduce home prices / rents locally--is pervasive, distinctive to housing, but weakly held.
People give more internally inconsistent answers, within and across surveys, to questions about the price effects of housing supply shocks than to questions about other economic shocks / beliefs.
/3
By contrast, people have pretty stable views about which actors are most responsible for high housing prices--namely, developers and landlords.
/4
So, while nearly all renters and even a majority of homeowners say they'd prefer lower housing prices in their city, the mass public's lack of conviction that more supply would help--and their eagerness to blame developers & landlords--means...
/5
...that there's less of a mass constituency for supply-expanding policies than for policies like rent control and inclusionary zoning that stick it to landlords and developers.
/6
For a great writeup of the JEP symposium, check out @AA_Millsap's column in @Forbes,
For folks who want to dig deeper, our JEP paper comes w/ a 100-page online appendix (aeaweb.org/content/file?i…) & a replication package w/ codebook (openicpsr.org/openicpsr/proj…) for four surveys in which we investigated loads of potential explanations for housing supply skepticism.
/9
Big thanks to @TimothyTTaylor, @ProfJAParker & @heidilwilliams_ for inviting our participation in JEP's housing-markets symposium and for their terrific feedback on the paper!
/end
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Vincent develops a parcel-level, gen-equilibrium model of development in NYC, accounting for parcel traits like size/value of existing uses, & estimating n'hood & endogenous amenities, wages, builder cost function, extensive & intensive margins of the redevelopment decision.
/2
He obtains results not only the effect of upzoning on housing-supply and prices, but also on the distribution of welfare gains/losses across the socioeconomic spectrum and as between current and future residents of NYC.
/3
Here's the first of my two essays for @NiskanenCenter's "party of abundance" series. ⤵️
In the piece, @ProfSchleich & I argue that big-city YIMBYs should endeavor to forge a cross-issue, party-like faction & drive an urban quality of life agenda.
Inspired by this great pod ⤵️ , in which another nationally prominent progressive says, "of course I agree w/ state & local YIMBYs on 99% of their agenda," here's a seven-item test. 🧵.
CA deserves its moment in the sun, but journalists should be paying more attention to the amazing Abundance policies -- and better Democratic politics -- of our neighbors to the north.
Washington State is killing it. Oregon's doing pretty well too.
2⃣ In 2002, CA repealed parking minimums near "major transit stops." But the bill gives local govts wiggle room to re-impose parking mandates unless the project meets certain targets for deed-restricted-affordable housing.
"Can you put a rough number on how much California's CEQA reforms will increase housing production?"
I've gotten this Q from lots of journalists over the last 48 hours (who sound frustrated w/ my answer), so here's a 🧵 laying out my thinking about it.
1/25
tl, dr: @GavinNewsom was right to call AB 130/SB 131 "the most consequential housing reform in modern history in the state of California" -- but even so, there's no defensible way to give a quantitative "this much more housing" answer to the reporters' question.
/2
In part, the CEQA-reform package is consequential b/c of what it signifies: that California is overcoming the seemingly intractable politics of a high-cost, low-supply equilibrium.
/3
An update on California's CEQA / housing package as we hurtle toward the finish line.
tldr: @BuffyWicks's CEQA infill exemption is now *even better* than the 6/24 draft ⤵️; and it looks like @Scott_Wiener will land most of the fish in SB 607 but not the real lunker.
The million dollar (million unit?) question about Wicks's infill exemption has always been, "Will labor unions extract wage concessions that render the bill ineffective?"
/2
The 6/24 bill draft featured a novel, two-tier minimum wage for construction workers, plus "prevailing wage" requirements for tall projects (>85'), 100% affordable projects, and certain projects / crafts in San Francisco.
/3