TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Gyourko,Joseph
AU  - Saks,Raven
TI  - Why Have Housing Prices Gone Up?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11129
PY  - 2005
Y2  - February 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11129
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11129.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu

Joseph Gyourko
University of Pennsylvania
Wharton School of Business
3620 Locust Walk
1480 Steinberg-Dietrich Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6302
Tel: 215/898-3003
Fax: 215/573-2220
E-Mail: gyourko@wharton.upenn.edu

Raven Molloy
Federal Reserve Board of Governors
20th and C Streets NW
Washington, DC 20551
E-Mail: raven.s.molloy@frb.gov
AB  - Since 1950, housing prices have risen regularly by almost two percent per year. Between 1950 and 1970, this increase reflects rising housing quality and construction costs. Since 1970, this increase reflects the increasing difficulty of obtaining regulatory approval for building new homes. In this paper, we present a simple model of regulatory approval that suggests a number of explanations for this change including changing judicial tastes, decreasing ability to bribe regulators, rising incomes and greater tastes for amenities, and improvements in the ability of homeowners to organize and influence local decisions. Our preliminary evidence suggests that there was a significant increase in the ability of local residents to block new projects and a change of cities from urban growth machines to homeowners' cooperatives.
ER  -