The preservation of historic districts—is it worth it?

Sevrin Waights

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: I investigate the welfare effect of conservation areas that preserve historic districts by regulating development. Such regulation may improve the quality of life but does so by reducing housing productivity—that is, the efficiency with which inputs (land and non-land) are converted into housing services. Using a unique panel dataset for English cities and an instrumental variable approach, I find that conservation areas lead to higher house prices for given land values and building costs (lower housing productivity) and higher house prices for given wages (higher quality of life). The overall welfare impact is found to be negative.

Keywords: housing; planning; regulation; historic preservation; construction; land (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 H89 L51 L74 R21 R31 R38 R52 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2019-03-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Journal of Economic Geography, 1, March, 2019, 19(2), pp. 433–464. ISSN: 1468-2702

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/87175/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The preservation of historic districts—is it worth it? (2019)
Working Paper: The Preservation of Historic Districts - Is it Worth it? (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:87175

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