Office Space Supply Restrictions in Britain: The Political Economy of Market Revenge

Paul Cheshire and Christian Hilber

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Office space in Britain is the most expensive in the world and regulatory constraints are the obvious explanation. We estimate the ‘regulatory tax’ for 14 British office locations from 1961 to 2005. These are orders of magnitude greater than estimates for Manhattan condominiums or office space in continental Europe. Exploiting the panel data, we provide strong support for our hypothesis that the regulatory tax varies according to whether an area is controlled by business interests or residents. Our results imply that the cost of the 1990 change converting commercial property taxes from a local to a national basis – transparently removing any fiscal incentive to permit local development – exceeded any plausible rise in local property taxes.

Keywords: Land use regulation; regulatory costs; business taxation; office markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H3 J6 Q15 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-04-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-geo, nep-reg and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Office Space Supply Restrictions in Britain: The Political Economy of Market Revenge (2008)
Journal Article: Office Space Supply Restrictions in Britain: The Political Economy of Market Revenge (2008)
Working Paper: Office space supply restrictions in Britain: the political economy of market revenge (2008)
Working Paper: Office Space Supply Restrictions in Britain: The Political Economy of Market Revenge (2007)
Working Paper: Office space supply restrictions in Britain: the political economy of market revenge (2007)
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