Philip Gordon Hoxie

"Who Wins With Up-Zoning? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from California's By-Right Permitting Reforms for Accessory Dwelling Units." Joint with Gabriel Canedo Riedel.​

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Abstract: Can up-zoning small units increase housing supply and who captures the benefits? We study California's 2017 de-regulation of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) through state-preemption of local zoning and permitting. We exploit a feature of California's regulatory environment to isolate quasi-random variation in the geography of permitting reform: the California Coastal Zone. Leveraging a regulatory discontinuity at the Coastal Zone boundary and pre-registered designs, we find that permitting reforms increased ADU permitting activity by about 30%, although these effects are small in magnitude. However, the reform did increase land values by 7%. With a stylized model, we show that the change in land values reflect the decreased permitting costs associated with the reform package. We also find that permitting reforms are likely not associated with large price spillovers, and the increases in land values are associated with increased property tax collections.​

Draft available upon request.