IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/20151.html

When Developers Hold Office: Shaping Housing Supply Through Local Politics

Author

Listed:
  • Ouasbaa, Ghizlen
  • Solé-Ollé, Albert
  • Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet

Abstract

We examine the impact of city council members with real estate back-grounds on housing supply in California between 1995 and 2019. Using candidate occupation data and a close-elections regression discontinuity design, we find that electing a developer increases approved housing units by 68% during their term, especially for multifamily projects. The effect operates primarily through discretionary zoning approvals and does not persist beyond the developer’s term, suggesting limited impact on broader regulatory reform. These findings offer new causal evidence on how policymakers’ professional backgrounds shape land-use deci-sions and contribute to a long-standing debate on the political origins of housing supply constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Ouasbaa, Ghizlen & Solé-Ollé, Albert & Viladecans-Marsal, Elisabet, 2025. "When Developers Hold Office: Shaping Housing Supply Through Local Politics," CEPR Discussion Papers 20151, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP20151
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • P00 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - General - - - General
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20151. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CEPR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://cepr.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.