Professor Paul Cheshire

Professor Paul Cheshire

Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography

Department of Geography and Environment

Telephone
020 7955 7586
Room No
CKK 3.22
Office Hours
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Languages
English, French
Key Expertise
Housing and Economics of Land Use, Real Estate Economics, Urban Development

About me

An economist by training, Paul Cheshire is Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography, now working part time. He has a strong interest in policy analysis and policy related fields, particularly in urban land markets, housing and urban growth, and has been named one of the Planning industry's most influential people. 

Paul co-edited the Handbook of Regional & Urban Economics, Vol. 3: applied urban economics (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1999) with E. S. Mills, and Recent Developments in Urban and Regional Economics (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 2004) with Gilles Duranton. His most recent books are Urban Economics and Urban Policy: Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom (Edward Elgar, 2014), with Henry Overman and Max Nathan and The Economics of Land Markets and their Regulation (Edward Elgar, 2017) edited with Christian Hilber. 

He is the author/co-author of more than 100 papers and was the 1989 winner of the Donald Robertson Memorial Prize and in 2004 won the Royal Economic Society's prize for the best paper in the Economic Journal. He won the European Regional Science Association/European Investment Bank's prize for lifetime contribution to regional science research in 2009. 

He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences and of the Weimer School. He held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2000/01 and was a Visiting Fellow of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in 2002. He was awarded a CBE for services to Economics and Housing in 2017. 

Apart from his academic work he has spent time as an advisor and as a consultant for the European Commission, the World Bank, the OECD, the UN and other international organisations as well as the UK government, including being a member of the Expert Panel for the Barker Review of the Planning System, and an Academic Friend of the Eddington Transport Study. Until its abolition in 2010 he was a board member of the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit and a member of two of the Department of Communities and Local Government's Expert Panels. In 2021 he acted as the Specialist Advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Built Environment.

View Paul's CV.

Expertise Details

Housing and Economics of Land Use; Real Estate Economics; Urban Development

Countries and regions

Britain; EU

Sectors and industries

Construction and Property; Environment; Policy and Regulatory Bodies

Selected publications

Regulating Retail to Town Centres: The price paid in productivity, (2012) (with E. Einiö and C.A.L. Hilber)

Offices scarce but housing scarcer: estimating the premium for office conversions, Real Estate Economics, (2021) (with K. Kaimakamis)

'Trophy Architects’ and design as rent-seeking: Quantifying deadweight losses in a tightly regulated office market, (2020), Economica, 87, 348, 1078-1104:  (with G. H. Dericks)

Paul Cheshire and Boyana Buyuklieva (2019) Homes on the right tracks: Greening the Green Belt to solve the housing crisis, London: The Centre for Cities. ISBN: 978-1-9162447-0-2 

Broken market or broken policy? The unintended consequences of restrictive planning, National Institute Economic Review, 245, August 2018, R9-19. 

Cheshire, Paul and Hilber, Christian A.L. and Koster, Hans R.A. (2017) Empty homes, longer commutes: the unintended consequences of more restrictive local planning. Journal of Public Economics. ISSN 0047-2727

P. Cheshire, How to capture land value rises, Planning, 2045, 10 February 2017, 16-18

P. Cheshire, M. Nathan, H. G. Overman, Urban Economics And Urban Policy: Challenging Conventional Policy Wisdom, London, Edward Elgar, 2014 [ISBN: 978 1 78195 251 1 / 978 1 78195 252 8 (ebook)

P. Cheshire, C. A. L. Hilber, I. Kaplanis (2014), Land use regulation and productivity - land matters: evidence from a UK supermarket chain, Journal of Economic Geography

P. Cheshire (2014) Turning houses into gold: don’t blame the foreigners, it’s we Brits who did it, CentrePiece, Spring 2014, 14-18

P. Cheshire and W. Vermeulen (2009), Land Markets and their Regulation: The welfare economics of planning, in H.S.Geyer (ed) International Handbook of Urban Policy, Aldershot: Edward Elgar

Urban Growth Drivers in a Europe of Sticky People and Implicit Boundaries', Journal of Economic Geography,9, 1, 85-115, 2009. (with Stefano Magrini)

Reflections on the Nature and Policy Implications of Planning Restrictions on Housing Supply Oxford Review of Economic Policy,24, 1, 50-58, 2008.

Office Space Supply Restrictions in Britain: The political economy of market Revenge Economic Journal,118, (June) F185-F221, 2008. (with Christian Hilber)

Policies for Mixed Communities: Faith-based displacement activity? International Regional Science Review, 32 (3),343-375, 2009

Segregated Neighbourhoods and Mixed Communities: a critical analysis, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York, 2007, 43

Resurgent Cities, Urban Myths and Policy Hubris: What we need to know, Urban Studies, 43, 8, 1231-46, July 2006

Population Growth in European Cities: weather matters - but only nationally, Regional Studies, 40, 1, 23-37 (February 2006) (with Stefano Magrini)

The Introduction of Price Signals into Land Use Planning Decision-making: a Proposal, Urban Studies, 42, 4, 647-663, April 2005. (with Stephen Sheppard)