Housing supply and the future of our urban planet

Join us for this special Economica Coase lecture which this year will be delivered by Harvard academic Edward Glaeser.

Cities are economic powerhouses, but both the U.S. and U.K. fail to produce the housing and infrastructure that would enable their most productive cities to grow. Even the sunbelt metropolises that once provided an ocean of affordable housing in the U.S. have begun to look like the sclerotic housing markets of coastal America and England. While productivity in resident construction soared right after World War II, productivity in that sector fell dramatically after 1970. After that year, the regulatory process seems to allow only small and idiosyncratic building projects, which are built by small, relatively unproductive firms. Moreover, these small firms seem to produce little technological innovation. Public productivity also appears limited: infrastructure is extremely expensive and often poorly maintained. An overview of global reforms suggests that change is possible, but difficult when the change process is very inclusive.