Matthew Turner is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto. His current research focuses on the economics of land use and transportation and he is broadly interested in understanding the economics of environmental regulation. He holds a bachelors degree from the University of California, a Ph. D. in economics from Brown University, has held post-doctoral fellowships at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Hoover Institution, and is an associate editor at the Journal of Urban Economics, the Journal of Economic Geography and Regional Science and Urban Economics. His research appears in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, and is regularly featured in the popular press.

Abstract: We estimate the effect of land use regulation on the value of land by exploiting variation in regulation and land values across municipal borders. Since the value of land gives us the market’s measure of the attractiveness of a location, our estimates allow us to draw conclusions about the effect of land use regulation on welfare. Reductions to an aggregate measure of regulatory intensity are welfare improving. Looking at a more detailed description of regulation we find that complexity of the planning process and a planning process subject to political manipulation are most likely to lower welfare. Regulation that requires minimum lot sizes for residential development increases land values.