The Costs of Environmental Land Use Regulation
This paper measures the effect of environmental land use regulation on housing supply using variation in the timing and location of species listings under the Endangered Species Act. In a newly constructed panel of municipal housing permits, I find that species listings reduce annual permit flows by 0.5 permits per thousand residents, about 10% of the average annual flow. The effect is robust across different species, geographies, and place characteristics. The effect is larger for critical habitat listings, zero for proposed but not-yet-enforced listings, and is reversed after de-listings. Satellite land use data show reductions in both greenfield and infill development, suggesting that the ESA constrains construction in already-developed areas where benefits to endangered habitats are limited.