In our item last week on high housing costs, we pointed out that land use regulations cause shortages of new homes and apartments in many cities and thus artificially raise prices.

A new American Enterprise Institute study by Tobias Peter and Edward Pinto documents that more residential land use regulation translates into higher prices.

According to the authors:

Supply is constrained by zoning that fails to recognize a location’s highest and best use, procedures and approvals that add time and expense, and urban-growth boundaries that limit available land… The result is a government-run system that is unresponsive to market conditions and leads to housing unaffordability.