Measuring the Stringency of Land-Use Regulation: The Case of China's Building-Height Limits

Brueckner, Jan and Fu, Shihe and Gu, Yizhen and Zhang, Junfu (2016): Measuring the Stringency of Land-Use Regulation: The Case of China's Building-Height Limits.

Abstract

This paper develops a new approach for measuring the stringency of a major form of land-use regulation, building-height restrictions, and it applies the method to an extraordinary dataset of land-lease transactions from China. Our theory shows that the elasticity of land price with respect to the foor-area ratio (FAR), an indicator of the allowed building height for the parcel, is a measure of the regulation's stringency (the extent to which FAR is kept below the free-market level). Using a national sample, estimation that allows this elasticity to be city-specific shows substantial variation in the stringency of FAR regulation across Chinese cities, and additional evidence suggests that stringency depends on certain city characteristics in a predictable fashion. Single-city estimation for the large Beijing subsample, where site characteristics can be added to the regression, indicates that the stringency of FAR regulation varies with certain site characteristics, again in a predictable way (being high near the Tiananmen historical sites). Further results using a different dataset show that FAR limits in Beijing are adjusted in response to demand forces created by new subway stops.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Floor-area ratio, density restriction, urban development
• Subjects: R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R1 - General Regional Economics > R14 - Land Use Patterns; R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics > R5 - Regional Government Analysis > R52 - Land Use and Other Regulations

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