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Main Authors: Oluku, Uche, Cheng, Shaoming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.02159
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author Oluku, Uche
Cheng, Shaoming
author_facet Oluku, Uche
Cheng, Shaoming
contents The paper examines the effects of stringent land use regulations, measured using the Wharton Residential Land Use Regulatory Index (WRLURI), on employment growth during the period 2010-2020 in the Retail, Professional, and Information sectors across 878 local jurisdictions in the United States. All the local jurisdictions exist in both (2006 and 2018) waves of the WRLURI surveys and hence constitute a unique panel data. We apply a mediation analytical framework to decompose the direct and indirect effects of land use regulation stringency on sectoral employment growth and specialization. Our analysis suggests a fully mediated pattern in the relationship between excessive land use regulations and employment growth, with housing cost burden as the mediator. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the WRLURI index is associated with an approximate increase of 0.8 percentage point in the proportion of cost burdened renters. Relatedly, higher prevalence of cost-burdened renters has moderate adverse effects on employment growth in two sectors. A one percentage point increase in the proportion of cost burdened renters is associated with 0.04 and 0.017 percentage point decreases in the Professional and Information sectors, respectively.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2305_02159
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Mediation Analysis of the Relationship Between Land Use Regulation Stringency and Employment Dynamics
Oluku, Uche
Cheng, Shaoming
General Economics
Economics
The paper examines the effects of stringent land use regulations, measured using the Wharton Residential Land Use Regulatory Index (WRLURI), on employment growth during the period 2010-2020 in the Retail, Professional, and Information sectors across 878 local jurisdictions in the United States. All the local jurisdictions exist in both (2006 and 2018) waves of the WRLURI surveys and hence constitute a unique panel data. We apply a mediation analytical framework to decompose the direct and indirect effects of land use regulation stringency on sectoral employment growth and specialization. Our analysis suggests a fully mediated pattern in the relationship between excessive land use regulations and employment growth, with housing cost burden as the mediator. Specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the WRLURI index is associated with an approximate increase of 0.8 percentage point in the proportion of cost burdened renters. Relatedly, higher prevalence of cost-burdened renters has moderate adverse effects on employment growth in two sectors. A one percentage point increase in the proportion of cost burdened renters is associated with 0.04 and 0.017 percentage point decreases in the Professional and Information sectors, respectively.
title A Mediation Analysis of the Relationship Between Land Use Regulation Stringency and Employment Dynamics
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.02159