报告题目：Double Your Losses: Foregone Agglomeration Economies & Deadweight Losses with Britain’s Discretionary Urban Planning System

主讲嘉宾：

Paul Cheshire（保罗·切瑟尔）

伦敦政治经济学院经济地理学荣誉教授

英国皇家社会科学院院士

报告摘要：

Urban economics provides powerful evidence of the importance of agglomeration economies: productive agents are, all else equal, more productive in larger cities and in denser clusters. More recent research provides evidence of ‘vertical’ agglomeration economies: working in taller buildings leads to greater individual productivity (Koster et al, 2014; Liu et al., 2018). Britain combines idiosyncratic but tight restrictions on building heights and the supply of office space (Cheshire and Hilber, 2008) with a discretionary planning system. The tight restrictions on the supply of office space create substantial economic rents but since decisions on development proposals are politically administered, they are gameable, inducing rent-seeking activity. We are able to quantify the impact of this and find that ‘trophy architects’ (TAs) – prior winners of a lifetime achievement award – obtain more space on a given site apparently by signalling iconic design. Analysis of 2,039 office buildings transactions in London shows TAs build 14 stories taller, increasing a representative site value by 152 percent. We argue this premium is compensation for the extra costs, risks and delays of using a TA to game the planning system; and therefore an indirect measure of deadweight rent-seeking losses. Nevertheless the effect of these restrictions is also to restrict agglomeration economies in Britain’s largest cities.

报告时间：2023年4月15日（周一），16:40-18:10

地 点：厦门大学经济楼N302