In a recent NBER working paper, authors Enrico Moretti and Chang-Tai Hsieh analyze how the growth of cities determines the growth of nations. They use data on 220 MSAs from 1964 – 2009 to estimate the contribution of each city to US national GDP growth. They compare what they call the accounting estimate to the model-driven estimate. The accounting estimate is the simple way of attributing city nominal GDP growth to national GDP growth in that it doesn’t account for whether the increase in city GDP is due to higher nominal wages or increased output caused by an increase in local employment. The model-driven estimate that they compare it to distinguishes between these two factors.
Before I go any further it is important to explain the theory behind the author’s empirical findings. Suppose there is a productivity shock to City A such that workers in City A are more productive than they were previously. This productivity shock could be the result of a new method of production or a newly invented piece of equipment (capital) that helps workers make more stuff with a given amount of labor. This productivity shock will increase the local demand for labor which will increase the wage.
Now one of two things can happen and the diagram below depicts the two scenarios. The supply and demand lines are those for workers, with the wage on the Y-axis and the amount of workers on the X-axis. Since more workers lead to more output I also labeled labor as L = αY, where α is some fraction less than 1 to signify that each additional unit of labor doesn’t lead to a one unit increase in output, but rather some fraction of 1 unit (capital is needed too).
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City A can have a highly elastic supply of housing, meaning that it is easy to expand the number of housing units in that city and thus it is relatively easy for people to move there. This would mean that the supply of labor is like S-elastic in the diagram. Thus the number of workers that are able to migrate to City A after labor demand increases (D1 to D2) is large, local employment increases (Le > L*), and total output (GDP) increases. Wages only increase a little bit (We > W*). In this situation the productivity shock would have a relatively large effect on national GDP since it resulted in a large increase in local output as workers moved from relatively low-productivity cities to the relatively high-productivity City A.
Alternatively, the supply of housing in City A could be very inelastic; this would be like S-inelastic. If that is the case, then the productivity shock would still increase the wage in City A (Wi > W*), but it will be more difficult for new workers to move in since new housing cannot be built to shelter them. In this case wages increase but since total local employment stays fairly constant due to the restriction on available housing the increase in output is not as large (Li > L* but < Le). If City A output stays relatively constant and instead the productivity shock is expressed in higher nominal wages, then the resulting growth in City A nominal GDP will not have as large of an effect on national output growth.
As an example, Moretti and Hsieh calculate that the growth of New York City’s GDP was 12% of national GDP growth from 1964-2009. But when accounting for the change in wages, New York’s contribution to national output growth was only 5%: Most of New York’s GDP growth was manifested in higher nominal wages. This is not surprising as it is well known that New York has strict housing regulations that make it difficult to build new housing units (the recent extension of NYC rent-control laws won’t help). This makes it difficult for people to relocate from relatively low-productivity places to a high-productivity New York.
In three of the most intensely land-regulated cities: New York, San Francisco, and San Jose, the accounting contribution to national GDP growth was 19.3%. But these cities actual contribution to national output as estimated by the authors was only 6.1%. Contrast that with the Rust Belt cities (e.g. Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc.) which contributed -28.5% according to the accounting method but +6.1% according to the author’s model.
The authors conclude that less onerous land-use restrictions in high-productivity cities New York, Washington D.C., Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, and the rest of Silicon Valley could increase the nation’s output growth rate by making it easier for workers to migrate from low to high-productivity areas. In an extreme migration scenario where 52% of American workers in 2009 lived in a different city than they actually did, the author’s calculate that GDP per worker would have been $8,775 higher in 2009, or $6,345 per person. In a more realistic scenario (only 20% of workers lived in a different city) it would have been $3,055 more per person: That is a substantial increase.
While I agree with the author’s conclusion that less land-use restrictions would result in a more productive allocation of labor and thus more stuff for all of us, the author’s policy prescriptions at the end of the paper leave much to be desired. They propose that the federal government constrain the ability of municipalities to set land-use restrictions since these restrictions impose negative externalities on the rest of the country if the form of lowering national output growth. They also support the use of government funded high-speed rail to link low-productivity labor markets to high-productivity labor markets e.g. the current high-speed rail construction project taking place in California could help workers get form low productivity areas like Stockton, Fresno, and Modesto, to high productivity areas in Silicon Valley.
Land-use restrictions are a problem in many areas, but not a problem that warrants arbitrary federal involvement. If federal involvement simply meant the Supreme Court ruling that land-use regulations (or at least most of them) are unconstitutional then I think that would be beneficial; a broad removal of land-use restrictions would go a long way towards reinstituting the institution of private property. Unfortunately, I don’t think that is what Moretti and Hsieh had in mind.
Arbitrary federal involvement in striking down local land-use regulations would further infringe on federalism and create opportunities for political cronyism. Whatever federal bureaucracy was put in charge of monitoring land-use restrictions would have little local knowledge of the situation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) already monitors some local land use and faulty information along with an expensive appeals process creates problems for residents simply trying to use their own property. Creating a whole federal bureaucracy tasked with picking and choosing which land-use restrictions are acceptable and which aren’t would no doubt lead to more of these types of situations as well as increase the opportunities for regulatory activism. Also, federal land-use regulators may target certain areas that have governors or mayors who don’t agree with them on other issues.
As for more public transportation spending, I think the record speaks for itself – see here, here, and here.