Paul Krugman rightly notes that one of the key differences between the metropolitan areas that experienced housing bubbles and those that didn’t is that the bubble cities tend to have much more restrictive land use regulations. Land use is actually an area of policy/law which, for some odd reason, I’ve always enjoyed a great deal (and which I’m looking forward to getting back to, once we make it to the other side of this financial crisis). Land use is the only area of law that can rival finance in terms of complexity (which I thrive on), as well as real world policy relevance.
In any event, Krugman cites the Brookings survey of land use regulations in his post. The Brookings survey is fine, but for a variety of methodological reasons, the Wharton land use database is vastly superior, and much preferred in the urban economics literature. I’ve uploaded the Wharton database here, in case you’re interested (which you should be).
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