The Geographic Determinants of Housing Supply
利用卫星地形和水体数据估算美国大都市区可开发土地量，发现陡坡地形显著限制住宅开发，且供给弹性受地理和管制双重约束。
I process satellite-generated data on terrain elevation and presence of water bodies to precisely estimate the amount of developable land in U.S. metropolitan areas. The data show that residential development is effectively curtailed by the presence of steep-sloped terrain. I also find that most areas in which housing supply is regarded as inelastic are severely land-constrained by their geography. Econometrically, supply elasticities can be well characterized as functions of both physical and regulatory constraints, which in turn are endogenous to prices and demographic growth. Geography is a key factor in the contemporaneous urban development of the United States. (c) 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..