Returns to Scale in Residential Construction: The Marginal Impact of Building Height
利用美国50个大城市公寓建筑的标准施工投入数据，估计了边际成本和盈亏平衡租金，发现建筑高度在第四层和第八层时边际成本曲线出现非线性变化，影响开发商的规模回报，并模拟了高度管制对住房可负担性的负面影响。
Abstract We estimate the marginal cost and break‐even rent of developing multifamily apartment buildings in the 50 largest cities in the United States using a novel data set of required construction inputs of standardized assemblies. We find nonlinearities in the marginal cost curve at the fourth and eighth stories that directly impact a developer's returns to scale with respect to height. This curve allows us to identify a developer's maximum willingness to pay for land for each building height, which we then compare to existing single‐family land prices to determine whether new multifamily development will occur. The analysis concludes by simulating the impact of height regulations on break‐even rents of new supply. We find that height regulation often has large, negative effects on housing affordability, with increasing magnitudes for more expensive land markets.