This paper examines the impact of housing supply elasticity on urban development. Using data for a sample of roughly one hundred Italian main cities observed over 40 years, we first estimate housing supply elasticities at the city level, measured as the correlation between the changes in the housing stock and in the house prices. Second, we show that differences in the elasticity of housing supply may determine the extent to which a demand shock translates into more intense employment growth or more expensive houses. To address endogeneity of housing supply elasticity, we exploit a synthetic measure of physical constraints to residential development as instrumental variable. We find that an exogenous increase in labor demand determines a rise of employment and house prices; however, in cities with a less elastic housing supply, the impact on economic growth is significantly lessened while the effects on house prices are larger.

中文翻译：

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住房供应弹性和增长：来自意大利城市的证据

本文研究了住房供应弹性对城市发展的影响。我们使用40年来观察的大约100个意大利主要城市的样本数据，首先估算城市水平的住房供应弹性，以住房存量变化与房价之间的相关性来衡量。其次，我们表明住房供应弹性的差异可能决定需求冲击转化为更强烈的就业增长或更昂贵的住房的程度。为了解决住房供给弹性的内生性问题，我们利用对住房发展的物理约束的综合度量作为工具变量。我们发现，劳动力需求的外生增长决定了就业和房价的上涨。但是，在住房供应弹性较小的城市，