Data and Code for: The Folk Economics of Housing

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Christopher Elmendorf, University of California, Davis; Clayton Nall, University of California, Santa Barbara; Stan Oklobdzija, University of California, Riverside

Version: View help for Version V1

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code			07/21/2025 03:38:PM
data			06/23/2025 04:24:PM
figures			06/23/2025 03:28:PM
survey_instruments			06/23/2025 03:39:PM
tables			06/23/2025 03:30:PM
License.txt	text/plain	1.4 KB	06/20/2025 12:44:PM
README.pdf	application/pdf	388.9 KB	07/21/2025 10:24:AM
references.bib	application/x-bibtex-text-file	2.1 KB	06/23/2025 12:12:PM

Project Citation:

Elmendorf, Christopher, Nall, Clayton, and Oklobdzija, Stan. Data and Code for: The Folk Economics of Housing. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2025. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-08-07. https://doi.org/10.3886/E233932V1

Project Description

Summary: We investigate why economically inefficient housing regulations persist despite broad expert consensus that they restrict supply and drive up prices. We propose that public misunderstanding of basic market dynamics—what we term “folk economics”—plays a central role. Drawing on three preregistered, nationally representative surveys of urban and suburban U.S. residents, we examine how people reason about the relationship between housing supply and prices. While majorities of both renters and homeowners express a desire for lower housing costs, only a minority believe that large increases in regional housing supply would reduce prices. In contrast to textbook economic reasoning, many respondents blame landlords and developers for high prices. They favor price controls, demand subsidies, and regulations targeting housing providers. We find that beliefs about housing supply effects are weakly held and highly unstable over time and across survey contexts, consistent with the view that they are “non-attitudes.” These misperceptions help explain why punitive housing policies enjoy stronger and more consistent public support than pro-supply reforms. Our findings suggest that correcting economic misconceptions may be essential for enabling effective policy change, and they highlight the need to incorporate models of mass belief formation into political economy accounts of land-use regulation.

Funding Sources: Manhattan Institute; UCSB Pahl Initiative on Critical Social Issues

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: economic knowledge; folk economics; housing policy

JEL Classification:
D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
R31 Housing Supply and Markets

Geographic Coverage: United States adults, urban and suburban zip codes

Time Period(s): 3/17/2022 – 3/13/2024 (Four Survey Waves, 2022-2024)

Collection Date(s): 3/17/2022 – 3/24/2022 (Survey 1); 8/16/2022 – 8/29/2022 (Survey 2); 4/23/2023 – 5/11/2023 (Survey 3); 3/5/2024 – 3/13/2024 (JPIPE Paper Survey)

Universe: Quota-sampled online of 18+ US population, targeting equal proportions of owners and renters.

Data Type(s): aggregate data; census/enumeration data; experimental data; geographic information system (GIS) data; observational data; survey data

Methodology

Sampling: Survey responses were collected online by Forthright (Bovitz) using quotas specified by the researchers.

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Published Versions

V1 [2025-08-07]

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