Legal and policy debates about land-use restrictions tend to focus on exclusionary zoning that restricts housing construction. Such restrictions do indeed cause great harm, and also violate constitutional rights. But restrictions on commercial uses of property also have major negative effects. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study by economists Fil Babalievsky, Kyle Herkenhoff, Lee Ohanian and Edward Prescott attempts to quantify the effect. Here is the abstract:
