'What Big Teeth You Have!': Identifying the Motivations for Exclusionary Zoning

Abstract

This paper considers whether a number of the motivations for exclusionary zoning usually examined by economists are distinguishable from one another in a general theoretical model. The four motivations identified are: fiscal zoning, public goods zoning, consumption zoning and political economic zoning. It is demonstrated in a general setting that the motivations are observationally equivalent if the only available information is community composition. The most important implication of this finding is that a policy directed at alleviating one motive for zoning inevitably affects other motives. The existence of exclusionary zoning does not constitute a prima facie case for any particular intervention. Rather, the true motivations behind the observed pattern of land use and land-use controls must be identified.