IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/bphupl/qt9621c051.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Prevaling Wage Requirements on the Cost of Low-Income Housing

Author

Listed:
  • Dunn, Sarah
  • Quigley, John M.
  • Rosenthal, Larry A.

Abstract

Recent California legislation extends the application of prevailing wage regulations to subsidized low-income residential construction projects. This paper estimates the cost and supply effects of this legislation. Econometric evidence based on recently completed tax-credit projects in California demonstrates that construction costs increase substantially under prevailing wage requirements. Estimates of additional construction costs in our most extensive models range from 9 to 32 percent. The analysis controls for variations in cost by geographical location and for differences in project characteristics, financing, and developer attributes. We estimate the effect of uniform imposition of these regulations on the number of new dwellings for low-income households produced under the tax credit program. Under reasonable conditions, our mid-range estimate of this prospective decrease exceeds 2,600 units per year.

Suggested Citation

  • Dunn, Sarah & Quigley, John M. & Rosenthal, Larry A., 2005. "The Effects of Prevaling Wage Requirements on the Cost of Low-Income Housing," Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy, Working Paper Series qt9621c051, Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:bphupl:qt9621c051
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9621c051.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Allen, Steven G, 1983. "Much Ado about Davis-Bacon: A Critical Review and New Evidence," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(3), pages 707-736, October.
    2. Barry T. Hirsch & David A. MacPherson, 2003. "Union Membership and Coverage Database from the Current Population Survey: Note," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(2), pages 349-354, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jaewhan Kim & Chang Kuo-Liang & Peter Philips, 2012. "The Effect of Prevailing Wage Regulations on Contractor Bid Participation and Behavior: A Comparison of P alo A lto, C alifornia with Four Nearby Prevailing Wage Municipalities," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 874-891, October.
    2. Glaeser, Edward L., 2014. "Understanding housing: The intellectual legacy of John Quigley," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 3-12.
    3. Matthew Hinkel & Dale Belman, 2022. "Should prevailing wages prevail? Re‐examining the effect of prevailing wage laws on affordable housing construction costs," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 60(4), pages 761-783, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Behroz Baraghoshi & Cihan Bilginsoy, 2013. "Interstate Variations in Private Sector Union Density in the U.S," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 180-202, June.
    2. Andreas G. F. Hoepner & Lisa Schopohl, 2020. "State Pension Funds and Corporate Social Responsibility: Do Beneficiaries’ Political Values Influence Funds’ Investment Decisions?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 489-516, September.
    3. Michel Freyssenet & Bruno Jetin, 2019. "The deregulation of employment and finance: the Big Three in crisis," Working Papers halshs-02020051, HAL.
    4. Bates, Laurie & Santerre, Rexford, 2013. "Is the U.S. Private Education Sector Infected by Baumol’s Cost Disease? Evidence from the 50 States," MPRA Paper 52300, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Erik Brynjolfsson & Catherine Buffington & Nathan Goldschlag & J. Frank Li & Javier Miranda & Robert Seamans, 2023. "The Characteristics and Geographic Distribution of Robot Hubs in U.S. Manufacturing Establishments," Working Papers 23-14, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    6. Daniel P. Kessler & Lawrence F. Katz, 2001. "Prevailing Wage Laws and Construction Laborc Markets," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 54(2), pages 259-274, January.
    7. Parrish Bergquist & Christopher Warshaw, 2023. "How climate policy commitments influence energy systems and the economies of US states," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-9, December.
    8. repec:ilr:articl:v:65:y:2012:i:2:p:263-285 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Emin Dinlersoz & Jeremy Greenwood & Henry Hyatt, 2017. "What Businesses Attract Unions? Unionization over the Life Cycle of U.S. Establishments," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 70(3), pages 733-766, May.
    10. Louis‐Philippe Beland & Bulent Unel, 2019. "Politics and entrepreneurship in the US," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 33-57, February.
    11. Paul A. Gompers & Sophie Q. Wang, 2017. "Diversity in Innovation," NBER Working Papers 23082, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Christopher K. Coombs & Richard Cebula, 2011. "The Impact of Union Corruption on Union Membership," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 131-148, January.
    13. Feng Li, 2011. "Earnings Quality Based on Corporate Investment Decisions," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(3), pages 721-752, June.
    14. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Drautzburg, Thorsten & Guerron-Quintana, Pablo A., 2017. "Political Distribution Risk and Aggregate Fluctuations," CEPR Discussion Papers 12187, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. David A. Macpherson & Barry T. Hirsch, 2023. "Five decades of CPS wages, methods, and union‐nonunion wage gaps at Unionstats.com," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 439-452, October.
    16. Barry T. Hirsch, 2008. "Wage Gaps Large and Small," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 74(4), pages 914-933, April.
    17. David Brady & Regina Baker & Ryan Finnigan, 2013. "When Unionization Disappears: State-Level Unionization and Working Poverty in the U.S," LIS Working papers 590, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    18. Shishir Shakya & Alicia Plemmons & Juan Tomas Sayago-Gomez, 2022. "Spatial spillovers and the productivity-compensation gap in the United States," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 68(3), pages 669-689, June.
    19. Pierre Brochu & Louis-Philippe Morin, 2011. "Union Membership and Perceived Job Insecurity: 30 Years of Evidence from the American General social Survey," Working Papers 1106E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    20. Antonio Falato & Jae W. Sim, 2014. "Why Do Innovative Firms Hold So Much Cash? Evidence from Changes in State R&D Tax Credits," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2014-72, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    21. Jacqueline Agesa & Richard U. Agesa, 2012. "Imports, unionization and racial wage discrimination in the US," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(3), pages 339-350, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:bphupl:qt9621c051. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibbrkus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.