Data and Code for: The Folk Economics of Housing

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.