Nikhil Datta

@amritakulka.bsky.social and my housing work was featured on ITV Tonight yesterday. You can play with a fun map and read more about it here: wheretobuild.warwick.ac.uk

#TeamHair strikes again

@amritakulka.bsky.social and I are looking to hire a full time predoc to work with us on a project on land use regulation and market power in the housing market. If you're interested in (very) big data and applied econ please do apply! #econra #econ_ra
econjobmarket.org/positions/12...

New piece from #TeamHair

Working paper on options for reform of non-compete clauses in employment contracts

ICYMI given today's focus on the budget: the UK government has today also published a working paper on options for reform of non-compete agreements.

Responses to the specific options set out therein (statutory limits, size cutoffs and an outright ban), can be submitted until 18 February.

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Yesterday was my last day at the CMA.

It has been a real honour helping to build its research function over the last three years. This therefore seems like a good opportunity to highlight a few things we have published in recent years.

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🚨 undergrads and masters students interested in careers in applied econ research:

My department is recruiting 4-5 full-time RAs to start summer 2026. See the announcement here for more details: jessiehandbury.com/misc/RAflyer...

A few reasons you should apply...

Could new tenants’ rights usher in rent controls? Here’s why that wouldn’t necessarily be a positive The government says it doesn’t back rent controls – but new protections should limit how much landlords can push up prices.

New piece from me and Jan Bakker in The Conversation

theconversation.com/could-new-te...

Assessment Tool. Scottish Local Planning Authorities prepare a Local Housing Strategy based on local Housing Need and Demand Assessments. We take these different systems into account when we discuss housing targets in
section 4.4." Page 6. Not sure you read it very well.

"This table shows the history of housing target policies only for England. Wales and Scotland have devolved housing delivery policies with Welsh Local Planning Authorities setting housing numbers in their Local Development Plans informed by the Welsh government’s Local Housing Market...

Commenting on an article having not read it is quite a basic error, but not uncommon.
“In practice we use separate gaps for England, Scotland and Wales, aggregated from LA targets which amount to England - 371994, Scotland - 20045 and Wales - 9879 homes per year.“ Page 37.

We don’t include flood zone mapping or geographical limitations- only planning designations. If you think of interest to policy makers we can look at incorporating in future iterations.

Any interested stakeholders (policymakers, planners, developers etc) feel free to get in touch. We have also produced 350 LA specific reports accessible here: www.warwick.ac.uk/cage/whereto....

Looking at detailed evidence on planning restrictiveness, we find that Bexley, Lewisham, and Wandsworth combine high housing gaps with slow, restrictive planning systems. These areas urgently need reform. In contrast, Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham show high demand and efficient planning.
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We then turn to planning designations. 15% of the gap lies in Greenbelt areas – but it’s very concentrated. Allowing building on just 10% of England’s greenbelts with the highest gap would be a huge positive. This particularly pronounced around the North and Northwest. 11/n

To meet Britain’s housing gap, around 50% of new homes need to come from densification—especially in Wandsworth, Islington, Camden, Manchester, Bristol, Salford, Edinburgh & Portsmouth. Another 30% should be urban extensions like North Shields and South London (Richmond–Kingston).
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Arguably the most important finding is that 96% of the variation is within LAs rather than between. Many LAs have areas of both high and low gaps. Croydon for example has OAs in the top 6th percentile and bottom 1st percentile. 9/n

The areas with the highest housing gaps are in trendy urban centres, all classed as densification. Those with the lowest gaps cluster near sewage plants, airports, major roads, or in places lacking basic amenities—where few people want to live. 8/n

We use 20 billion Rightmove searches and housing availability data to build our key measure of excess demand—the housing gap: the difference between how many people search for homes in an area and how many are available. We calculate this at the OA level – essentially a neighbourhood. 7/n

The proportion of densification has fallen over the past 2 decades, while urban extensions have grown along with small town extensions. We show that urban extensions are slower and more bureaucratic, with longer planning times and slower build-out rates compared to densification. 6/n

We then classify every new build by where it happened—combining settlement size, distance to the city centre, and local context:
New Rural Developments – small villages & rural areas
Small Town Extensions – around small towns
Urban Extensions – city outskirts
Densification – inner-city builds
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70% of new builds have worse than average job access than the existing housing stock, and this figure is even worse when considering only public transport. 4/n

18% of all new builds are now in rural villages or small towns without a secondary school or GP up from 11% in 2010. 3/n

In the report we start by asking where has Britain built? Using data on 3.2 million builds over the past two decades we document that many new homes are built in low-demand areas with poor amenities and worse than average access to jobs. 2/n

Where should Britain build 1.5 million homes?
@amritakulka.bsky.social l and I analysed 20 billion housing searches + availability to map demand at a hyper-local level.
Map 👉 wheretobuild.warwick.ac.uk
Full + 350 LA reports 👉 www.warwick.ac.uk/cage/whereto...
@cagewarwick.bsky.social
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Are you an economist looking for a pre-doc? Are you interested in youth crime and policy? Then come work with us! We're hiring at @cep-lse.bsky.social to come and work with Rui Costa, Matteo Sandi and myself on a joint project. Applications now open: jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...
#EconRA #EconSky

As someone who has lived in three different towns in Hertfordshire, I have no idea what he's talking about. Now if you need me I'll be eating second breakfast.

Warwick econ are hiring! With a preference for Macro & Development.

econjobmarket.org/positions/12...

Glad to see my new piece in The Conversation is stimulating informed debate

How new renters’ rights could drive landlords out of the market Landlords could see costs increase while profits fall.

theconversation.com/how-new-rent...

New piece from Jan David Bakker & myself on some of the possible consequences of the renter's rights bill