Andrea Herrera Bórquez
PhD Student in Economic Geography at LSE.
About me
Hi, I’m Andrea Herrera, an Economic Geography PhD candidate specializing in Urban Economics. I am studying the effects of urban planning and transport infrastructure on housing outcomes and the spatial distribution of economic activity and people using Quantitative Spatial Models. I am also interested in learning about the spatial determinants of intergenerational mobility, spatial inequalities, environmental issues, and gender inequalities.
This is my CV.
Contact me at a.herrera5@lse.ac.uk
My research
Working papers
Regulating the Skyline: Evidence from London's Protected Vistas. [JMP]
Best Student Paper at the 2025 Urban Economics Association North American Meeting.
Abstract
Planning authorities often impose height limits to protect beauty, heritage, and iconic views. I use London’s Protected Vistas—height retrictions that preserve views of key landmarks—to estimate effects on building height, prices, and welfare. A boundary discontinuity design shows that tall buildings (over 18 m, per GLA) are 3–7% shorter inside corridors, with no change in average height across all buildings and no change in the share of tall buildings; effects are stronger where permissible height is less than 60 m. Prices are about 4% higher inside. The price gap could reflect (i) enhanced private landmark visibility, (ii) amenities of lower-rise environments, or (iii) a supply effect under imperfect mobility. Using a building-level visibility index, I find no improvement in private views within corridors, ruling out the view-hedonic channel. I then use the reduced-form estimates to run counterfactuals in a quantitative spatial model that updates both feasible floorspace and a local amenity term. The model attributes about 85% of the local price change to the amenity channel, with the remainder to supply; removing the caps shifts development toward commercial use and raises aggregate welfare by about 0.2%, with small citywide changes in prices and composition.
The Effects of Transport Infrastructure on Housing Supply: The Role of Land-Use Regulation. Co-authored with Hugo Silva and Kenzo Asahi. [Working Paper]
Abstract
We study the impact of new transportation infrastructure on housing supply using historical and micro data from Santiago and exploiting instrumental variables. We find that subway and highway expansions increase residential floor space substantially, but when we account for land-use regulation, we see two contrasting dynamics in the city. In the wealthiest quintile, the effect is negligible for more than 95% of the blocks due to their initial stringent regulation. However, in blocks in the first four quintiles of wealth, the impact on housing supply is substantial and homogeneous concerning the initial regulation. We provide evidence that the transport infrastructure triggers regulation to become more permissive everywhere but in the wealthiest neighborhoods. We quantify how land-use regulation limits housing supply, thus restraining welfare gains from transport infrastructure improvements.