TY - JOUR T1 - Empirics on the Long-Run Effects of Building Energy Codes in the Housing Market JF - Land Economics JO - Land Econ SP - 585 LP - 607 DO - 10.3368/le.93.4.585 VL - 93 IS - 4 AU - Makram El-Shagi AU - Claus Michelsen AU - Sebastian Rosenschon Y1 - 2017/11/01 UR - http://le.uwpress.org/content/93/4/585.abstract N2 - We study the effectiveness of building energy codes, taking a long-run perspective. The focus is on regulation’s impact on energy demand in both high- and low-quality residences, in other words, the diffusion and the entry of “green” buildings in the housing market. We develop a measure for regulation intensity and apply this to a panel-error-correction regression model for energy requirements of a large sample of German apartment houses built between 1950 and 2005. We show that regulation is effective in saving energy. In particular, regulation pushes investors in the low-quality housing market segment toward the technological frontier. Indirectly, it also affects the high-quality segment. (JEL Q41, R52) ER -