According to them, a standard American home should cost around $200,000, a figure that includes the cost of construction, what land would cost in a lightly regulated market, and a modest profit for developers. In many places, that’s what the prices roughly are. But for a few metropolitan areas like San Francisco and Boston, homes are wildly overpriced, leading to distortions in the economy and labor market.

We would still see homes of different sizes and styles — condos in some places, single-family homes in others — depending on the market in each city. A New York home would be smaller than one in, say, Houston.

And prices would still vary from place to place, based on demand and geography. It’s easier to build in Phoenix (plenty of flat land), and harder in San Francisco (lots of hills and nearby water). But while building in the San Francisco metro area is more expensive than in other places, it’s not that expensive. By the paper’s calculations, a home in the San Francisco area should cost around $281,000.

The actual price for a standard home in the area is more like $800,000 (using 2013 data). The paper argues that most of that difference is caused by regulatory hurdles like design and environmental reviews that can add years to a project’s timeline and suppress the overall housing supply. The result is overpayment on a grand scale for the few homes that do get built.

People are sure to quibble with the economists’ calculations, but their general conclusion — that an abundance of new homes would result in lower prices — is not remotely controversial. Many studies, from the McKinsey Global Institute, California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office and others, have shown that California’s high home prices are largely a supply problem: The state doesn’t build enough homes.

There are counterexamples around the world. Tokyo has not had rapid home price appreciation because increases in demand are met with increases in new building.

So let’s carry on with this hypothetical. Say we opened the floodgate of development. What kind of effects could we expect? The economy would grow, and by a lot. According to a recent paper by the economists Chang-Tai Hsieh, from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and Enrico Moretti, from the University of California, Berkeley, local land-use regulations reduce the United States’ economic output by as much as $1.5 trillion a year, or about 10 percent lower than it could be.