reference library

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated California’s housing crisis by heightening social and economic inequalities, with disparate impact on those unable to perform their jobs. The strong likelihood of a prolonged…
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Scholars have long argued that gentrification may displace long-term homeowners by causing their property taxes to increase, and policy makers, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have cited this argument as…
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Urban economics and branches of mainstream economics – what we call the “housing as opportunity” school of thought – have been arguing that shortages of affordable housing in dense agglomerations…
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The pace of gentrification has accelerated in cities across the country since 2000, and many observers fear it is displacing low-income populations from their homes and communities. We offer new…
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This paper provides the first, comprehensive evidence on the question of whether the subsidized flood insurance rates are needed to meet the affordability goal of the National Flood Insurance Program….
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Gentrification is a powerful force for economic change in our cities, but it is often accompanied by extreme and unnecessary cultural displacement. While gentrification increases the value of properties in…
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Economists have scrutinized the effects of residential building restrictions on the cost of housing, growth, and migration in recent years. More strictly zoned states and metro areas have lost population…
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The pace of gentrification has accelerated in cities across the country since 2000, and many observers fear it is displacing low-income populations from their homes and communities. We offer new…
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This paper estimates the link between population density and COVID-19 spread and severity in the contiguous United States. To overcome confounding factors, we use two Instrumental Variable (IV) strategies that…
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In this paper, we discuss what economic researchers have learned about density and what we see as the most significant gaps in this understanding. We begin by describing how economic…
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There is significant evidence that restrictions on residential land use reduce housing supply, increase house prices, and limit inflows of low‐income households. Local decision‐makers often argue that their efforts are…
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Using a 1994 law change, we exploit quasi-experimental variation in the assignment of rent control in San Francisco to study its impacts on tenants and landlords. Leveraging new data tracking…
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Differences in the supply of housing generate substantial variation in housing prices across the United States. Because housing prices influence migration, the elasticity of housing supply also has an important…
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Gentrification is a powerful force for economic change in our cities, but it is often accompanied by extreme and unnecessary cultural displacement. While gentrification increases the value of properties in…
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We develop two search-theoretic models emphasizing firm entry to examine the Oswald hypothesis, the idea that homeownership is linked to inferior labor market outcomes, and compare their predictions to three…
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Regulatory constraints on housing production have shut millions of Americans out of the country’s most productive labor markets. Historically, Americans have moved to the parts of the country that offered…
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The condominium structure, which facilitates ownership of units in multi-family buildings, was only introduced to the US during the 1960s. We ask whether the subsequent development of condominiums encouraged high-income…
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Low-income families in the United States tend to live in neighborhoods that offer limited opportunities for upward income mobility. One potential explanation for this pattern is that families prefer such…
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The U.S. market for home improvement and repair is now well over $400 billion annually as the housing stock faces pressure to meet the nation’s growing and changing housing needs….
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This report highlights the financial stress facing teachers in regions of fast economic growth and high property values. Teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area report far greater financial anxiety…
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Before I turn to longer-term structural trends, let me highlight that the housing recovery has been strong in recent years, aided by a wide range of countercyclical policies from the…
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Differences in the supply of housing generate substantial variation in housing prices across the United States. Because housing prices influence migration, the elasticity of housing supply also has an important…
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Over the past 30 years, the share of adult populations with college degrees increased more in cities with higher initial schooling levels than in initially less educated places. This tendency…
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This paper builds a dynamic general equilibrium model of cities and uses it to analyze the role of local housing markets and moving costs in determining the character and extent…
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Despite both empirical and anecdotal evidence suggesting the importance of common systematic factors determining price appreciation in residential real estate markets, the existing literature focuses almost exclusively on the impact…
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Economic theory predicts that individual migration decisions for working-age adults will depend on area differences in wages, housing costs, and amenities. While the importance of wages and amenities is well-established…
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In recent years, observers across America’s political spectrum have expressed concern over declining residential mobility and its implications for economic mobility in the United States. There is a widespread belief…
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We estimate the causal effect of each county in the U.S. on children’s incomes in adulthood. We first estimate a fixed effects model that is identified by analyzing families who…
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Are the well-known facts about urbanization in the United States also true for the developing world? We compare American metropolitan areas with comparable geographic units in Brazil, China and India….
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Gentrification has provoked considerable controversy surrounding its effects on residential displacement. Using a unique individual-level, longitudinal data set, this study examines mobility rates and residential destinations of residents in gentrifying…
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The past thirty years have seen a dramatic decline in the rate of income convergence across states and in population flows to wealthy places. These changes coincide with (1) an…
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This paper studies the impact of state-level land-use restrictions on U.S. economic activity, focusing on how these restrictions have depressed macroeconomic activity since 2000. We use a variety of state-level…
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