Property Rights and Urban Form
How do the different elements in the standard bundle of property rights, including those of possession and transfer, influence the shape of cities? This paper incorporates insecure property rights into [...]
Warding Off Development: Local Control, Housing Supply and NIMBYs
Local control of land-use regulation creates a not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) problem that can suppress housing construction, contributing to rising prices and potentially slowing economic growth. I study how increased local control [...]
Single-Family Zoning Reform: An Analysis of SB 1120
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 [...]
The rise and effects of homeowners associations
In the U.S., nearly 60% of recently built single-family houses, and 80% of houses in new subdivisions, are part of a homeowners association (HOA). We construct the first near-national map [...]
Should Law Subsidize Driving?
A century ago, captains of industry and their allies in government launched a social experiment in urban America: the abandonment of mass transit in favor of a new personal technology, [...]
Who Participates in Local Government? Evidence from Meeting Minutes
Scholars and policymakers have identified neighborhood activism and participation as a valuable source of policy information and civic engagement. Yet, these venues may be biasing policy discussions in favor of [...]
The Effect of New Luxury Housing on Regional Housing Affordability
I study the short-run effect of new housing construction on housing affordability using individual address history data. Because most new construction is expensive, its effect on the market for more [...]
Does Homeownership Influence Political Behavior? Evidence from Administrative Data
Does owning property influence how individuals engage in the political process? This is a fundamental question in political economy, and a timely one given recent interest in understanding "NIMBYism" and [...]
Waiting for Affordable Housing in New York City
We develop a new dynamic equilibrium model with heterogeneous households that captures the most important frictions that arise in housing rental markets and explains the political popularity of affordable housing [...]
Does Property Ownership Lead to Participation inLocal Politics? Evidence from Property Records andMeeting Minutes
Homeowners and renters have participated in politics at different rates throughout American history, but does becoming a property owner motivate an individual to access forms of political participation likely to [...]