Save the Orphan (Works)
[M]ost copyrighted works have a short commercial life. Only a tiny fraction of books, songs, movies, and software are so successful that they enjoy multiple printings and continue to sell [...]
Who Gets the Credit? And Does It Matter? Household vs. Firm Lending Across Countries
While the theoretical and empirical finance literature has focused almost exclusively on enterprise credit, about half of credit extended by banks to the private sector in a sample of 45 [...]
Housing Wealth Isn’t Wealth
A fall in house prices due to a change in fundamental value redistributes wealth from those long housing (for whom the fundamental value of the house they own exceeds the [...]
Real Effects of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis: Is it a Demand or a Finance Shock?
We develop a methodology to study whether and how a financial-sector crisis can spill over to the real economy, and apply it to the case of the ongoing subprime mortgage [...]
The Greenness of Cities: Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Urban Development
Carbon dioxide emissions may create significant social harm because of global warming, yet American urban development tends to be in low density areas with very hot summers. In this paper, [...]
The Prevalence and Effects of Occupational Licensing
This study provides the first nation-wide analysis of the labor market implications of occupational licensing for the U.S. labor market, using data from a specially designed Gallup survey. We find [...]
The Litigation of Financial Innovations
This paper examines the litigation of patents relating to financial products and services. I show that these grants are being litigated at a rate 27 to 39 times greater than [...]
Housing Supply and Housing Bubbles
Like many other assets, housing prices are quite volatile relative to observable changes in fundamentals. If we are going to understand boom-bust housing cycles, we must incorporate housing supply. In [...]
The attenuation of human capital spillovers
This paper uses 2000 Census data to estimate the relationship of agglomeration and proximity to human capital to wages. The paper takes a geographic approach, and focuses on the attenuation [...]
Housing Externalities
Using data compiled from concentrated residential urban revitalization programs implemented in Richmond, VA, between 1999 and 2004, we study residential externalities. Specifically, we provide evidence that in neighborhoods targeted by [...]