ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

JUE Insight: How much does COVID-19 increase with mobility? Evidence from New York and four other U.S. cities (With Edward L. Glaeser and Stephen J. Redding), Journal of Urban Economics, 127, February 2022.

How Regressive Are Mobility-Related User Fees and Gasoline Taxes? (with Ed Glaeser and Jim Poterba), NBER Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 37, August 2023.

  • NBER WP 30746

Working Papers

Global Capital and Local Assets: House Prices, Quantities, and Elasticities (with Benjamin Keys). December, 2023. Revise & Resubmit, Review of Financial Studies.

We examine the impact of foreign purchases in the U.S. housing market, and exploit foreign demand shocks to estimate local price elasticities of supply. Other countries introduced foreign-buyer taxes beginning in 2011, intended to deter foreign housing investment. After 2011, we show house prices grew 6 to 9 percentage points more in U.S. zipcodes with high foreign born populations; this growth reversed after 2017. These international tax policy changes act as a U.S. housing demand shock, instrumenting for endogenous capital flows. We find that global capital inflows contributed to a 3% annual increase in prices and 0.5% increase in quantities over 2011–2018 for the average U.S. city. The ratio of these two elasticities yields a new estimate of the local house price elasticity of supply, which we construct for 100 U.S. cities. These supply elasticities average 0.26 and vary between 0.06 and 0.9, establishing that local housing markets exhibit substantial spatial heterogeneity and are more inelastic than estimated in prior decades.

Ridesharing and the Redistribution of Economic Activity, July 2024. Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Urban Economics.

Awards: UEA Best PhD Paper (Honorable Mention), 2019; EMUEA Kraks Fond Prize (Runner Up), 2019; OSU PhD Conference on Real Estate and Housing (Best Paper Award), 2019.

This paper studies how improvements in local accessibility influence cities’ distributions of nontradeable amenities, housing costs and welfare. I build a model of local demand for these amenities, which depends on travel times and costs. Ridesharing’s entry shocks these times and costs. Three years after entry, amenities grow faster in areas which are driving-accessible and transit-inaccessible. In these locations, median house prices and rents rise by 3% and 1% per year, respectively. Taken together, the improvements in amenities and access outpace the rising housing costs. All residents benefit from ridesharing, although homeowners’ benefits are four times larger than renters’.

The Financial Consequences of Wanting to Own a Home (with Gregor Schubert) February 2025.

Selected Presentations: Pre-WFA Summer Real Estate Research Symposium 2023, NBER SI 2023 (Real Estate); BFI Women in Empirical Micro; Utah Eccles Housing Affordability Summit, Online Spatial and Urban Seminar 2025S

We study the causal effects of homeownership affinities on tenure choice, household sensitivity to credit shocks, and retirement portfolios. Exploiting exogenous variation in affinities across U.S. immigrants’ countries of origin, we find that a 10pp higher affinity causes a 1.5pp higher homeownership rate in the U.S. Using exogenous credit-supply shocks, we show that high-affinity households are more responsive to credit availability, and less likely to default on mortgage payments. By retirement, high-affinity households realize higher homeownership, greater total wealth, and larger real estate shares in their portfolios. These effects are largely driven by appreciation.

Impact of Institutional Owners on Housing Markets (with Franklin Qian and Zipei Zhu) February 2025.

Selected Presentations: Cavalcade 2025, Baruch College (Zicklin) (scheduled), Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (scheduled), CU Boulder (Leeds), 2024 Stanford SITE for Housing and Urban Economics, Cornell Real Estate Symposium, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, 2024 Pre-WFA Summer Real Estate Research Symposium, 2nd Annual Conference on Market-Based Solutions for Reducing Wealth Inequality, CICF 2024, ITAM Finance Conference 2024, RERI Annual Conference 2024

Since the Great Recession, Long-Term Rental (LTR) companies, including single-family rental and private equity firms, have reshaped the U.S. investor landscape. Using housing deeds data from 2010 to 2022, we show that LTRs outpaced other investors, and concentrate geographically. We develop an instrument that predicts LTR market share based on local product preferences and decreasing management costs. A one-standard-deviation increase in LTR share raises house prices by 1.58 p.p., lowers homeownership by 0.53 p.p., and does not affect rents. These averages mask significant temporal heterogeneity. LTRs contribute to a 0.32\% national homeownership decline by acquiring homes from owners and speculators.

 

Other Publications


Understanding the Ballot Question That Could Reshape Rideshare and Gig Driving, with Evan Horowitz. Center for State Policy Analysis, Tisch College, Tufts University, 2022.

Your Uber Has Arrived: How Ridesharing Expands Access, Increases Emissions, and Changes Cities. Kleinman Center for Energy Policy Digest, 2019.

Underwater and Drowning? Some Facts about Mortgages that Could Be Targeted by Eminent Domain, with Andreas Fuster. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Liberty Street Economics, 2013.