Non-degree certificate programs that are free, short, and located in urban areas may allow for the geographic convergence of urban job-seekers and employers to lead to both a skills and a spatial match. Leveraging a large-scale survey of applicants to a unique technology certificate and...

The lack of socioeconomic mobility among marginalized populations leads to the concentration of poverty, a long-standing issue in American cities. Empirical studies on neighborhood effects have found that poverty concentration adversely affects the socioeconomic mobility of...

As policy-makers grapple with whether or not to forgive student debt, for who, and how much, it is important to explore how student debt forgiveness would relate to intended household decisions and behaviors. We conducted a survey experiment that asked participants with student debt to imagine a...

Stable and adequate housing is critical in the midst of a pandemic; without housing, individuals and families cannot shelter in place to prevent the spread of disease. Understanding and combating housing hardships in vulnerable populations is therefore essential to a sound public health response....

The combined supply and demand shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic have created the largest shift in consumer behavior in recent history, while exposing millions of households to material hardships like food insecurity and housing instability. In this study, we draw on national surveys conducted...

Debt ownership is a common and increasingly large part of households' financial lives, which potentially exposes them to long-term credit risks from missed debt payments. In this study, we partnered with a large credit union to conduct a ten-arm field experiment aimed at reducing delinquent...

Government intervention in the housing market was partially driven by research showing that foreclosures lower neighboring housing values and thus increase neighbors' risk of foreclosure. While prior research has consistently identified a negative spillover effect of foreclosures on nearby...

The substantial costs of foreclosures to individuals and society motivated nearly $40 billion in government subsidies to homeowners during the Great Recession. Most of these subsidies were in the form of permanent loan modifications with mixed evidence of effectiveness. This paper estimates the...

While a deep body of research assesses the impact of natural disasters on residential real estate prices, a scholarly consensus has not yet been reached regarding natural disasters' impact on housing values in local housing markets. On the one hand, neighborhoods damaged by disasters experience...

We examine individuals' decision to attend Black Lives Matter protests and demonstrations calling for less stringent public health measures to combat COVID-19 (e.g., for swifter reopening of businesses). Our analysis is facilitated by a unique staggered panel data set originally constructed to...