Using individual-level data on homeowner debt and defaults from 1997 to 2008, we show that borrowing against the increase in home equity by existing homeowners is responsible for a significant fraction of both the sharp rise in U.S. household leverage from 2002 to 2006 and the increase in...

This paper uses a structural model to show that foreclosures played a crucial role in exacerbating the recent housing bust and to analyze foreclosure mitigation policy. We consider a dynamic search model in which foreclosures freeze the market for non-foreclosures and reduce price and sales...

Contents; Preface; Postmortem for a Housing Crash / Edward L. Glaeser and Todd Sinai; 1. House Price Moments in Boom-Bust Cycles / Todd Sinai; 2. The Supply Side of the Housing Boom and Bust of the 2000s / Andrew Haughwout, Richard W. Peach, John Sporn, and Joseph Tracy; 3. A Spatial Look at Housing...

Economic theory predicts that home ownership should have a negative effect on risk-taking in financial portfolios. However, empirical work has not found a strong relationship between housing and portfolios. We identify two reasons for the divergence between the theory and data. First, it is...

Urban economists understand housing prices with a spatial equilibrium approach that assumes people must be indifferent across locations. Since the spatial no arbitrage condition is inherently imprecise, other economists have turned to different no arbitrage conditions, such as the prediction...

This paper studies the impacts of work-from-home (WFH) in the housing market from both intercity and intracity perspectives. Our results confirm the theoretical prediction that WFH puts downward pressure on housing prices and rents in high-productivity counties, a result of workers starting to...

Two phenomena characterized the housing market in the 1970s: a somewhat-disguised surge toward home ownership and a well-publicized sharp increase in the real price of housing. These movements were partially reversed in the first half of the 1980s. In the "standard view", the 1970s changes are...

Cities are physical structures, but the modern literature on urban economic development rarely acknowledges that fact. The elasticity of housing supply helps determine the extent to which increases in productivity will create bigger cities or just higher paid workers and more expensive homes. In...

A key reason for the existence of cities are the externalities created when people cluster together in close proximity. During Covid, such interactions came with health risks and people found other ways to interact. We document how cities changed during Covid and consider how the persistence of...