Following popular discourse, we abuse economic terminology by defining the housing shortage in the United States as the difference between the number of homes that would be built in the absence of supply constraints and the actual number of homes. The magnitude of the housing shortage is...

This paper provides a systematic analysis of the way shifts in property utilization rights in China induced another sequence of institutional changes that led to the rise of rural-urban labor migration from 1980 to 1984, a critical period in the country's market transition. I show that the...

There is much interest among cultural economists in assessing the effects of heritage preservation policies. There has been less interest in modeling the policy choices made in historic and cultural landmark preservation. This paper builds an economic model of a landmark designation that...

We use a unique regulatory event that occurred in Queensland, Australia, from 2007- 2012, to examine the predictive power of landowner relationship networks and lobbying behaviour on successfully gaining value-enhancing rezoning. A State authority, the Urban Land Development Authority (ULDA),...

Do leader networks promote efficient intergovernmental contracts? We examine a groundbreaking policy in China where subprovincial governments freely traded land conversion quotas, and investigate the role of leader networks on the boundary between jurisdictions that embrace trade versus autarky....

Much has been written identifying property price effects of historic preservation policies. Little attention has been paid to the possible policy endogeneity in hedonic price models. This paper outlines a general case of land use regulation in the presence of externalities and then demonstrates...

We investigate the impact of the presence of university dropouts on the academic success of first-time students. Our identification strategy relies on quasi-random variation in the proportion of returning dropouts. The estimated average zero effect of dropouts on first- time students' success...

In Australia, the so-called Group of Eight (Go8) universities have lower student-to-staff ratios, better qualified staff, superior research outcomes, and generally better placement in university rankings compared to non-Go8 universities. They are also typically the most competitive universities...

This guide, updated for the 2011-12 job market season, describes the U. S. academic market for new Ph.D. economists and offers advice on conducting an academic job search. It reports findings from published papers, describes practical details, and provides links to internet resources. Topics...

We use data from the 2007-2008 Ph.D. economist job market to investigate initial job placement in terms of job location, job type, and job rank. Our results suggest gender differences in all three dimensions of job placement. Relative to their male counterparts, female candidates are less (more)...