China's fast economic growth over the past 40 years has been accompanied by an increasingly rapid rate of urbanization, from about 20% in the early 1980s to 60% in 2018. In addition to natural population growth, rural-urban migration is generally believed to be a dominant driving force....

This paper studies temporary policy incentives designed to address capital overhang by inducing asset demand from buyers in the private market. Using variation across local geographies in ex ante program exposure and a difference-in-differences design, we find that the First-Time Homebuyer...

This paper measures the housing market impact of state-level anti-discrimination laws in the 1960s using household-level and census-tract data. State-level fair-housing' laws attempted to bar discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and national origin in the sale, rental, and financing of...

Interconnected capital markets allow mobile global capital to flow into immobile local assets. This paper examines how foreign demand affects U.S. housing markets, and uses this demand shock to estimate local price elasticities of supply. Other countries introduced foreign-buyer taxes meant to...

During the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. government closely regulated the single-family housing finance system. The regulation manifested itself in a highly specialized system with four notable characteristics: portfolio restrictions against investments in corporate assets, tax inducements to invest...

The key stylized facts of the housing market are positive serial correlation of price changes at one year frequencies and mean reversion over longer periods, strong persistence in construction, and highly volatile prices and construction levels within markets. We calibrate a dynamic model of...

To explain the low-frequency variation in US equity and debt returns in the 20th century, we solve an equilibrium model in which households face housing collateral constraints. An increase in the ratio of housing to human wealth loosens these borrowing constraintsthus allowing for more risk...

We produce first results on the sustainability of homeownership for recent (2007-2009) FHA-insured borrowers. More than 15 percent of these borrowers have already been 90 days or more delinquent, while less than 7 percent have completed their graduation to sustainable homeownership by finally...

We analyze by far the most extensive data base yet employed in estimating capitalizationquot; of below-market interest rates into asset prices: nearly 300,000 sales of owner-occupied homes inquot; Sweden from 1981 to 1993 with 40,000 including government subsidized interest rates. Ourquot;...

We use variation in mortgage modifications to disentangle the impact of reducing long-term obligations with no change in short-term payments (“wealth”), and reducing short-term payments with approximately no change in long-term obligations (“liquidity”). Using regression discontinuity...