The state of Georgia allocated most of its land to the public through a system of lotteries. These episodes provide unusual opportunities to assess the long-term impact of large shocks to wealth, as winning was uncorrelated with individual characteristics and participation was nearly universal...

The US Civil War ended in 1865 without the distribution of land or compensation to those formerly enslaved--a decision often seen as a cornerstone of racial inequality. We build a dataset to observe Black households' landholdings in 1880, a key component of their wealth, alongside a sample of...

We estimate the impact of more stringent minimum lot size restrictions across small border areas of neighboring communities using data from the Wharton Residential Land Use Regulatory Index (WRLURI) surveys. Economically meaningful effects are found on the built environment, not just house...

This paper provides new empirical results regarding the demand and supply of title, its impact on land value, and its effects on agricultural investment on Brazilian frontiers. We use survey data from 1992 and 1993 from the state of Par with data on the characteristics of the settlers, land...

Housing equity is the principle asset of a large fraction of older Americans. Indeed many retired persons have essentially no financial assets, other then Social Security and, for some, employer-provided pension benefits. Yet we find that housing wealth is typically not used to support...

This paper provides new evidence on the determinants of individual trade policy preferences using an individual-level data set identifying both stated trade policy preferences and potential trade exposure through several channels for the United States in 1992. There are two main empirical...

This paper studies the impact of the portfolio constraint imposed by the consumption demand for housing (the 'housing constraint') on the household's optimal holdings of financial assets. Since the ratio of housing to net worth declines as the household accumulates wealth, the housing constraint...

This paper describes the real wealth accumulation of American youth and relates this behavior to variations in real constant-quality house prices in their localities of residence. We argue that increases in the real constant-quality house price have two offsetting effects on wealth. First, the...

Do housing price fluctuations play an important role in the economic security of retirees, or is housing wealth just a sideshow to the determination of consumption and saving? Using panel data on saving from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and aggregate time- series data, I find that shifts...

This paper summarizes the impact of economic, social and demographic variables on household formations and home ownership in the 1960-85 period and uses this knowledge to forecast household formations, and their split between owners and renters, through the year 2000. High and low growth...