We study the equilibrium properties of an overlapping-generation economy where agents choose where to locate, and how much housing to own, and city residents vote on the number of new building permits every period. Under-supply of housing persists in equilibrium under conditions we characterize....

People choose where to live and how much to invest in housing. Traditionally, the first decision has been the domain of spatial economics, while the second has been analyzed in finance. Spatial asset pricing is an attempt to combine equilibrium concepts from both disciplines. In the finance...

Equilibrium of the housing market depends on a complex set of interactions between: (1) individual location decisions; (2) individual housing investment; (3) collective decisions on urban growth. We embed these three elements in a model of a dynamic economy with two sources of friction:...

This paper documents the delayed adoption of a major technological innovation: the adoption of the diesel locomotive in the US railway industry. Contrary to other instances of major technological innovations, the delay in the adoption of the diesel locomotive was not associated with an initial...

This paper investigates the benefits of allowing households to compensate the portfolio distortion due to their housing consumption through investments in housing price derivatives. Focusing on the London market, we show that a major loss from over-investment in housing is that households are...

This paper presents a dynamic theory of housing market fluctuations. It develops a life-cycle model where households are heterogeneous with respect to income and preferences, and mortgage lending is restricted by a down-payment requirement. the market interaction of young credit-constrained...

In a model of career concerns for experts, when is the principal hurt from observing more information about her agent? This paper introduces a distinction between information on the consequence of the agent's action and information directly on the agent's action. It is the latter kind that can...

Recent events in several countries have underscored the importance of good governance in private occupational pension plans. The present paper uses contract theory to analyze the interplay of residual claims and control rights in private pensions. The residual claimant is the plan sponsor in a...

One of the main problems in pension policy is to develop an institutional framework that guarantees that public and private pensions promises are kept. This paper discusses how the governance of public and private pensions is key to making such promises credible. It argues that credibility...