Providing for shelter represents a large portion of the typical household budget. Accordingly, rent, paid either to a landlord or to oneself as an owner-occupant, has a large weight in the CPI and in the personal consumption expenditures deflator, resulting in substantial scrutiny of how tenant...

The boom and subsequent bust in housing construction and prices over the 2000s is widely regarded as a principal contributor to the Financial Panic of 2007 and the subsequent Great Recession. As of this writing, housing market activity remains at depressed levels as the economy slowly resolves...

By historical standards, the U.S. economy has experienced a period of remarkable stability since the mid-1980s. One explanation attributes the diminished variability of economic activity to information-technology-led improvements in inventory management. Our results, however, indicate that the...