A clustering algorithm is applied to effective rents for twenty-one U.S. office markets, and to twenty-two metropolitan markets using vacancy data. It provides support for the conjecture that there exists a few major families of cities: including an oil and gas group and an industrial Northeast...

This paper addresses the issue of how closely the fortunes of suburbs are tied to the fortunes of the central city. We use similarities in residential housing price dynamics as a measure of how closely the economies of cities and suburbs are related. We develop housing price indices for most of...

A clustering algorithm is applied to effective rents for twenty-one metropolitan U.S. office markets, and to twenty-two metropolitan markets using vacancy data. It provides support for the conjecture that there exists a few major "families" of cities: including an oil and gas group and an...

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...

Home mortgages have loomed continually larger in the financial situation of American households. In 1949, mortgage debt was equal to 20 percent of total household income; by 1979, it had risen to 46 percent of income; by 2001, 73 percent of income (Bernstein, Boushey and Mishel, 2003). Similarly,...

Large racial differences in home ownership have been a source of considerable concernamong policymakers because homeownership choice may influence wealth accumulation, labormarket outcomes, and even children's educational outcomes. Racial differences in ownershiprates may be affected by...

This paper provides a conceptual basis for the price discovery potential for tradable market instruments and specifically the development of mortgage securitization in Asia and the potential dangers of such markets. Nonetheless we argue for the potential importance of securitization in Asia...

While other countries dismantled their segmented housing finance systems and linked housing finance to capital markets through deregulated depositories, the US linked housing finance to capital markets through depository deregulation and securitization. Elsewhere securitization has not...

We revisit the relationship between financing constraints and homeownership rates using the 2004 wave of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The survey respondents are a nationally representative sample of Americans 39-47 years of age as of this wave. As most of the sample had been...