We estimate the causal impact of a 2018 zoning reform that banned new short-term rental registries in some parts of Lisbon. The short-term rental licence expires when the house is sold, hence the ban removes the option value of short-term renting a property. We rely on two administrative data...

The amendment to the German Trade and Crafts Code in 2004 offers a natural experiment to asses the causal effects of this reform on the probabilities of being self-employed and transition into and out of self-employment, using cross-sections (2002-2006) of German microcensus data. This study...

The empirical literature on occupational licensing finds standard monopoly effects of entry regulations: Less competition and economic rents for professionals. I exploit the natural experimental design of a change in the German crafts regulation in 2004, which removed the traditional licensing...

Large variation in the estimated income premium of occupational licensing can be found in the existing literature. I revisit the natural experimental design of a change in the German crafts regulation in 2004, which removed the traditional licensing requirement for self-employment in certain...

We show that foreign real estate capital inflows have positive real effects and adverse distributional consequences. Using transaction-level data, we document (i) a "China shock" in the U.S. housing market characterized by surging foreign Chinese housing purchases after 2008; and (ii) "home bias" in...

This paper presents a first view on the effects of COVID-19 and subsequent shutdown and re-opening orders on residential real estate markets. We use micro-level data on property transactions from a large number of multiple listing services and find moderate aggregate pricing effects in the...