This paper examines the effects of minimum lot area restrictions on housing prices, construction, and residential sorting in the United States. First, I develop a structural break detection algorithm to estimate neighborhood-level minimum lot areas nationwide and provide new evidence on the...

This chapter considers the structure of mortgage finance in the United States and its role in shaping patterns of homeownership, the nature of the housing stock, and the organization of residential activity. We start by providing some background on the design features of mortgage contracts that...

I identify shocks to interest rates resulting from two administrative details in adjustable-rate mortgage contract terms: the choices of financial index and lookback period. I find that a 1 percentage point increase in interest rates at the time of ARM reset results in a 2.5 percentage rise in...

We provide novel estimates of the timing, magnitudes, and potential determinants of the start of the last housing boom across American neighborhoods and metropolitan areas (MSAs) using a rich new micro data set containing 23 million housing transactions in 94 metropolitan areas between 1993 and...