Introduction: Value, Preferences, and Inequality in the Housing Market -- Benevolence, Interest, and Establishing Authority -- Romancing the Home -- Malleable Prices -- Real Estate Agents and Neighborhood Inequalities -- Conclusion: Making Preferences, Making Prices, and Making Neighborhoods.

We examine commission splits between listing and selling agents in real estate transactions. We construct a theoretical model to show that agency problems arise when a listing agent attempts to maximize his or her payoff while setting the commission split. Mitigation to these agency problems can...

The real estate market is highly intermediated, with 90% of buyers and sellers hiring an agent to help them transact a house. However, low barriers to entry and fixed commission rates result in a market where inexperienced intermediaries have a large market share, especially following house...

This paper studies racial and ethnic discrimination in discrete choices by real estate brokers using national audit data from the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study. It uses a fixed effects logit model to estimate the probability that discrimination occurs and to study the causes of...

The author constructs a theoretical model to examine the effects of an inherent conflict of interest between a seller of a house and the real estate broker hired by the seller. The model is then used to calibrate the broker's commission rates that would maximize the seller's expected gain. The...