In this essay, we review the basic economics of housing supply and the functioning of US housing markets to better understand the distribution of home prices, household wealth and the spatial distribution of people across markets. We employ a cost-based approach to gauge whether a housing market...

Like many other assets, housing prices are quite volatile relative to observable changes in fundamentals. If we are going to understand boom-bust housing cycles, we must incorporate housing supply. In this paper, we present a simple model of housing bubbles that predicts that places with more...

The volatility of house prices and construction levels is high. Both exhibit strong positive serial correlations at 1-year frequencies, Prices show strong mean reversion over 5-year periods. This paper asks whether these facts can be reconciled in a dynamic housing model, where in the tradition...

Urbanization is undoubtedly a key driver of development-cities provide the national platform for prosperity, job creation, and poverty reduction. But urbanization also poses enormous challenges that one is familiar with: congestion, air pollution, social divisions, crime, the breakdown of public...