In the presence of moving costs, individuals may remain in a region even when they expect to attain a higher standard of living elsewhere. When a natural disaster or other exogenous shock forces individuals to move, the net impact on living standards could be positive or negative. This paper...

Many observers argue that urban revitalization harms the poor, primarily by raising rents. Others argue that urban decline harms the poor by reducing job opportunities, the quality of local public services, and other neighborhood amenities. While both decay and revitalization can have negative...

Why do voters at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum support political candidates who generally disfavor redistributive policies? Existing explanations often presume that voters are explicitly acting in opposition to their economic self-interest, or that they hold persistently optimistic...

The black-white earnings gap has historically been larger in the South than in other regions of the United States. Since 1970, however, the male annual earnings gap outside the South has increased -- dramatically, when the analysis factors in non-participants -- while the gap within the South...

This paper employs a simple intertemporal model to show that presence of liquidity constraints can depress the price of a durable good below its net present rental value, regardless of the overall supply elasticity. The existence of price effects implies that the relaxation of liquidity...