We examine the housing-market impact of U.S. urban casinos in nearby neighborhoods using data on home-purchase mortgage applications around opening years. Our sample covers 48 new urban casinos opened between 1995 and 2009. We compare changes in the volume of mortgage applications, the average...

This paper provides evidence that the recent housing bust in the United States precipitated a “credit crunch” for small businesses. Using detailed records of individual bank’s lending history, we develop a measure of their exposure to the housing bust. This measure is then used to estimate...

Access to legal gambling has expanded in Canada. Casinos can generate both positive and negative local impacts. We analyze the effect of new urban Canadian casinos on nearby neighborhoods in terms of population growth and composition, and housing market outcomes based on more than 40 urban...

A recent large Canadian survey permits us to compare real-time and on-line social networks as sources of subjective well-being. The sample of 5,000 is drawn randomly from an on-line pool of respondents, a group well placed to have and value on-line friendships. We find three key results. First,...

Using two large US surveys, we estimate the effects of unemployment on the subjective well-being of the unemployed and the rest of the population. For the unemployed, the non-pecuniary costs of unemployment are several times as large as those due to lower incomes, while the indirect effect at...