Despite ongoing restructuring of the Chinese economy, barriers to labor mobility and attendantstratification of China’s labor markets remain significant. Those barriers serve to reduce the efficiency of labor market allocations and accordingly inhibit wage equilibration and productivity...

This paper examines whether CRA incentives were influential regarding the large increase in lending to lower-income communities through the 1990s and early 2000s. The approach capitalizes on the fact that, because the CRA does not apply to all lenders in all locations, the regulations establish...

We study in the laboratory a series of first price sealed bid auctions of a common value good. Bidders face three types of information: private information, public information and common uncertainty. Auctions are characterized by the relative sizeof these three information elements. According to...

Conventional definition of homeownership is based on the share of households, which ignores the variable effects of household formation. We study whether such omission leads to a distorted assessment of trends and differentials in homeownership. In the 1990s, many groups experienced a decline in...

In this paper, we estimate default hazard functions that include standard variables along with borrowers sunk cost: i.e., down payment at loan origination. After testing large numbers of specifications, we find that after controlling for mark-to-market loan-to-value, initial combined loan to...

Property market dynamics depend on changes in long run equilibrium and on impediments to adjustment towards equilibrium. One of the most important aspects of property market dynamics is often attributed to the activities in the mortgage market. However, many impediment factors, such as changes...

While the subprime mortgage loan product clearly expands access to credit, concerns have been raised about its costs, particularly to lower-income and minority populations. This paper examines whether GSE loan purchase activities might serve as an effective vehicle for mitigating these costs....

This paper estimates a proportional hazard model of duration of residence in rental housing. The study employs unique data from the BLS-CPI housing sample to construct the duration of rental occupancy for metropolitan areas over the 1987-1998 period. American Housing Survey and other...

This paper examines evidence concerning Latino immigrants’ travel mode choices among auto alone, carpool, transit and other from six different immigrant gateways: Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington D.C. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of living in...

We develop a model for determining the optimal high income linear tax rate when there exist imperfectly substitutable types of labor. If one type is disproportionately prevalent among higher income taxpayers, then wages adjust in response to more progressive taxation and part of the statutory...