Four years into the economic recovery, housing markets have finally started to improve. While many indicators of activity indicate recent growth, comparing over time and across the United States suggests that many regional housing markets are looking better now only in comparison to where they...

When a city experiences a decline in income or population, do all neighborhoods within the city decline equally? Or, do some neighborhoods decline more than others? What are the characteristics of the neighborhoods that decline the most? We answer these questions by looking at what happened to...

The Great Migration significantly increased the number of African Americans moving to northern and western cities beginning in the first half of the twentieth century. We show that their arrival shaped slum clearance and urban redevelopment efforts in receiving cities. To estimate the effect of...

We study the impacts of blockbusting, i.e. large-scale racial turnover of urban neighborhoods orchestrated by real estate professionals using aggressive and discriminatory practices. In a panel of census tracts across large cities in the postwar United States, we compare tracts subjected to...

In this paper, we begin by documenting substantial variation in house price growth across neighborhoods within a city during city wide housing price booms. We then present a model which links house price movements across neighborhoods within a city and the gentrification of those neighborhoods...

Using a unique dataset of interest rates offered by a large sample of U.S. banks on various retail deposit and loan products, we explore the rigidity of bank retail interest rates. We study periods over which retail interest rates remain fixed ("spells") and document a large degree of lumpiness...