Throughout American history, cities have experienced rapid population growth during periods when they offered exceptionally well-paying jobs. But population growth in high-wage cities is only possible when people can find housing within a reasonable commuting distance. Unlike in the past,...

The overriding challenge of the 21st-century economy has not been too much money, too much credit, or too many homes. To the contrary, at the heart of the housing “bubble,” the sense of stagnation, and the sense of inequity is a distressing lack of homes.In this brief, based on the evidence...

The economic dislocations caused by the coronavirus pandemic will almost certainly result in economic contraction. There have been calls for bold actions to attenuate the effects of this contraction and also to provide cash for struggling Americans whose incomes may be temporarily disrupted. But...

Most research on the run-up in home prices before the Great Recession has focused on types of excessive demand—loose lending, foreign savings, loose monetary policy, speculation, bank deregulation, federal housing subsidies, etc. The focus on excess demand led to fatalism about the collapse in...

A growing body of literature has shown that innumerable discretionary choices of home buyers and sellers spread the effects of housing supply conditions throughout a metropolitan area. New units draw residents with higher incomes from the existing stock of housing, which leaves existing homes...

Home prices have been rising, unusually, since the mid-1990s. This increase could be attributed to any number of factors, either temporary or permanent, sustainable or imminently reversible. Those factors include low interest rates, speculation, federal subsidies, and monetary stimulus. In fact,...

The existing literature on price changes in the housing market between 2002 and 2010 has largely focused on temporary sources of demand—loosening and then tightening of credit markets or trend-following speculative activity. Using a new variable that quantifies the effect of inelastic supply...

An oversupply of housing, as a result of a building boom after the turn of the century, is commonly cited as a key cause of the Great Recession and the slow recovery from that recession. Using both national data and data for individual metropolitan areas, such as housing permits, residential...