Better nutrition and comfortable housing are complements in the capability space: however, for the poor and low-income families food and housing can be substitutes in the commodity space. We take Engel law to implement a simple food-based measure of absolute poverty in a developed country,...

The authors examine the connection between government mortgage programs and economic outcomes during and after the financial crisis. They find a strong correlation between counties that participated more heavily in Federal Housing Administration (FHA)/Veterans Affairs (VA) and...

How do housing rents, quality and affordability evolve when cities grow over time? This paper studies urban housing markets for half a millennium (1500–2017) for Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, London, and Paris. Based on a dataset of 436,000 rent observations, we build new...

I study a staggered policy change intended to reduce bidding wars for homes by increasing their list price and eliminating underpricing. Using a novel and large micro data set and a difference-in-difference methodology, I find that increasing the list price reduces the buyer arrival rates in all...

Rent controls are firmly back on the political agenda. At the national level the reintroduction of rent controls is now official Labour Party policy. At the London level Mayor Sadiq Khan calls for their reintroduction as well. Politicians, however, are in this case merely following a shift in...

We use a quantitative spatial equilibrium model to evaluate the distributional and welfare impacts of a recent temporary rent control policy in Berlin, Germany. We calibrate the model to key features of Berlin’s housing market, in particular the recent gentrification of inner city locations....

Since 2000, real estate prices in Switzerland have risen rapidly. By some measures, between 2000 and 2014 apartment prices almost doubled, while those of single-family homes increased by around 60%. Price rises have varied considerably across cantons. Transactions activity in the sector has been...

We use a quantitative spatial equilibrium model to evaluate the distributional and welfare impacts of a recent temporary rent control policy in Berlin, Germany. We calibrate the model to key features of Berlin’s housing market, in particular the recent gentrification of inner city locations....