Why does China have a vast number of unsold and unoccupied homes? This paper proposes a theory based on the incentives of local government officials to explain this puzzle. Specifically, I develop a dynamic, infinite-horizon model that incorporates cities' economic growth, an evaluation scheme...

China has a vast number of unsold and unoccupied homes. Can incentives faced by local politicians explain this puzzle? In China, local governments are monopolists in selling land use-rights, which is a key input for the housing market. City managers, the leader of local governments, are promoted...

This paper documents large differences in mortgage prepayment behavior across racial and ethnic groups in the United States, which have significant implications for monetary policy, inequality, and pricing. Using a novel data set that combines administrative data on mortgage performance with...

We use a new methodology to assess mortgage pricing discrimination faced by minority borrowers. We identify a "menu problem" that comes from the multidimensional nature of mortgage pricing: When getting a mortgage, borrowers can choose to avoid closing costs and pay a high interest rate or...

During the period 2005 to 2020, Black borrowers with mortgages insured by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac paid interest rates that were almost 50 basis points higher than those paid by nonHispanic white borrowers. We show that the main reason is that non-Hispanic white borrowers are much more likely...

Real wages in U.S. retail sectors exhibit years of stickiness around minimum wage, where only recently retailers have started raising wages. The paper provides a theoretical explanation for this long-term wage stickiness by exploring the possibility that firms may tacitly collude on paying the...

Using data from the 2014 Boston Fed Bill Payment Experiment and the 2014 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC), we investigate how households pay their rent. We find that the dominant methods for paying rent are cash (22 percent), check (42 percent), and money order (16 percent). Electronic...

Motivated by the assessment of racial discrimination in mortgage pricing, we introduce a new methodology for comparing the menus of options borrowers face based on their choices. First, we show how standard regression-based approaches for assessing discrimination in the menus context can lead to...

During the period 2005 to 2020, Black borrowers with mortgages insured by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac paid interest rates that were almost 50 basis points higher than those paid by non-Hispanic white borrowers. We show that the main reason is that non-Hispanic white borrowers are much more likely...

We use a new methodology to assess mortgage pricing discrimination by race. We make four main contributions. First, we show that existing estimates of mortgage pricing differences by race can be confounded by a "menu problem," which is the problem associated with evaluating equality in...