These are 10 of my favourite #UrbanEconomics & #SpatialEconomics articles published in academic journals in 2025, continuing with a tradition started in 2018 (order is alphabetical by first author, no ranking implied):
🆕 What causes people to migrate to cities?
Today on VoxDev, Zachary Barnett-Howell, Travis Baseler, @thomasginn.bsky.social @cgdev.org and Stepan Gordeev outline their results from a large-scale study in Kenya: voxdev.org/topic/migrat...
Forthcoming in the AER: "Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse" by Arpit Gupta, Vrinda Mittal, and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
Excited to see the new Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics (Volume 6), edited jointly with Dave Donaldson come out: www.sciencedirect.com/handbook/han.... Fantastic set of chapters on recent advances and pointing the way to exciting further research @treballen.bsky.social @siepr.bsky.social
Our Assistant Professor of Real Estate and Urban Economics @gandhisahil.bsky.social tells @bloomberg.com that the rising cost of housing in Mumbai is squeezing out lower and middle income workers 👉 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
🆕 Reforming India’s housing market: How disclosure laws boosted efficiency
Today on VoxDev, Vaidehi Tandel (@manchester.ac.uk), Sahil Gandhi, Anupam Nanda & Nandini Agnihotri (WRI India) discuss the impact of mandatory disclosures in the Mumbai housing market: voxdev.org/topic/public...
Delighted that after many years of hard work, Barriers to Global Capital Allocation (written jointly with Bruno Pellegrino and Enrico Spolaore), will be coming out in the QJE. academic.oup.com/qje/article-...
Just published in @jpube.bsky.social:
"Do mandatory disclosures squeeze the lemons? The case of housing markets in India"
By @vaidehitandel.bsky.social, @gandhisahil.bsky.social, Anupam Nanda, & Nandini Agnihotri
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#econsky #publiceconomics #HousingMarket
#econsky #urbanecon @arpitrage.bsky.social @vaidehitandel.bsky.social @amineouazad.bsky.social @jeffrlin.bsky.social @sandipz.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
However, land is a state subject and not all states mandate developers to disclose litigation.
6 states + 1UT mandate developers to provide litigation status
16 states and 3UTs don't
We urge other states to also mandate developers to provide litigation status.
6/6
Disclosure laws in developing countries reduce information asymmetry, market inefficiencies, and unequal access to information among buyers. 5/6
Decline of prices was highest for buyers in the lowest income quartile and there was no impact on buyers in highest income quartile. 4/6
Prices and sales of litigated properties (lemons) fell after the disclosure law was introduced. 3/6
In an 2021 Journal of Urban Economics paper we found that Mumbai has 27.3% of projects under litigation. Construction time is 8.5 yrs & litigated projects take longer.
Litigated projects are "lemons"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
2/6
Real Estate Regulatory Authority was introduced in 2016 to bring transparency in the Indian real estate
What was its impact on outcomes? We answer this question in our new @jpube.bsky.social paper "Do mandatory disclosures squeeze the lemons?"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
1/6
One week to go.
📢Heavily revised working paper on AI + Zoning —
with @alexbartik.bsky.social and Dan Milo, we have a new draft of our paper which expands on our method to understand housing regulations with AI.
Incudes a new public data release with more housing regulation data:
NIMBY restrictions on housing are well understood; but they also serve to hold back a host of other businesses too
Looks like a great way to end a symposium!
My obituary for the urban planner and civil engineer - and mentor to me - Shirish Patel, who died on Friday at 92. scroll.in/article/1077...
The Journal of Urban Economics turns 50 years old: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
One thing I don’t understand about the incidence of tariffs is how much foreign inputs feature in goods.
Ie, coffee beans are roughly 10% of the cost of coffee. So assuming full passthrough, a 10% tariff would increase coffee prices paid by the consumer by 1%.
What does that look like in general?
Why do we build #skyscrapers? #CitiesintheSkyBook.
buildingtheskyline.org/cities-in-th...
This is a fantastic opportunity for urban and housing economics job market candidates to do a postdoc with
@HansKoster9 and Jos van Ommeren
workingat.vu.nl/vacancies/po...
#urbaneconomics
When home heating prices are lower, fewer people die each winter, particularly in high-poverty communities. That's the punchline of my paper with Janjala Chirakijja and Pinchuan Ong on heating prices and mortality in the US, just published in the Economic Journal. 📉📈 academic.oup.com/ej/advance-a...
Constructing influence: Political turnover reveals quid pro quo arrangements in Mumbai’s real estate.
Today on VoxDev, Vaidehi Tandel, Sahil Gandhi & Alex Tabarrok outline their research on the politician-developer nexus in #India: voxdev.org/topic/migrat...
