"Remote Work and Consumer Cities"
with Yichen Su
The rapid adoption of remote work led to a sharply reduced presence of office workers in urban centers, weakening cities' traditional role as a center for production. Despite the adverse effect of remote work on cities, we highlight that cities' role as a center for consumption remains strong and may have risen with increased time flexibility from workers. We first use a stylized model to illustrate that the amenity value premium of dense urban centers could serve as a key anchoring force for foot traffic in cities, mitigating the brunt of the negative shock from remote work. Using a combination of foot traffic and consumer transaction data at a detailed geographic level, we show that while visits to former commuting destinations remain depressed due to the persistent popularity of remote work, visits to consumption amenity clusters recovered quickly and robustly, and foot traffic became more spatially concentrated toward amenity clusters in MSAs with a higher level of remote work adoption. Our findings suggest that the adoption of remote work likely accelerated the transition of cities from centers for production to centers for consumption.
Presented at: UIUC, University of Iowa (Tippie), University of Houston Brownbag, ASSA-Econometric Society 2026 (scheduled), the Bloomberg Center for Cities Research Conference at Harvard University 2025 (scheduled), The Implications of Remote Work Conference at Stanford University 2025 (scheduled), AREUEA National 2025, UEA European 2025, MEA 2025, WEAI’s 100th Annual Conference
"Mortgage Lock-in, Lifecycle Migration, and the Welfare Effects of Housing Market Liquidity"
with Kristopher Gerardi and David Zhang
We use a search and matching model to study the heterogeneous welfare effects of housing market illiquidity due to mortgage lock-in over the lifecycle. We find that younger home buyers are disproportionately affected by mortgage lock-in, which disrupts their typical pattern of moving to higher-quality neighborhoods. We estimate a model with heterogeneous seller-buyers bargaining within markets defined by CBSA-income terciles and with endogenous migration across markets. We find that the effects of mortgage lock-in on volume are significantly more muted than its partial equilibrium estimates, with interest rates driving most of the aggregate decline in volume, and with the level and sign of effect varying greatly across geographies. Without mortgage lock-in, time on the market increases by 80–109%, house prices decline by 2%–4%, and match surplus increases by 0%–5%. The pricing and match surplus effects are 2–3 times larger for households in lower-income areas, due to a higher idiosyncratic dispersion in buyer valuation leading to larger match surplus variation in those areas. Our study highlights the welfare benefits of market thickness in real estate markets.
Presented at: The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, WFA 2025, Pre-WFA Summer Real Estate Research Symposium 2025, NFA 2025, MFA 2025, AEA 2025, Colorado Finance Summit 2024, University of Toronto Financial Economics Conference 2024
Media: Brookings
"Impact of Institutional Owners on Housing Markets" Under Revision
with Caitlin Gorback and Zipei Zhu
Since the Great Recession, single-family rental companies have significantly changed the U.S. investor landscape. Using housing deeds data from 2010 to 2022, we document that Long-Term Rental (LTR) companies, including single-family rentals and real estate private equity firms, have outpaced other investor types such as builders and iBuyers. These firms concentrate geographically, increasing their local market shares. To evaluate the impact of LTRs on housing markets, we develop a "suitability index" that predicts LTR entry based on landlord preferences and decreasing property management costs. Our findings indicate that more suitable Census Tracts experience 46–73% higher annual LTR share growth for each standard deviation increase in the index. Furthermore, a one-standard-deviation increase in LTR share implies a 1.58 percentage point rise in tract-level house prices and a 0.53 percentage point decline in homeownership, with no significant effect on rents. Notably, these effects are time-sensitive, primarily driven by increases during the COVID-19 period when LTRs controlled substantial numbers of desirable single-family rentals. Our discussion highlights how the reallocation of homes among different ownership types contributes to these trends, with transitions from owners and speculators to LTRs leading to a decline in national homeownership rates of 0.32%.
Presented at: USC (Marshall), Baruch College (Zicklin), University of Colorado Boulder (Leeds), The Federal Reserve Board of Governors, The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, SFS Cavalcade 2025, AREUEA-ASSA 2025, Stanford SITE for Housing and Urban Economics 2024, Cornell Real Estate Symposium 2024, SF Fed-UCLA conference on housing, financial markets, and monetary policy 2024, UEA North American Meeting 2024, Pre-WFA Summer Real Estate Research Symposium 2024, 2nd Annual Conference on Market-Based Solutions for Reducing Wealth Inequality, CICF 2024, ITAM Finance Conference 2024, RERI Annual Conference 2024, UT Austin Finance Brownbag
Funding: Real Estate Research Institute (RERI) funding, McCombs Research Excellence Grants
Media: Real Estate Research Institute (RERI) Webinar
"Entrepreneur Experience and Success: Causal Evidence from Immigration Wait Lines" Under Revision
with Abhinav Gupta and Yifan Sun
Best Paper Award at Summer Research Conference in Finance at ISB 2024
This study examines the causal effect of entrepreneurs’ prior experience on the success of startups. Using variations in Green Card waiting periods within a country as an instrument for the experience of immigrant first-time entrepreneurs, we find that startups with more experienced founders achieve greater success in securing funding, generating patents, and expanding their workforce. The key driver of this success is the larger initial team size, made possible by the founders’ enhanced ability to recruit former colleagues. Our results suggest that each additional year of experience translates into an estimated value of $200,000, highlighting an important factor for policymakers and venture capitalists to consider.
Presented at: University of Cincinnati (Lindner), NC State, NBER Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship 2025, AFA 2025, NFA 2024, Labor and Finance Conference at the Kelley School of Business 2024, 20th Annual Finance Conference at WashU in St. Louis, 17th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Behavioral Finance & Economics, Summer Research Conference in Finance at Indian School of Business 2024
"Asymmetric Underreactions and House Price Revisions"
with Ding Jing, Rongbing Huang, Lei Jiang
We develop a search and bargaining model in which house buyers and sellers adjust their reservation prices upon the arrival of information. Our empirical results suggest that sellers exhibit lower responsiveness to negative information shocks than buyers, although both buyers and sellers tend to underreact to these shocks. In both the U.S. and China, a greater downward revision from a house's initial list price to its final list price is followed by a greater downward revision from its final list price to its sales price and lower neighborhood-level returns in subsequent months. In China, a house visitor's budget is positively related to the subsequent list-price revision, and two major policies adjusting the minimum down payment ratio had intended effects. Furthermore, a higher proportion of house visits during the listing period by visitors with a budget range below the at-visit list price predicts a greater downward revision from the final list price to the sales price. Negative policy information is less fully incorporated into revised list prices shortly after the policy changes than positive policy information.
Presented at: AREUEA-ASSA Conference 2026 (scheduled), FMA 2025 (scheduled), International Review of Finance 2025 Conference on "Real Estate, Household, and ESG Finance"
"The Numbers Game: Effects of Listing and Counteroffer Pricing Format in Housing Bargaining"
with Haaris Mateen, Ye Zhang, and Tianxiang Zheng
Subsumes our original paper The Microstructure of the U.S. Housing Market: Evidence from Millions of Bargaining Interactions
Using confidential offer-level data from the US housing market, this paper analyzes the impact of various listing and counteroffer pricing strategies on the housing bilateral bargaining process. We observe that sellers tend to cluster their listing prices around “charm” numbers (e.g. 349,999) while buyers’ counteroffers mainly cluster around round numbers (i.e., 350,000). Through the repeated sales approach, we explore the benefits and costs of these pricing strategies. Compared to listings with precise prices, listings with special prices (i.e., either round prices or charm prices) tend to sell faster but at lower prices than those with more precise prices. Although this indicates “cheap talk” signaling benefits, charm prices systematically dominate round prices. Charm listing prices typically lead to a higher likelihood of sale, achieving higher sales prices, and quicker transactions compared to round listing prices. Concerning the effects of buyer counteroffer pricing strategies, our analysis reveals that round counteroffer prices frequently result in lower sales prices and faster deals, albeit at an increased risk of negotiation breakdown. Furthermore, we identify a “mimicry effect”: buyers mirroring the precision level of sellers’ charm or precise listing prices significantly lower the risk of an impasse, even though it may lead to higher sales prices and longer negotiation periods. Overall, our findings offer novel insights into the strategic effectiveness of different pricing formats in the housing market bargaining process.
Presented at: Duke (Fuqua), University of Colorado Boulder (Leeds), Atlanta Fed, AFA PhD Student Poster Session 2025, India Management Research Conference 2024, 17th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Behavioral Finance & Economics, Yale Junior Finance Conference 2023, AREUEA-ASSA Conference 2024, Stockholm School of Economics Finance Brownbag, University of Houston Finance Brownbag, Columbia Experimental Design Workshop 2023.
"The Effects of High-skilled Firm Entry on Incumbent Residents" Rej & Resubmit at American Economic Review, Under revision using LEHD data
with Rose Tan
Claire and Ralph Landau Prize for the Best Student SIEPR Discussion Paper 2021
Best Student Paper (Honorable Mention) at Urban Economics Association North American Meeting 2020
Using 391 high-skilled firm entries in the U.S. from 1990–2010, we estimate the effects of the firm entry on incumbent residents’ consumption, finances, and mobility. We compare outcomes for residents living close to the entry location with those living far away while controlling for their proximity to potential high-skilled firm entry sites. We find high-skilled incumbents, especially homeowners, benefit. Low-skilled incumbents on average benefit less. For a representative firm entry with 1000 new employees entering a metropolitan area with a population of 1.1 million, the aggregate welfare benefit across all incumbents is an annual equivalent of $25 million. Low skilled renters living within 10 minutes from the entry bear the largest costs.
Presented at: The Pennsylvania State University (Smeal), USC (Price), University of Utah (David Eccles), University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), University of Notre Dame, UNC (Kenan–Flagler), USC (Marshall), California State University–Fullerton, National University of Singapore (Real Estate), UCLA (Anderson), NYU (Furman), Washington University in St. Louis, University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore (Business School), UNC Working Group on Economic Development, MFA 2023, AREUEA National Conference 2022, AREUEA-ASSA Conference 2022, Quantitative Spatial Economics Junior Workshop 2021, NBER Summer Institute: Urban/Real Estate 2021, UEA North American Meeting 2020
Funding: Shultz Graduate Student Fellowship in Economic Policy, Stanford Center for Computational Social Science Research Award
Media: Kenan Institute UNC Affordable Housing Symposium Discussion with Matthew Kahn
"Identifying Agglomeration Spillovers: Evidence from Grocery Store Openings"
with Qianyang Zhang and Xiang Zhang
We estimate the strengths of agglomeration spillovers in the local non-tradable service sector using 413 grocery store openings in the U.S. in 2018-2019. We combine deep learning tools with propensity score estimation to find counterfactual opening sites and compare business outcomes surrounding actual and counterfactual sites. We find openings of grocery stores lead to significant growth in foot traffic to their opening locations and a 39 percent increase in foot traffic to businesses within 0.1 miles. The spillovers of demand are strongest between new grocery stores and businesses in wholesale and retail and hospitality services. We also find that grocery store openings lead to a 6.9 percentage point higher growth in the number of businesses within 0.1 miles of the openings 0-3 years later.
Presented at: UEA European Meeting 2024, Online Spatial & Urban Seminar 2024, NBER Summer Institute: Real Estate 2023, AREUEA-ASSA Conference 2023, Eastern-FA 2023, RERI Annual Conference 2023, AREUEA National Conference 2023, CICF 2023, UEA North American Meeting 2023
Funding: Real Estate Research Institute (RERI) funding
"Do CEOs Know Best? Evidence from China"
with Nicholas Bloom, Hong Cheng, Mark Duggan, Hongbin Li
We analyze a new management survey for around 1,000 firms and 10,000 employees across two large provinces in China. The unique aspect of this survey is it collected management data from the CEO, a random sample of senior managers and workers. We document four main results. First, management scores, much like productivity, have a wide spread with a long left-tail of poorly managed firms. This distribution of management scores is similar for CEOs, senior managers, and workers management, and appears broadly reasonable compared to US scores for similar questions. Moreover, for all groups these scores correlate with firm performance, suggesting all employees within the firm are (at least partly) aware of their firms’ managerial abilities. Second, the scores across the groups are significantly cross-correlated, but far from completely. This suggests that while different levels of the firm have similar views on the firms’ management capabilities, they do not fully agree. Third, we find that the CEO’s management scores are the most predictive of firm performance, followed by the senior managers and then the workers. Hence, CEOs do appear to know best about their firms' management strengths and weaknesses. Fourth, within-firm management score dispersion is negatively correlated with investment and R&D intensity, suggesting long-run planning is linked with greater consistency in management across levels in firms.
Status: Updated results with the second wave of CEES available upon request. Third wave of survey pending
Research Briefs: VoxChina
"The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco"
with Rebecca Diamond and Tim McQuade
American Economic Review, Vol.109, No.9 (September 2019)
Published version, Final draft (March 2019)
Media: WSJ NYT Bloomberg Economist Stanford GSB NPR Freakonomics Radio
Research Briefs: Brookings Cato
"Which Landlords Pay for Rent Control? Heterogeneous Landlord Response to San Francisco’s Rent Control Expansion"
with Rebecca Diamond and Tim McQuade
AEA Papers and Proceedings, Vol.109, (May 2019)
[Published version] [Final draft (February 2019)] [Appendix]
"The International Empirics of Management"
with Daniela Scur, et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol.121, No.45 (November 2024)
"The impact of suburbanization on urban residents"
with Marco Giacoletti and Matthijs Korevaar
"Distributional Effects of Adverse Economic Shocks Through Firm Production Networks"
with Turk Al-Sabah
"Who Benefits from Rent Control? The Equilibrium Consequences of San Francisco’s Rent Control Expansion"
with Rebecca Diamond and Tim McQuade
Subsumes the structural model analysis from our original NBER WP No. 24181