Research

Job Market Paper

Dynamic Monopoly in the Rental Market: Evidence from New York City Housing

(R&R at Journal of Urban Economics)

A lack of affordable housing has plagued renters across the world. This paper examines a factor contributing to this crisis: landlord market power. Specifically, it investiagates how frictions influence market power. It introduces a dynamic monopoly model of rental housing markets - incorporating search frictions as in Manning's (2003) monopsony framework - and uses it to estimate landlord rent-setting power in New York City. The model decomposes the residual demand elasticity into the trade-off between rent and tenant move-in/move-out. Using Craigslist and American Housing Survey data, I estimate rent elasticities of move-ins and move-outs to derive the residual demand elasticity. Findings show heterogeneous effects across rent-per-room deciles, with demand elasticities generally ranging from -4 to -7. The most conservative estimate suggests a 9% markup, providing evidence against the hypothesis of no landlord pricing power.

Published Papers

Disarray at the headquarters: Economists and Central bankers tested by the subprime and the COVID recessions, with Francisco Louçã and Alexandre Abreu, Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 30, Issue 2, April 2021 (Guest Editors: Giovanni Dosi and Joseph E. Stiglitz)The article explores the discussions among economic modelers and central banks research staff and decision makers, namely on the adequacy of unconventional monetary policy and fiscal expansionary measures after the subprime crisis and as the COVID recession is developing. First, the article investigates the arguments, models and policy proposals of several mainstream schools of economics that challenged the traditional Chicagoan orthodoxy based on Milton Friedman’s views, and developed the Lucas Critique, the New Classical synthesis and Real Business Cycle approach that replaced monetarism as the main rivals to old-time Keynesianism. Second, the transformation of Real Business Cycle models into Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models is mapped, as it extended the ideas of the iniquity of government intervention and unified academic and central bank research. Yet, a battery of criticism was levied against the DSGE models and, as the debate emerged over quantitative easing and other tools of unconventional monetary policy, the need for policy pragmatism shattered the previous consensus. The article then proceeds to discuss how the leading mainstream academic economists reacted to changes in central banks‘ practices, noticing a visible dissonance within Chicago-school and DSGE economists, as well as major contortions of central bankers in order to justify their new postures. The article concludes with a call for an extensive menu of fiscal, industrial and innovation policies in order to respond to recessions and structural crises.

Working Papers:

Employee Ownership and Worker Outcomes: Evidence from ESOPs, with David Levine

(R&R at ILR Review, preprint available as a chapter in the POWER Act study report here.)

This paper studies the effects of Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) on worker attitudesand perceptions using data from the General Social Survey and the National ESOP Employee Survey. Employing double machine learning techniques to address endogeneity concerns, we find that ESOP membership is associated with increased job satisfaction, participation in decision-making, organizational commitment, and reduced job search intentions. Our analysis explores potential mediating factors, revealing that the positive effects of ESOP membership are partially mediated by increased participation in decision-making, higher job satisfaction, and greater organizational commitment. No significant evidence suggests these effects vary between socially disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged workers. Our findings highlight the potential of ESOPs to promote job quality and employee well-being.

Work in Progress:

Labor Standards Compliance and Worker Complaints: New Data and Insights, with Daniel Schneider and David Weil

Franchising and Labor Standards, with Daniel Schneider and David Weil

Regulating platform work: Evidence from the Iberian Peninsula, with José Soeiro

Revisiting the Effects of the 1994 San Francisco Rent Control, with Anders Fremstad and Mark Paul

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