Published papers
"Baby Booms and Asset Booms: Demographic Change and the Housing Market" - Journal of Finance (2025) - with Marc Francke
Coverage: The Economist, De Telegraaf Policy: 2024 Economic Report of the President
"Reaching for Yield and the Housing Market: Evidence from 18th-century Amsterdam" - Journal of Financial Economics (2023).
Coverage: Forbes (2), Forbes (1), The Economist, Trouw
"The Total Return and Risk to Residential Real Estate" - Review of Financial Studies (2021) - with Piet Eichholtz, Thies Lindenthal and Ronan Tallec
"Housing Markets in a Pandemic: Evidence from Historical Outbreaks" - Journal of Urban Economics (2021) - with Marc Francke.
Coverage: Bloomberg (2), Bloomberg (1), Slate, NRC Handelsblad, Financieele Dagblad, Het Parool, De Correspondent, Radio Noord-Holland.
Working papers
"How Housing Supply Expansions Reshape Cities" - with Marco Giacoletti and Franklin Qian
We study a large Dutch policy from the mid-1990s that released land for housing near major cities, with locations set centrally and unrelated to local market trends. Using administrative data, we find that new supply attracted high-income households and lowered house prices mainly in nearby high-income neighborhoods. It also raised local employment, especially in high-paying occupations. A quantitative spatial equilibrium model shows that the housing and welfare effects of relaxing supply constraints depend on how jobs and migrants reallocate.
"An Alpha in Affordable Housing?" - with Sven Damen and Stijn van Nieuwerburgh
Rental properties with the lowest rents earn the highest investment returns. Using rent, cost and price data from the United States, Belgium and the Netherlands, we show this holds across markets and over time. Low-rent units do not carry more business-cycle or regulatory risk. Large corporate landlords avoid this segment, possibly for reputational reasons, while financial constraints keep renters from buying and medium-sized landlords from expanding. Low-income tenants bear the cost through high rent burdens.
"Buy-to-Live vs. Buy-to-Let: Home Ownership, Property Prices and Neighborhoods" - with Marc Francke, Lianne Hans and Sjoerd van Bekkum
How does who owns a home affect prices and neighborhoods? We study a Dutch ban on buy-to-let purchases whose coverage varies within and across cities. The ban removes investor demand, which first-time buyers largely replace, and has a weak positive effect on prices. Homes sold after the ban house fewer, older and richer occupants who are more often Dutch-born and moved shorter distances. Supporting first-time buyers thus changes who lives in a neighborhood, at the cost of fewer housing opportunities for lower-income outsiders.
Media coverage: International: The Telegraph, Morningstar, The Guardian, Inman, Reason, Propmodo, Yahoo Finance, El Pais, 3Cat Dutch: Financieel Dagblad (front page), NOS, RTL, NRC Handelsblad, Telegraaf (1), Telegraaf (2), NU.nl, NPO 1, Financieel Dagblad (2), Financieel Dagblad (3), Trouw, BNR, Business Insider, Metro, Parool. Policy: Senate Judiciary Committee, California, IMF, CPB
"Staying Put, Paying Up: The Long-Term Wealth Effects of Property Tax Shocks" - with Peter Koudijs
How do owners respond when policy permanently raises the cost of a house they already own? We study a 1732 reform in Holland that replaced century-old tax assessments with current rental values, and follow owners until death in archival records. Owners facing a tax increase did not sell more often. They paid later, were foreclosed more often, and more often died without registered wealth. A one-standard-deviation tax increase lowered wealth at death by about 13 percent, more than twice the capital loss. Seventy years later, affected properties were less often owner-occupied and more often vacant.
"A Housing Affordability Revolution?" - with Thies Lindenthal and Piet Eichholtz (R&R Journal of Urban Economics).
We study housing affordability in seven European cities from 1500 to 2024, using nearly half a million rent observations linked to wages, quality and inequality. Constant-quality real rents rose slowly while quality improved substantially. Between the 1910s and 1970s, wages grew much faster than rents, inequality fell and housing policy expanded. Yet expenditure shares rose, especially for low-income households. Rising minimum housing standards reconcile these facts, because they steepen Engel curves and raise budget shares at the bottom even when rents fall relative to wages. Media coverage: NOS, Historisch Nieuwsblad, Quantpedia
Work in progress
"The Housing Ladder" - with Asaf Bernstein, Felix-Antoine Gaudreault, Peter Koudijs and Mauro Mastrogiacomo - How gains in home equity help owners move up the housing ladder, and how mortgage rules shape this link, using Dutch and US data.
"Rent Price Shocks and Household Spending: Evidence from Bank Transactions" - with Jeannine van Reeken - How households adjust spending when their rent changes, using the 2023 Dutch social rent cut and bank transaction data.