Some landlords in the rental housing market consistently outperform others by being more flexible with rent pricing. They earn 0.5% higher annual rental income through an additional rent adjustment of 0.3%. In volatile markets, these differences in rent adjustments and rental income increase to 0.8% and 1.7%. The friction landlords face in adjusting rents is crucial, but landlords with greater knowledge and experience adjust rents more flexibly. Consequently, these findings suggest that institutional landlords, due to their expertise and low friction, likely drive rent inflation and secure a larger market share, especially when the market is volatile.

Using the US Supreme Court's narrow decision in Shelby v. Holder as a negative shock to Black Americans' voting rights, we explore the relationship between political voice and economic decision-making. Post-decision, Black Americans are less likely to apply for mortgages, borrow less money, and buy fewer homes. However, they increasingly purchase homes with cash and seek mortgages from lenders friendly to Black borrowers. We document that a decline in trust in government and financial institutions among Black Americans is crucial for interpreting these results. Our findings suggest disenfranchisement may lead to financial market exclusion and worsen preexisting differences by reducing trust.

What are the aggregate effects of deposit shocks? We introduce a new fact regarding the within-bank geographic concentration of deposits – 30% of deposits are concentrated in a single county. We construct deposit shocks by combining the within-bank deposit concentration with local natural disasters. We show that large shocks to deposit concentrated areas amplify through bank internal capital markets and generate aggregate fluctuations. Deposit shocks explain 3.30% of variation in economic growth. We identify the deposit elasticity of economic growth as 0.87 and the money multiplier as 1.18. Lender and borrower-side frictions are critical for the aggregation of local shocks.

When central banks loosen monetary policy, credit availability increases, generating upwards pressure on asset prices. This paper analyzes the "credit channel" of monetary policy transmission in a unique institutional setting: the Chonsei system in the Korean housing market, in which rental tenants make interest-free loans to landlords in exchange for paying no rent. We show that, as Chonsei interest rates approach zero, the size of Chonsei loans grows unboundedly, exerting strong upwards pressure on house prices. We verify the model’s predictions empirically. Calibrating the model to the data, we find that a simple policy – imposing a proportional tax on Chonsei deposits – can substantially dampen the passthrough of interest rate changes to deposit size and house prices, providing potential benefits for financial stability.

Macroprudential policy deregulation can induce a house price boom through a small number of credit-unconstrained speculators. After the LTV DTI deregulation in South Korea in 2014, credit-constrained areas witnessed fast mortgage credit and housing transaction growth. However, house prices grew not in those areas but in credit-unconstrained speculative areas that had seen significant house price growth during the past decade. The house price boom in the speculative areas was not accompanied by housing transaction growth, suggesting that a small number of speculators increased the house prices. 

Enhanced prudential monitoring by financial intermediaries can increase available housing credit while keeping borrower defaults low. By examining the unique Chonsei system in Korea, where realtors act as financial intermediaries facilitating peer-to-peer housing financing between landlords (borrowers) and Chonsei tenants (lenders) at the local level, this paper shows that Chonsei tenants provide more housing credit to landlords in zipcodes with more realtors. Despite this expanded financing, Chonsei tenants in zipcodes with more realtors experienced fewer or the same level of landlord defaults during the interest rate rise following the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper examines the unintended consequences of monetary policy on housing rent, a major component of the consumer price index. By analyzing the share of open adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) at the zipcode level, it demonstrates that tightened (loosened) monetary policy increases (decreases) rent prices as landlords pass their interest payment burden onto tenants. The property-level analysis further confirms that rental housing financed with ARMs is more responsive to monetary policy changes than housing financed with fixed-rate mortgages within the same zipcode.

This paper shows that speculation can affect house prices differentially depending on properties' historical price growth. After the change in reconstruction laws for old apartments in South Korea in 2014, treated apartments witnessed a rapid increase in transactions: for the next four years, treated apartments were traded 10-20% more than untreated ones. However, only apartments that experienced substantial price growth during the previous housing boom saw notable price increases after the law change.

The impact of the tax benefits of debt on financing decisions and investments has been central to finance literature since Modigliani and Miller (1958, 1963). Using detailed personal tax file data from Australia, we extend the longstanding questions into the realm of personal finance. Specifically, by exploiting Australia’s unique personal tax system, which allows individuals to deduct investment losses against other income, such as salary and wages (called negative gearing), we study how personal tax rates affect individuals’ debt financing for their speculative housing investments.