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Affiliated PhD Student

Jeanna Kenney

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PhD Candidate in The Wharton School Applied Economics Department

About

Jeanna Kenney is an Applied Economics PhD Candidate in The Wharton School studying topics in real estate and urban economics. Her research focuses on the various people and decisions involved in the often complicated process of a home purchase. In particular, her dissertation studies the occupational licensing process for real estate agents and how this affects competition in the brokerage industry and outcomes in local housing markets. 

Prior to Wharton, Jeanna was a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, working primarily with economists on the Regional economics team studying economic trends in the greater Philadelphia area and issues of bias in home purchase appraisals. She holds a B.A. in Economics with a concentration in Math from Haverford College. A native of nearby Delaware County, Jeanna enjoys reading, baking, and cheering on Philly sports teams.

Selected Publications

Calem, P., Kenney, J., Lambie‐Hanson, L., & Nakamura, L. (2021). Appraising home purchase appraisals. Real Estate Economics, 49(S1), 134-168.

Ferreira, F., Kenney, J., & Smith, B. (2023). Household mobility, networks, and gentrification of minority neighborhoods in the US (NBER Working Paper No. 31480). National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www.nber.org/papers/w31480

Faculty Fellow

Benjamin Keys

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Rowan Family Foundation Professor of Real Estate and Finance

About

Ben Keys is the Rowan Family Foundation Professor of Real Estate and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He studies issues related to household finance, mortgage finance, real estate, applied econometrics, labor economics, and urban economics. Keys’s research has been published in such journals as the Quarterly Journal of Economics,  American Economic Review,  Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies, among others. His work has been profiled in the Economist, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post, among other publications. Before joining Wharton, Keys taught at the University of Chicago and worked as a staff economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Keys holds a B.A. in economics and political science from Swarthmore College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan.

Selected Publications

“What Determines Consumer Financial Distress? Place- and Person-Based Factors” (pdf)
(with Neale Mahoney and Hanbin Yang), Review of Financial Studies, conditionally accepted.

“Investment Over the Business Cycle: Insights from College Major Choice” (pdf)
(with Erica Blom and Brian C. Cadena), Journal of Labor Economics, forthcoming.

“Moral Hazard during the Housing Boom: Evidence from Private Mortgage Insurance” (pdf)
(with Neil Bhutta), Review of Financial Studies, 35(2), February 2022.

“Refinancing, Monetary Policy, and the Credit Cycle” (pdf)
(with Gene Amromin and Neil Bhutta), Annual Review of Financial Economics, 12, November 2020.

“Minimum Payments and Debt Paydown in Consumer Credit Cards” (link)
(with Jialan Wang), Journal of Financial Economics, 131(3), March 2019.

Fellow

Carolyn Kousky

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Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy at Environmental Defense Fund

School/Department

Areas of Interest

    About

    Carolyn Kousky is Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy at Environmental Defense Fund. Dr. Kousky’s research examines multiple aspects of disaster insurance markets, disaster finance, climate risk management, and policy approaches for increasing resilience. She has published numerous articles, reports, and book chapters on the economics and policy of climate risk and disaster insurance markets, and is routinely cited in media outlets including NPR, The New York Times, and The Financial Times, among many others. She is the recipient of the 2013 Tartufari International Prize from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. She is the vice-chair of the California Climate Insurance Working Group, a university fellow at Resources for the Future, a non-resident scholar at the Insurance Information Institute, and a member of the Roundtable on Risk and Resilience of Extreme Events at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She has a BS in Earth Systems from Stanford University and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University.

    Selected Publications

    Kousky, C., M. Palim, and Y. Pan (2020). Flood Damage and Mortgage Credit Risk: A Case Study of Hurricane Harvey. Journal of Housing Research.

    Kousky, C. (2018). “Financing Flood Losses: A Discussion of the National Flood Insurance Program” Risk Management and Insurance Review. 21(1): 11-32.

    Kousky, Carolyn (2017).  “Revised Risk Assessments and the Insurance Industry.” In: Policy Shock: Recalibrating Risk and Regulation after Oil Spills, Nuclear Accidents and Financial Crises.  Cambridge University Press: 55-81.

    Kousky, C., P. Raschky, and E. Michel-Kerjan (2018). “Does Federal Disaster Assistance Crowd Out Flood Insurance?” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 87: 150-164.

    Kousky, C., and  Shabman, L. (2017).  “Federal Funding for Flood Risk Reduction in the US: Pre-or Post-Disaster?”  Water Economics and Policy, 3(01), 1771001.

    Kousky, C., B. Lingle, and L. Shabman (2017). “The Pricing of Flood Insurance.” Journal of Extreme Events. 04, 1750001

    Faculty Fellow

    Daniel Raff

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    Associate Professor of Management

    School/Department

    Areas of Interest

      About

      Daniel Raff is Associate Professor, Management Department, The Wharton School. His recent consulting deals with competitive strategy in manufacturing and services (including financial services) and deal design. He has been a professor at Wharton since 1994. He has held previous appointments at Harvard University and Oxford University and visiting appointments at Columbia University Schools of Business and Law. He has served as Faculty Research Fellow and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as Sloan Senior Research Fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. He has also served as Trustee, Business History Conference, 1998-2001; Chair, Investment Committee, 2001-present; Chair, Audit and Budget Committee and Trustee ex officio, Economic History Association, 2001-present.

      Selected Publications

      Daniel Raff and Philip Scranton, “Silences, and Beginning to Fill Them”. In The Emergence of Routines, edited by Daniel M. G. Raff and Philip Scranton, (2017)

      Daniel Raff, “Learning from History”. In The Emergence of Routines, edited by Daniel M. G. Raff and Philip Scranton, (2017)

      Daniel Raff, “The Book-of-the-Month Club as a New Enterprise”. In The Emergence of Routines, edited by Daniel M.G. Raff and Philip Scranton, (2016)

      Daniel Raff (2013), How to Do Things with Time, Enterprise & Society.Related

      Daniel Raff (2013), The Business of the Press, Oxford University Press, Chapter 5, pp. 190-216.

      Faculty Fellow

      Todd Sinai

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      David B. Ford Professor; Professor of Real Estate and Business Economics and Public Policy

      Chair, Real Estate Department

      About

      Professor Todd Sinai has been with Wharton since 1997 and is David B. Ford Professor; Professor of Real Estate and Business Economics and Public Policy and chair of the Real Estate Department at the Wharton School. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his BA from Yale University. Todd has also served as a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a visiting scholar of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

      His research interests include commercial real estate, real estate investment trusts, risk and pricing in housing markets, and taxation of real estate.

      Selected Publications

      Todd Sinai, Joseph Gyourko, Christopher J Mayer (2013), Superstar Cities, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 5 (4), pp. 167-199.

      Todd Sinai and Nicholas S. Souleles (2013), Can Owning a Home Hedge the Risk of Moving, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 5 (2), pp. 282-312.

      Edward Glaeser and Todd Sinai (2012), House Price Moments in Boom-Bust Cycles, Housing and the Financial Crisis.

      Todd Sinai and Andrew Paciorek (2012), Does Home Owning Smooth the Variability of Future Housing Consumption?, Journal of Urban Economics, 71 (2), pp. 244-256.

      Todd Sinai (2011), Understanding and Mitigating Rental Risk, Cityscape, 13 (2), pp. 105-125.

      Affiliated PhD Student

      Benjamin (Benji) Smith

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      PhD Candidate in Wharton's Applied Economics Program

      About

      Benji is a doctoral candidate in Wharton's Applied Economics program specializing in urban and environmental economics. His ongoing research includes studying how policies in the Western US requiring new development to pay water utilities to develop water-intensive housing leads to denser development in new communities, and how local income shocks in metropolitan areas induce gentrification and the subsequent mobility patterns in cities (joint with Fernando Ferreira and Jeanna Kenney). Other interests include how housing markets are related to school choice programs, and the effects of urbanization on local water quality. Prior to graduate school, Benji worked as a research associate at the American Enterprise Institute in the Housing Center. He researched riskiness in mortgage lending and the housing market origins of the 2008 global financial crisis which is published in the Review of Finance. Benji earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Souther California, majoring in Economics and International Relations. 

      Selected Publications

      Davis, Morris, William Larson, Stephen Oliner, and Benjamin Smith. “A Quarter Century of Mortgage Risk,” Review of Finance, March 2023. https://academic.oup.com/rof/article/27/2/581/6586810

      Faculty Fellow

      Richard Voith

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      Founding Principal, Econsult Solutions

      School/Department

      Areas of Interest

        About

        Richard Voith is the President and Principal of Econsult Solutions, Inc. He is a well-known expert in real estate economics, transportation, and applied microeconomics. Prior to joining Econsult Solutions, Voith was Economic Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia where his responsibilities included analysis of Philadelphia’s regional economy. In addition to his consulting and academic research, Voith has worked frequently in the public policy arena. He is a founding board member of Pentrans, an organization dedicated to improving transportation in Pennsylvania. In 2006, he was appointed by Governor Rendell to the newly created Transportation Funding and Reform Commission charged with recommending appropriate levels of funding for transit systems, roads and bridges throughout the Commonwealth. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (1992-2000) as one of two representatives for the city of Philadelphia on the Board. He served as Vice Chairman of SEPTA for three years (1996-1998); during his tenure, he participated in the procurement of a new fleet of subway cars, the hiring of a new management team, development of financing mechanisms for an ambitious capital plan as well as efforts to dramatically streamline the authority to reduce costs while expanding service throughout the Greater Philadelphia region.

        Selected Publications

        Voith, Richard P, and Susan M Wachter. 2012. “The Affordability Challenge: Inclusionary Housing and Community Land Trusts in a Federal System.” In Value capture and land policies, edited by Gregory K. Ingram and Yu-Hung Hong. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

        Voith, Richard P. 2011. “The Economics of Recovery.” In Managing Urban Disaster Recovery: Policy, Planning, Concepts and Cases, edited by Edward J. Blakely, Eugenie L. Birch, Roland V. Anglan and Harou Hayashi. Crisis Response Publications.

        Crone, Theodore, Leonard Nakamura, and Richard P. Voith. 2010. “Rents Have Been Rising, Not Falling, in the Postwar Period.” Review of Economics and Statistics 92(3): 628-644.

        Zielenbach, Sean and Richard Voith. 2010. “HOPE VI and Neighborhood Economic Development: The Importance of Local Market Dynamics.” Cityscape 12(1): 99-131.

        Zielenbach, Sean, Richard Voith, and Michael Mariano. 2010. “Estimating the Local Economic Impacts of HOPE VI.” Housing Policy Debate 20(3): 485-522.

        Faculty Fellow

        Susan Wachter

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        Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance

        Co-Director, Penn Institute for Urban Research

        About

        Susan Wachter is the Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. From 1998 to 2001, she served as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the senior urban policy official and Principal Advisor to the Secretary. During her tenure at HUD, Wachter’s office was responsible for the New Markets Tax Credit, the major legislative initiative for urban revitalization, with the goal of attracting private capital into low-income communities. At The Wharton School, she was Chairperson of the Real Estate Department and Professor of Real Estate and Finance from July 1997 until her 1998 appointment to HUD. At Penn, she co-founded and currently is Co-Director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. She also founded and currently serves as Director of Wharton’s Geographical Information Systems Lab. She was the editor of Real Estate Economics from 1997 to 1999 and currently serves on the editorial boards of several real estate journals. Wachter is the author of more than 200 scholarly publications and the recipient of several awards for teaching excellence at The Wharton School. Her forthcoming edited volume, Fair Housing, will be published by Penn Press. Previous volumes include Shared Prosperity in America’s Communities and Neighborhoods and Life Chances. Wachter has served on multiple for-profit and not-for-profit boards and currently serves on the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee of Fannie Mae and the Office of Financial Research Advisory Committee of the U.S. Treasury. She frequently comments on national media and testifies to Congress on U.S. housing policy.

        Selected Publications

        Acolin, Arthur, Xudong An, Raphael Bostic, and Susan M. Wachter. 2017. “Homeownership and Nontraditional and Subprime Mortgages.” Housing Policy Debate 27(3): 393-418.

        Wachter, Susan M., Arthur Acolin, and Scott Bernstein. 2017. “Opportunity, Housing Access, and Infrastructure.” Housing Policy Debate 27(3): 468-471.

        Wachter, Susan M. and Patricia Mccoy. 2017. “Representations and Warranties: Why They Did Not Stop the Crisis.” In Evidence and Innovation in Housing Law and Policy, edited by Lee Fennell and Benjamin Keys. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

        Wachter, Susan M. and Joseph Tracy, eds. 2016. Principles of Housing Finance Reform. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

        Wachter, Susan M., ed. 2016. Public Pensions and City Solvency. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

        Acolin, Arthur, Laurie S. Goodman, and Susan Wachter. 2016. “A Renter or Homeowner Nation?” Cityscape 18(2): 145-158.

        Acolin, Arthur, Jesse Bricker, Paul S. Calem, and Susan Wachter. 2016. “Borrowing Constraints and Homeownership.” American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 106(5): 625-629.

        Affiliated PhD Student

        Xiao “Betty” Wang

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        PhD Candidate, Business Economics and Public Policy, the Wharton Business School

        About

        Xiao (Betty) Wang is a Doctoral Student in Business Economics and Public Policy at the Wharton Business School. Her research interests are in urban economics, real estate economics and public policy. Before coming to Penn, Betty earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, Mathematics and International Development Studies from Washington University’s College of Arts and Sciences. 

         

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