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Affiliated PhD Student

Kathy Bi

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Doctoral Candidate in Wharton's Applied Economics program

About

Kathy is a fourth year doctoral student in Wharton's Applied Economics program, studying urban and real estate economics. She is interested in the drivers of spatial inequality and the consequences of place-based policies. Prior to graduate school, Kathy worked as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Williams College, majoring in Economics. 

Faculty Fellow

Gilles Duranton

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Dean's Chair in Real Estate Professor

About

Gilles Duranton is Professor of Real Estate in the Real Estate Department at The Wharton School. His research focuses on urban and regional development, transportation, and local public finance. Prior to joining the Real Estate Department in 2012, Duranton taught at the University of Toronto for seven years, and the London School of Economics for nine years. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Urban Economics, and is an editorial board member for several other journals. He is also affiliated with the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, the Spatial Economics Research Centre at the London School of Economics, and the Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis. He currently serves as the Chair of the Real Estate department at The Wharton School.

Selected Publications

Duranton, Gilles. 2016. “Determinants of city growth in Colombia.” Papers in Regional Science 95(1): 101-132.

Duranton, Gilles. 2016. “Agglomeration effects in Colombia.” Journal of Regional Science 56(2): 210-238.

Duranton, Gilles. 2015. “Roads and Trade in Colombia.” Economics of Transportation 4(1): 16-36.

Duranton, Gilles. 2015. “Growing through cities in developing countries.” World Bank Research Observer 30(1): 39-73.

Faculty Fellow

Fernando Ferreira

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Professor, Departments of Real Estate, and Business Economics and Public Policy

About

Fernando Ferreira is C.F. Koo Professor, Professor of Real Estate, Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy in the Wharton School. His interests include public economics, urban economics, and real estate. He is also a Faculty Fellow and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), for which he co-edits the Journal of Public Economics. Ferreira has served as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is the recipient of various research grants, including from the Ford Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. 

Selected Publications

Ferreira, Fernando “What Drives Racial and Ethnic Differences in High Cost Mortgages? The Role of High Risk Lenders”, with Patrick Bayer and Stephen Ross. Review of Financial Studies, 2018. 

Ferreira, Fernando, Patrick Bayer, and Stephen Ross. 2016. “The Vulnerability of Minority Homeowners in the Housing Boom and Bust.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 8(1).

Ferreira, Fernando and Joseph Gyourko. 2014. “Does Gender Matter for Political Leadership? The Case of U.S. Mayors.” Journal of Public Economics 112: 24-39.

Ferreira, Fernando, Leah Platt Boustan, Hernan Winkler, and Eric Zolt. 2013. “The Effect of Rising Income Inequality on Taxation and Public Expenditures: Evidence from U.S. Municipalities and School Districts, 1970-2000.” Review of Economics and Statistics 95(4): 1291-1302.

Faculty Fellow

Joseph Gyourko

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Martin Bucksbaum Professor of Real Estate, Fiance, Business Economic & Public Policy

Director, Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center

About

Joe Gyourko is the Martin Bucksbaum Professor of Real Estate, Fiance, Business Economic & Public Policy and the Director at Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also serves as the Nancy Nasher and David Haemiseggar Director of the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center at Wharton. Professor Gyourko’s research interests include real estate finance and investments, urban economics, and housing markets, in the United States and China. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and served as Co-Director of the special NBER Project on Housing Markets and the Financial Crisis. Professor Gyourko served as co-editor of the Journal of Urban Economics, is a past Trustee of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and Director of the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA), and consults to various private firms on real estate investment and policy matters. He received his B.A. from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Selected Publications

Gyourko, Joseph and Edward Glaeser. Forthcoming. “The Economics of Housing Supply.” Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Wu, Jing, Joseph Gyourko, and Yongheng Deng. 2016. “Evaluating the Risk of Chinese Housing Markets: What We Know and What We Need to Know.” China Economic Review 39: 91-114.

Gyourko, Joseph and Raven Molloy. 2015. “Regulation and Housing Supply.” In Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics Vol 5A, edited by Gilles Duranton, J. Vernon Henderson, and William Strange. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier.

Gyourko, Joseph, Chris Mayer, and Todd Sinai. 2013. “Superstar Cities.” American Economic Journal-Economic Policy 5(4): 167-199.

Faculty Fellow

Jessie Handbury

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Assistant Professor of Real Estate

About

Jessie Handbury is an Assistant Professor of Real Estate at The Wharton School and was a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Her research interests lie at the intersection of urban economics, trade, and industrial organization. Her recent articles use detailed data on retail sales to characterize how product prices and availability vary across U.S. cities and to measure the implications of this variation on household living costs. Her current research examines spatial and socio-economic disparities in the availability and consumption of food products. This work, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, seeks to understand the roles that differentials in price sensitivity, nutritional preferences, and retail access each play in explaining socio-economic disparities in nutrition. 

Selected Publications

Handbury, Jessie, Ilya Rahkovsky, and Molly Schnell. 2015. “What Drives Nutritional Disparities? Retail Access and Food Purchases Across the Socioeconomic Spectrum.” NBER Working Paper Series Volume w21126.

Handbury, Jessie, and David E. Weinstein. 2014. “Goods prices and availability in cities.” The Review of Economic Studies 82(1): 258-296.

Handbury, Jessie. 2014. “Are poor cities cheap for everyone? Non-homotheticity and the cost of living across us cities.” Zell-Lurie working papers.

Affiliated PhD Student

Rebecca Jorgensen

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Phd Candidate in Wharton's Applied Economics Program

About

Rebecca Jorgensen is a sixth year PhD student in Wharton's Applied Economics program with research interests in household finance, real estate, and industrial organization economics. Her current research studies how mergers between residential real estate brokerages and mortgage lenders affect the structure of the mortgage market and the interest rate paid by borrowers. Her other work examines how increasing ridership on public transit affects travel time. Prior to graduate school, Rebecca worked as a Research Assistant at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on projects related to financial stability and competition, which is where her interest in mortgage markets began. Rebecca holds a Masters degree in Economics and a Bachelors degree in Quantitative Economics and Mathematics, all from Miami University.

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.

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.

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