Cities, Housing, and Society Research Group

The Cities, Housing, and Society Research Group is a monthly workshop for graduates students interested in topics related to urban and housing economics. The group includes students from a number of PhD programs including economics (GSB and Department), finance, political economy, organizational behavior, and marketing. Urban and housing economics is typically spread across many more "traditional" fields, but rarely meet together in an organized setting. Students come from fields including labor, public, industrial organization, macro, political economy, finance, and trade.


The monthly workshop meets one Wednesday per month from 1:30pm-3pm. The workshop will take two formats. Some weeks we will have a reading group style meeting, with papers assigned ahead of time, and a group of student in charge of leading discussion. Other meetings we will have an outside speaker who is an expert on the topic of interest for the meeting.


If you are a Stanford PhD student who would like to sign up to join the meetings, please email my assistant Nonna nonna@stanford.edu to request to be added to the email list. This is how you would receive the zoom link to join the meeting.

Schedule for Winter/Spring 2020:


Wednesday January 27th 1:30pm-3pm: Firm Entry Subsidies (Owen Zidar)


Wednesday February 24th 1:30pm-3pm: Neighborhood Effects (Reading Group Meeting)

Reading Assignments:

"THE CHILDREN OF HOPE VI DEMOLITIONS: NATIONAL EVIDENCE ON LABOR MARKET OUTCOMES" by John C. Haltiwanger, Mark J. Kutzbach, Giordano E. Palloni, Henry Pollakowski, Matthew Staiger, Daniel Weinberg. (2020)

"THE SOCIAL SIDE OF EARLY HUMAN CAPITAL FORMATION: USING A FIELD EXPERIMENT TO ESTIMATE THE CAUSAL IMPACT OF NEIGHBORHOODS" by John A. List Fatemeh Momeni Yves Zenou (2020)


Extended Reading List:

Kling, Jeffrey R., Jeffrey B. Liebman, and Lawrence F. Katz. "Experimental analysis of neighborhood effects." Econometrica 75.1 (2007): 83-119.

Chetty, Raj, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz. "The effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children: New evidence from the Moving to Opportunity experiment." American Economic Review 106.4 (2016): 855-902.

Chetty, Raj, and Nathaniel Hendren. "The impacts of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility I: Childhood exposure effects." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133.3 (2018): 1107-1162.

Chetty, Raj, and Nathaniel Hendren. "The impacts of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility II: County-level estimates." The Quarterly Journal of Economics 133.3 (2018): 1163-1228.

Chyn, Eric. "Moved to opportunity: The long-run effects of public housing demolition on children." American Economic Review 108.10 (2018): 3028-56.


Wednesday March 24th 1:30pm-3pm: Egg-Timer Student Presentations


Wednesday April 21st 1:30pm-3pm: Mortgages and Macro Effects (Tim McQuade)


Wednesday May 19th 1:30pm-3pm: Household Finance and Housing (Theresa Kuchler)


Wednesday June 16th 1:30pm-3pm: Migration (Reading Group Meeting)


Past Meetings:

Schedule for Fall 2020:

Monday September 21st 12pm-1:30pm: Affordable Housing Policy (Reading Group Meeting)

Reading assignments:

The socio-economic consequences of housing assistance by Winnie Van Dijk (2020)

Reforming housing assistance by Robert Collinson, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Jens Ludwig (2019)

Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice by Bergman et al (2020)

Extended reading list:

Autor, David H., Christopher J. Palmer, and Parag A. Pathak. "Housing market spillovers: Evidence from the end of rent control in Cambridge, Massachusetts." Journal of Political Economy 122.3 (2014): 661-717.

Baum-Snow, Nathaniel and Justin Marion. 2009. “The Effects of Low Income Housing Tax Credit Developments on Neighborhoods”, Journal of Public Economics

Diamond, Rebecca, Tim McQuade, and Franklin Qian. "The effects of rent control expansion on tenants, landlords, and inequality: Evidence from San Francisco." American Economic Review 109.9 (2019): 3365-94.

Diamond, Rebecca, and Timothy McQuade. Who wants affordable housing in their backyard? An equilibrium analysis of low income property development. Journal of Political Economy, 127:3: 1063-1117. 2019

Glaeser, Edward L., and Erzo FP Luttmer. "The misallocation of housing under rent control." The American Economic Review 93.4 (2003): 1027-1046.

Rosenthal, Stuart S. "Are private markets and filtering a viable source of low-income housing? Estimates from a “repeat income” model." The American Economic Review 104.2 (2014): 687-706.

Sinai & Waldfogel. “Do Low Income Housing Subsidies Increase the Occupied Housing Stock?” Journal of Public Economics, 89(11-12) 2137-2164 (Dec. 2005)

Monday October 26th 12pm-1:30pm: Urban Economics in Developing Countries (Nick Tsivanidis)

Reading assignments:

Bryan, Gharad, Edward Glaeser, and Nick Tsivanidis. "Cities in the developing world." Annual Review of Economics 12 (2020): 273-297.

Evaluating the Impact of Urban Transit Infrastructure: Evidence from Bogotá’s TransMilenio by Nick Tsivanidis (2020)

Monday November 9th 12pm-1:30pm: Gentrification (Erik Hurst)

Monday December 14th 12pm-1:30pm: Place-Based Policies (Reading Group Meeting)

Place-based Redistribution by Cecile Gaubert, Pat Kline, and Danny Yagan (2020)

Local economic development, agglomeration economies and the big push: 100 years of evidence from the Tennessee Valley Authority by Kline, Patrick and Enrico Moretti (2014)

Extended Reading List:

Austin BA, Glaeser EL, Summers LH. Jobs for the Heartland: Place-Based Policies in 21st Century America. NBER WP (2018)

Busso, Matias, Jesse Gregory, and Patrick Kline. 2013. Assessing the incidence and efficiency of a prominent place based policy. American Economic Review 103(2), 897-947.

Glaeser, Edward L. and Joshua D. Gottlieb. 2008. The economics of place-making policies. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 0(1):155–253.

Fajgelbaum, Pablo, and Cecile Gaubert. Optimal spatial policies, geography and sorting. QJE (2020)

P. Kline (2010) “Place Based Policies, Heterogeneity, and Agglomeration American,” Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings