I present a simple model of migration in which the net migration rate into a state depends on the expected present value of labor market conditions and amenities. I show that though this is a common model, existing empirical estimates do not separately identify the underlying parameters. The...

Existing empirical estimates of net migration models are not identified because they lack an explicit measure of expected future conditions. I find that using actual one-period-ahead net migration at the state level to control for expectations reduces the strength of the relationship between...

The proposition that "housing prices can't continue to outpace growth in household income" (Wall Street Journal; July 25, 2002) is the received wisdom among many housing-market observers. More formally, many in the housing literature argue that house prices and income are cointegrated. In this...

We use the dynamic Gordon-growth model to decompose the rent-price ratio for owner-occupied housing in the U.S., four Census regions, and twenty-three metropolitan areas into three components: The expected present value of real rental growth, real interest rates, and future housing premia. We...

I show that when house prices are high relative to rents (that is, when the rent-price ratio is low) changes in real rents tend to be larger than usual and changes in real prices tend to be smaller than usual. Standard error-correction models provide inconclusive results about the predictive...

The recent U.S. expansion has provided employment experience to individuals at tail of the skill distribution. Will these opportunities bestow persistent benefits in the form of greater future employability? Using synthetic cohorts constructed from the CPS, this paper estimates the degree of...

We apply the dynamic Gordon growth model to the housing market in 23 US metropolitan areas, the four Census regions, and the nation from 1975 to 2007. The model allows the rent-price ratio at each date to be split into the expected present discounted values of rent growth, real interest rates,...

As a rental unit ages, its quality typically falls; a failure to correct for this would result in downward bias in the CPI. We investigate the BLS age bias imputation and explore two potential categories of error: approximations related to the construction of the age bias factor, and model...

Many in the housing literature argue that house prices and income are cointegrated. I show that the data do not support this view. Standard tests using 27 years of national-level data do not find evidence of cointegration. However, standard tests for cointegration have low power, especially in...

I use standard error-correction models and long-horizon regression models to examine how well the rent-price ratio predicts future changes in real rents and prices. I find evidence that the rent-price ratio helps predict changes in real prices over 4-year periods, but that the rent-price ratio...