Housing price indexes should not confound the effect of changes in quality with the effects of changing house prices. A recent nonparametric regression technique, loess, allows flexible estimation of the hedonic price function and centers the estimation at fixed points, such as the beginning or...

In this paper, we study investments by existing homeowners to improve their homes. The value of a house is modeled as the expected net present value of a perpetual stream of service flows emanating from the attributes of the house. An important innovation in our model is that the set of house...

U.S. housing accounted for over 22% of the country's total primary energy consumption in 2009, which equated to more than $2000 per household and $229billion in aggregate expenditure. It appears that these amounts could be reduced substantially, with benefits to both household budgets and the...

Most empirical models of mortgage terminations emphasize refinancing incentives related to interest rate movements. We consider three sources of risk that lead to observed mortgage payment terminations: interest-rate related refinancing, default, and moving. We estimate models that identify the...