We study the impact of the 2005-2015 international student boom in US universities on local housing markets. By constructing a sample of American college towns characterizing rarely studied local markets in small urban areas, we show that international students exogenously sustained demand for...

In this report, we venture into the future of real estate markets and products. Our definition of "real estate" for this purpose is not limited to buildings—such as homes, apartments, hotels, retail malls, offices, factories, and warehouses. Our definition also includes the social...

We infer the role of price expectations in forming the U.S. housing boom in the early-2000s from examining housing inventories. We use a reduced form model to show that agents invest in vacant homes when they anticipate prices will increase. Empirically, vacancy can discriminate between price...

This paper shows that rising real estate prices reduce industry productivity, because they lead to a reallocation of capital and labor towards inefficient firms. I establish that the rise in real estate value during the US housing boom relaxes firms' financial constraints. Companies borrow...