Annual Conference

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Household Finance

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May 2023

The Effect of Principal Reduction on Household Distress: Evidence from Mortgage Cramdown

Jacelly CESPEDES, Carlos PARRA, Clemens SIALM
Mortgage cramdown enabled bankruptcy judges to discharge the underwater portion of a mortgage during Chapter 13 bankruptcy until the Supreme Court disallowed this practice in 1993. We investigate the impact of mortgage cramdown on household distress exploiting the random assignment of cases to judge...
Keywords: Debt Relief, Principal Reduction, Debt Overhang, Foreclosures, Consumer Bankruptcy, Housing Policies
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Annual Conference

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Household Finance

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May 2023

Online Learning and the Education Gap: A Digital Footprint Approach

Yongheng DENG, Xinfei HUANG, Teng LI
While online learning has become more common including during the Covid-19 period, its effect on the education gap between rich and poor children is still unclear. Using school closures (compulsory online education) across 21 cities in Southern China during the Covid-19 pandemic as a natural experim...
Keywords: School closures, education gap, family wealth, mobile Apps, time allocation
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Annual Conference

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Real Estate and Urban Economics

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May 2023

Housing Speculation and Entrepreneurship

Yichu WANG, Xuan TIAN
We document a speculation channel through which house market booms negatively affect entrepreneurship. To address endogeneity concerns, we exploit plausibly exogenous variation in house prices generated by staggered and unintended policy spillovers in China. We find house market speculation triggere...
Keywords: Housing speculation, Entrepreneurship, house purchase restriction policy
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Annual Conference

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Real Estate and Urban Economics

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May 2023

Housing Wealth and Fertility in China: A Regression Discontinuity Design

Fan ZHANG, Ya TAN, Geer ANG, Qinghua ZHANG
In this paper we examine the effects of housing wealth on fertility outcomes using a regression discontinuity design based on a 2006 Chinese housing policy. We show that the positive shock to housing wealth generated by this policy increased the likelihood of fertility by a significant margin of 3.6...
Keywords: Housing wealth, Fertility, Labor Participation, Health
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Annual Conference

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Real Estate and Urban Economics

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May 2023

Frictional and Speculative Vacancies: The Effects of an Empty Homes Tax

Derek STACEY, Lu HAN, Hong CHENG
In this paper, we study the implications of a vacant home tax for housing availability and affordability. We develop a model with owner-occupied homes, tenanted rental units, and empty houses. Housing units are constructed by competitive developers and supplied to local households, but can also be s...
Keywords: empty houses, taxation of vacant homes, housing affordability
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