Dissertation research:

The “home-voter hypothesis” and the portfolio-choice model of housing (in progress)

I combine Brueckner’s 1997 model integrating owner-occupied housing as an asset in portfolio decisions with key parts of William Fischel’s “homevoter” hypothesis. Agents in owner-occupied homes tend to have disproportionately large portions of financial portfolios in their housing asset, which is an asset class subject to systematic types of risk which cannot be diversified away. Therefore, these agents can vote on residential density restrictions, systematically decreasing portfolio variance. The model explores the degree to which a planner must compensate a homevoter for low-density vote preferences to shift.

A causal assessment of residential upzoning on housing prices using synthetic controls (JMP coming soon)

An analysis of the city-level policy changes involving low-density residential upzoning in Portland and Minneapolis and their effect on housing outcomes. I consider the difficulty of applying causal inference techniques in these settings. Though the sources of biases differ for each case, there are conditions under which they are signable, and therefore treatment-effect directionality is still useful.

Committee members: Dr. Steve Newbold (Chair), Dr. Thorsten Janus, Dr. Alexander James, Dr. Nino Abashidze