Urban Economics Lab
The Urban Economics Lab at MIT focuses on studying economic activity and economic trends in cities. The Lab uses analytical models and big data to understand what makes cities thrive or decline, how housing values are formed and oscillate, and how local politics and social phenomena manifest in the context of increasing global urbanization.
Latest News
Challenges for Housing Affordability in Denmark
Last week, Prof. Albert Saiz presented at the ROCKWOOL Foundation Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. He gave a keynote talk on the global housing affordability crisis.
New Research - Climate-migration and Housing
Natural disasters have been increasing in intensity and frequency, displacing millions of people across the globe and pushing them to seek refuge elsewhere. How does the arrival of natural disaster-induced migrants shape neighborhoods and housing markets? A new working paper by Vinicios Sant'Anna and coauthors investigates the impact of climate-induced migration on residential real estate markets in receiving areas. Specifically, the research focuses on the 1930s American Dust Bowl, a period of severe drought and dust storms that ravaged the Great Plains during the 1930s, forcing a mass exodus of residents. The paper studies how the influx of migrants fleeing the Dust Bowl affected housing dynamics in Los Angeles, the primary destination for these climate refugees.
New Working Paper - Long Run Housing Supply
New MIT CRE working paper by Professor Albert Saiz provides an introduction to the economics of housing supply. This comprehensive study explores the critical factors shaping the housing supply in metropolitan areas, its consequences for affordability and urban growth, and discusses the methods used to measure long-run housing supply elasticity across cities.
This paper offers valuable insights for researchers, urban planners, and policymakers interested in addressing housing challenges in growing metropolitan areas.
New Publication - Natural Barriers and Urban Connectivity
This new publication by Prof. Albert Saiz and coauthors at Nature Cities studies how the presence of natural barriers influence transportation environments and urban densities across the globe.
The paper introduces three novel indexes: the share of natural barriers, non-convexity (a measure of natural fragmentation), and the average road detour, to measure and study the practical reach and effects of natural barriers around global cities. It calculates these indexes for areas in and around four separate global city-boundary definitions, augmenting the original data with relevant additional variables.
