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
Real Estate Postdoc at MIT
The MIT Urban Economics Lab is thrilled to announce an opening for a Real Estate Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Center for Real Estate! We're looking for a passionate researcher to join our collaborative team focused on cutting-edge research in urban economics, housing, real estate finance, and the impact of immigration on local economies.
Apply now through MIT Careers: Apply here
World Bank Sustainable Cities Workshop
Professor Albert Saiz gave a keynote at the Sustainable Cities workshop with the World Bank. He presented his research on how the presence of natural barriers influences 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.
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.
