Research
I conduct research in five broad subject areas
Subject Area 1: Indivisibilities and Economic Outcomes
Subject Area 2: Economics and Psychology
Recent work on Rational Inattention (with Mark Dean) added March 11 2013:
Rational Inattention and State Dependent Stochastic Choice
and on Imperfect Perception (with Daniel Martin):
“A Testable Theory of Imperfect Perception”
Subject Area 3: Life Cycle Consumption and Portfolio Choice
Subject Area 4: Real Estate Finance
Recent Work on FHA (with Anna Cororaton and Joe Tracy)
“Is the FHA Creating Sustainable Homeownership?”
A central point in the paper is that FHA uses outmoded methods and as a result seriously understates risks to borrowers and to taxpayers. I made this point directly to Congress in 2010 and again in 2011. Time is almost up.
FHA Congressional Testimony 2011
FHA Congressional Testimony 2010
Subject Area 5: Individual Differences And Outcomes In Economics And Politics
While the topics are diverse, they form part of a web of long term personal interests. One connecting thread in the first three subject areas is the drive to connect the highest level of abstraction with the finest points of empirical detail. In all cases, I aspire to identify and to model the major forces at work, to measure the corresponding theoretical constructs, and to gauge the match between model and measurement. On a side note, my current work with John Leahy (A Graph Theoretic Approach to Markets and Divisible Goods and Comparative Statics in Markets for Indivisible Goods available under “Indivisibilities”) involves novel mathematics. To my surprise, I find myself becoming more comfortable with abstraction as I age, and as a result more capable of contributing to technical advance.
My research on real estate finance in subject area four centers on my long running effort to seed the development of markets in housing equity. This has brought me into contact with the realities of housing policy in the U.S., an activity that has been profoundly depressing, as indicated herein, and in the above paper on FHA under subject area 4 above.
Subject Area 6: U.S. Housing Policy: In Crisis