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On this day in 1966, a small school from El Paso, Texas made history 🏆

GovExec Update: a knowledgeable person told me that the FHFA home price index is statutorily required, and the team that produces it was not put on leave. But without the researchers who improve and enhance the index, it will become less useful over time even if it continues to exist.

Is anyone working on the policy side on making it feasible and profitable for Waymo to scale as fast as they are technologically able?

My paper with Alexander Ahammer is now live and available from the Journal of Health Economics: sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Punchline: we find that more targeted screening for DI benefits has positive impacts for labor force participation and wages, without adverse health consequences

Neighborhood serving retail should be *allowed* by zoning in most locations but not *required* as a condition to build homes. Less micro-management.

My new NBER WP is featured on the NBER home page! A 10 μg/m3 increase in daily PM2.5 pollution is associated with a 5.7% increase in full-day student absences and a 28% increase in discipline-related referrals, with effects driven by low-income students. nber.org

While the ranking is somewhat outdated (based from 1993-2013), it’s great to see UTEP break the top 10. This goal of social mobility, particularly for the Paso del Norte region, was made explicitly by Dr. Diana Natalicio.

We're very proud of BS Econ-Math senior, Gabriel Solis, who has accepted a pre-doctoral fellowship offer in MIT's Blueprint Labs! Gabriel will be working under Josh Angrist, David Autor, and Amanda Pallais in their Higher Education group. Congratulations Gabriel!

The RAND report highlights what we expect--Building costs are higher in CA>CO>TX. One thing that surprised me was that hard costs for market-rate multifamily housing were comparable in CA and CO. Soft costs (e.g., engineering, legal, etc.) and land drove the total difference.

An important figure behind our concept of “middle class.”

Property tax protest season in Texas! Does anyone know why sales data are not public? Impossible to generate good comps both for my own purposes and for the local appraisers who are basing their valuations on pretty thin information.

Manufactured homes built to the HUD Code are today's Sears catalog home! As of December: $88k for ~1000sqft, shipped. The catch? This is the price excluding land. In high-wage cities land costs millions per acre, so higher density is the only way to cut land costs per unit

Harsh but very true words from Matthew E. Kahn . You can't cry broke when you are sitting on over a million dollars in home equity.

🏠 Check out JP Morgan's list of "housing windmills" that are holding back supply: outdated building codes, zoning, labor constraints, and an industry slow to embrace innovation. What's striking? This is from a report published in 1969.

I know a lot of folks are currently looking for jobs, so this is a timely new position w/Ag&Natural Resources & UCSD! General role is environment-focused data science, but specific topical focus could be anything from sustainable ag to wildfire risk. More details: recruit.ucanr.edu/JPF00318

Assuming that state and local upzoning wins keep coming (?), the YIMBY project should include lowering deficits, to avoid the fiscal crowd out that’s going to make any new project hard to pencil out

Looking forward to presenting my research on the causal effects of flood damage later this week at the AREUEA National Conference

There are more than 800,000 power outages across the U.S. each year, and even short-term disruptions can be costly. Annual business losses exceed $150B. The market is responding with a parametric insurance designed to cover these events. insurancejournal.com/news/national/…

🚨Instrumental Variable Alert

Career opportunity: We’re seeking a Deputy Director of Policy to help promote evidence-driven research that informs housing policy in California and at the federal level. Please help us spread the word: ternercenter.berkeley.edu/careers/