Stuck: How Housing Regulation Ended America’s Mobility Revolution
Economist Peter Ganong and Atlantic deputy executive editor Yoni Appelbaum unpack how today’s housing regulations have shaped a two-tier America, limiting access to opportunity-rich cities to only the highest earners.
Do High Construct Costs Explain Soaring Home Prices?
Despite building costs commonly representing 60–70% of the cost of a new home, decades of data analyzed by Brian Potter and Chad Syverson reveal that they do little to account for soaring U.S. housing prices.
Read →
Building Costs vs. Housing Prices: Why Construction Isn’t Driving the Crisis
University of Chicago economist Chad Syverson breaks down 75 years of data to reveal a surprising truth—construction costs and housing prices have become “completely decoupled.”
Educational Disparities between First-Gen College Students and their Peers
Large excellence gaps appear as early as 3rd grade—first-generation students represent most of the student population yet are dramatically underrepresented among top achievers, a pattern only partially explained by income or school quality.
Read →
Why Have Income Gaps between States Stopped Narrowing?
The long era in which higher wages offset higher rents has ended, and with rising housing costs pricing many workers out of booming regions, income gaps across states have stopped closing and in some cases widened.
Read →
How Can Policymakers Stop Evictions?
Unique lease-level data from high-eviction neighborhoods reveal that many tenants recover from missed payments and that landlords often wait before filing, shedding light on the true drivers of eviction and how policy can effectively target them.
Read →
Why are Nordic Countries so Equal?
Nordic countries achieve unusually high income equality largely because their coordinated wage-setting system keeps pay differences between workers much smaller than in most other places.
Read →
Which Policies Help College Dropouts Re-Enroll?
Drawing on new evidence, this episode examines why students stop out, how mentoring can bring them back, and how federal lending policies influence access, completion, and tuition in graduate programs.