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Working Paper
Understanding the Exposure at Default Risk of Commercial Real Estate Construction and Land Development Loans
We study and model the determinants of exposure at default (EAD) for large U.S. construction and land development loans from 2010 to 2017. EAD is an important component of credit risk, and commercial real estate (CRE) construction loans are more risky than income producing loans. This is the first study modeling the EAD of construction loans. The underlying EAD data come from a large, confidential supervisory dataset used in the U.S. Federal Reserve’s annual Comprehensive Capital Assessment Review (CCAR) stress tests. EAD reflects the relative bargaining ability and information sets of ...
Journal Article
What's holding back homebuilding?
Homebuilding is typically a casualty of economic downturns, but it is also true that most economic recoveries are built upon a resumption of pounding hammers and buzzing blades. Not so with the recovery from the Great Recession. After new home construction slowed dramatically in the recession, the sector not only failed to lead the overall recovery as usual but significantly lagged it. Even now that overall economic growth and employment have largely resumed growing solidly, homebuilding and construction employment levels remain far below normal in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware as ...
Journal Article
How Long Does It Take to Build Multifamily Housing?
Increasing the supply of multifamily housing is a key strategy to reduce the cost of shelter in our larger cities. However, the time required to produce these units has grown over time. We document the duration from when an apartment or condominium development or redevelopment (i.e., conversion from another use) is first announced until its completion. We break down this duration into (a) the planning and permitting phase and (b) the construction phase. We find that, on average, projects spend three to four months more in the planning stage than in construction. This project duration is ...
Working Paper
On Commercial Construction Activity's Long and Variable Lags
We use microdata on the phases of commercial construction projects to document three facts regarding time-to-plan lags: (1) plan times are long—about 1.5 years—and highly variable, (2) roughly 40 percent of projects are abandoned in planning, and (3) property price appreciation reduces the likelihood of abandonment. We construct a model with endogenous planning starts and abandonment that matches these facts. The model has the testable implication that supply is more elastic when there are more "shovel ready" projects available to advance to construction. We use local projections to ...
Working Paper
On Commercial Construction Activity's Long and Variable Lags
We use microdata on the phases of commercial construction projects to document three facts regarding time-to-plan lags: (1) plan times are long--about 1.5 years on average--and highly variable, (2) roughly one-third of projects are abandoned in planning, (3) property price appreciation reduces the likelihood of abandonment. We construct a model with endogenous planning starts and abandonment that matches these facts. Endogenous abandonment makes short-term building supply more elastic, as price shocks immediately affect the exercise of construction options rather than just planning starts. ...
Journal Article
Demographics, COVID-19 Leave Construction with Tight Labor Supply
Although pandemic-induced material shortages may improve, the construction industry’s labor supply challenge is the result of longer-term demographic issues.