William C. Strange

B.A. (Oregon), M.A., Ph.D. (Princeton)

RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust Professor of Real Estate and Urban Economics

Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

William Strange joined the Rotman School of Management from the University of British Columbia in 2001.  At UBC, he served as Chair of the Urban Land Economics Division and Director of the Centre for Real Estate and Urban Land Economics.  He currently serves as Co-Editor (with Stuart Rosenthal) of Journal of Urban Economics and as Second Vice President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.  In 2009, he was given the Walter Isard Award for Distinguished Scholarly Achievements in the field of Regional Science by the North American Regional Science Council. 

 

Professor Strange's research and teaching concern urban economics and real estate.  He has published articles on a wide range of topics.  Some have dealt with agglomeration, the concentration of population in cities and of firms in industry clusters like the Silicon Valley.  Other research has analyzed private government, collective institutions that combine the features of the traditional private and public sectors like community associations, business improvement districts, private schools, and gated communities.  Professor Strange also has carried out research on a number of issues pertinent to real estate investment, many on the general topic of investment under uncertainty.  Some of Professor Strange's recent papers have concerned entrepreneurship, including the geography of female entrepreneurship.  Other recent research has dealt with urban labor market issues, including labor supply and the importance for cities of skills in general and soft skills in particular.

 

While at the Rotman School, Professor Strange has taught Managerial Economics (MGT 1210, formerly The Economics of Enterprise) and Real Estate Economics (MGT 2128).  Managerial Economics focuses on microeconomics and its applications to managerial decisions.  Topics covered include costs, perfect competition, game theory, oligopoly, pricing, monopolistic competition, agency theory, imperfect information, and firm organization.   Real Estate Economics uses economic methods to analyze real estate. Topics covered include the determinants of real estate values, the location decisions of households and firms, land use, urban growth and agglomeration, cycles, the behavioral finance of real estate, real options, and leasing. Professor Strange was voted the G.B.C. First Year MBA Professor of the Year by the Rotman School students in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008.  In 2003, he was awarded the Roger Martin and Nancy Lang Award for Excellence in Teaching.   

Office: Room 573, Rotman School of Management.

Mailing address:  Rotman School of Management, 105 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5S 3E6, Canada

E-mail address: wstrange@rotman.utoronto.ca

Other web page:  http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/facBios/viewFac.asp?facultyID=wstrange

Phone number: (416) 978-1949

Fax number: (416) 978-5433

Working Papers and Other Recent Research

·         Helsley, Robert W. and William C. Strange, “A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Skyscrapers,” working paper, 2007.

·         Helsley, Robert W. and William C. Strange, “Entrepreneurs and Cities:  Complexity, Thickness, and Balance,” working paper, 2009..

 

 

Selected Publications

·         Helsley, Robert W. and William C. Strange, "Agglomeration, Opportunism, and the Organization of Production," Journal of Urban Economics 62(1), 2007, 55-75.

·         Helsley, Robert W. and William C. Strange, “Urban Interactions and Spatial Structure,” Journal of Economic Geography 7(2), 2007, 119-138.

  • Rosenthal, Stuart S. and William C. Strange, "Agglomeration and Hours Worked," Review of Economics and Statistics 90(1), 2008, 105–118.
  • Helsley, Robert W. and William C. Strange, “A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Skyscrapers,” Journal of Urban Economics 64 (1),  2008, 49-64.
  • Rosenthal, Stuart S. and William C. Strange, “The Attenuation of Human Capital Externalities,” Journal of Urban Economics 64 (2), 2008, 373-389.

·         William C. Strange, "Agglomeration Research in the Age of Disaggregation," Canadian Journal of Economics 42(1), 2009, 1-27.

 

Editorial Boards

Updated December 9, 2009