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CRE Director

William Strange

Professor William Strange

Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy and SmartCentres Chair of Real Estate

Professor Strange earned his B.A. (Economics, History, Math) at the University of Oregon and his M.A. and Ph.D. (Economics) from Princeton University.  In 2009, Professor Strange was given the Walter Isard Award for Distinguished Scholarly Achievements in the field of Regional Science by the North American Regional Science Council.  In 2011, he was President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association. From 2007 to 2017, he has served as a Managing Editor of the Journal of Urban Economics.

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.  He continues to work on agglomeration and also on the microstructure of real estate markets.

CRE Faculty Fellows

baum-snowNathaniel Baum-Snow

Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy

Professor Baum-Snow received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He has research interests in urban and real estate economics, labor economics and economic geography. His research includes investigations of reasons for changes in the spatial organization of economic activity in U.S. and Chinese cities, reasons for which workers earn more and have more dispersed wages in larger cities, and the consequences of transportation infrastructure investments on urban growth and welfare. Since 2018, he has served as Managing Editor of the Journal of Urban Economics.

Stephan Heblich Photo

Stephan Heblich

Associate Professor and Munk Chair of Economics, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

In his research, Heblich looks at spatial disparities in the distribution of consumptive or productive amenities that attract individuals or firms. In turn, this helps explain spatial variation in house prices, the share of high-skilled workers, innovative activities and entrepreneurship, or economic development. Another stream of research focuses on causes and consequences of regional disparities in voting behavior. To establish causality Heblich often studies historic developments that explain present-day economic outcomes. This explains his interest in economic history. 

Heblich is on the editorial board of the Journal of Urban Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, and the Journal of Economic Geography. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of the European Economic Association and the leading field journals in Urban Economics.

 

Ruben Gaetani PhotoRuben Gaetani

Assistant Professor of Strategic Management, Department of Management, UTM

Professor Gaetani received his PhD in economics from Northwestern University. His research interests lie at the intersection of urban economics and the economics of innovation. In his papers, he combines theoretical and structural modeling with reduced-form empirical analysis to study the interactions between cities, technological innovation, and economic growth. His current work investigates the link between population density and the nature of local innovation, the effect of knowledge-based activities on economic segregation in cities, and the impact of technological waves on the evolution of the economic geography of countries.

Yue Yu

Assistant Professor, Department of Management, UTSC

Professor Yu received her Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University. Her research interest lies in urban economics and economic development. In particular, she is interested in combining granular data with spatial equilibrium models to understand the impacts of urban public policies on the housing market, residents' location choices and the welfare consequences. Her current work investigates the effects of land use regulations and urban environmental programs on neighborhood development, housing supply and the aggregate consequences. 

Aradhya Sood

Assistant Professor, Department of Management, UTSC (from Summer, 2021)

Professor Sood received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include urban and real estate economics, industrial organization and applied microeconomics. Her research includes studying historic factors and current policies associated with land and residential zoning and their effects on spatial distribution of economic and residential activities in the context of cities and regions in U.S. and India. In particular, her research has focused on studying the detrimental effects of land friction on the growth of Indian manufacturing firms, understanding the long-term consequences of racial historical housing practices on internal socio-economic geography of cities in the U.S., and the role of local politics and zoning on building of multi-unit housing.