We create a novel dataset identifying the quantity, location, and
timing of home sales by national and local U.S. developers in order
to study concentration in housing construction markets. Smaller markets
and more regulated markets are more concentrated, suggesting the importance
of fixed entry or operating costs. Concentration matters, with more
concentrated CBSAs having higher prices and lower quantities;
developers operating in more concentrated CBSAs are more profitable.
Negative price shocks originating in one CBSA cause developers to shrink
or exit other markets, thus propagating through the CBSA-developer network,
reducing competition and raising prices in connected CBSAs. These patterns
provide new evidence on how imperfect competition in housing construction
and financial frictions propagate local housing shocks across space.
Presented at:
Real Estate Finance and Investment Symposium, University of Cambridge;
1st Annual Workshop in Real Estate Finance, Frankfurt;
Asian Finance Association Annual Conference, Seoul;
China International Conference in Finance, Hong Kong;
AREUEA National Conference, Washington, D.C.
Presented at:
2026 NFA, Quebec City;
2026 EFA, Ghent;
Conference on Discrimination in the 21st Century: Fostering Conversations Across Fields;
CEPR Paris Symposium;
2025 Queensland Corporate Finance Conference;
2025 NBER Organizational Economics Meetings;
2025 FMA Meetings, Vancouver;
RAPS/RCFS Europe Meeting, Cambridge;
Barcelona School of Economics Summer Forum;
1st Asian Conference on Organizational Economics, HKU
We introduce a new measure, Partisan Portfolio Disagreement (PPD),
which captures the extent to which Democratic- and Republican-leaning investors
hold different equity portfolios. We demonstrate how the long-term evolution of
PPD can be estimated from county-level portfolio and political differences. Our
findings show that PPD among wealthy U.S. households more than doubled between
2001 and 2019. By 2019, 20 cents of every invested dollar differed between the
average Democratic- leaning and Republican-leaning direct equity portfolios.
Leveraging the staggered county-level entry of Sinclair, a conservative
television network, we provide causal evidence that political disagreement
drives portfolio disagreement. Further analysis shows that the rise in PPD is
driven by a growing number of partisan stocks across industries—particularly
politically sensitive and large-cap stocks which have become increasingly
partisan over time. Overall, our study suggests that the growing political
divide in U.S. society is increasingly segmenting U.S. equity markets along
political lines.
Award:
WRDS Award for Best Empirical Finance Paper, WFA 2023
Press coverage:
Wall Street Journal
,
The Economist
,
Financial Times
Presented at:
2025 FMA Meetings, Vancouver;
2025 NFA Conference, Calgary;
Sydney Banking and Financial Stability Conference;
USC Social and Behavioral Finance Conference;
2023 WFA Meetings, San Francisco;
2023 Eastern Finance Association Meetings, Asheville;
2023 AFFECT Workshop, New Orleans
