We revised our Skyscraper Revolution paper github.com/Ahlfeldt/DPs... Added indirect inference to estimate the QoL effect of density by matching causal reduced-form estimates in the model => more realistic counterfactuals. Quick read @voxeu.org: cepr.org/voxeu/column... @bsoeberlin.bsky.social

Paper (w/ Geetika Nagpal) is quoted in @economist.com "When in 2018 Mumbai let developers build taller buildings, housing supply in affected areas rose by 58% and the price of newly built units declined by 24%, says a new paper by Sahil Gandhi of University of Manchester & Geetika Nagpal of the WB"

These are 10 of my favourite #UrbanEconomics & #SpatialEconomics articles published in academic journals in 2025, continuing with a tradition started in 2018 (order is alphabetical by first author, no ranking implied):

🆕 What causes people to migrate to cities? Today on VoxDev, Zachary Barnett-Howell, Travis Baseler, @thomasginn.bsky.social @cgdev.org and Stepan Gordeev outline their results from a large-scale study in Kenya: voxdev.org/topic/migrat...

Forthcoming in the AER: "Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse" by Arpit Gupta, Vrinda Mittal, and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Excited to see the new Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics (Volume 6), edited jointly with Dave Donaldson come out: www.sciencedirect.com/handbook/han.... Fantastic set of chapters on recent advances and pointing the way to exciting further research @treballen.bsky.social @siepr.bsky.social

Our Assistant Professor of Real Estate and Urban Economics @gandhisahil.bsky.social tells @bloomberg.com that the rising cost of housing in Mumbai is squeezing out lower and middle income workers 👉 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

🆕 Reforming India’s housing market: How disclosure laws boosted efficiency Today on VoxDev, Vaidehi Tandel (@manchester.ac.uk), Sahil Gandhi, Anupam Nanda & Nandini Agnihotri (WRI India) discuss the impact of mandatory disclosures in the Mumbai housing market: voxdev.org/topic/public...

Delighted that after many years of hard work, Barriers to Global Capital Allocation (written jointly with Bruno Pellegrino and Enrico Spolaore), will be coming out in the QJE. academic.oup.com/qje/article-...

Just published in @jpube.bsky.social: "Do mandatory disclosures squeeze the lemons? The case of housing markets in India" By @vaidehitandel.bsky.social, @gandhisahil.bsky.social, Anupam Nanda, & Nandini Agnihotri www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #econsky #publiceconomics #HousingMarket

Real Estate Regulatory Authority was introduced in 2016 to bring transparency in the Indian real estate What was its impact on outcomes? We answer this question in our new @jpube.bsky.social‬ paper "Do mandatory disclosures squeeze the lemons?" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/6

One week to go.

📢Heavily revised working paper on AI + Zoning — with @alexbartik.bsky.social and Dan Milo, we have a new draft of our paper which expands on our method to understand housing regulations with AI. Incudes a new public data release with more housing regulation data:

NIMBY restrictions on housing are well understood; but they also serve to hold back a host of other businesses too

My obituary for the urban planner and civil engineer - and mentor to me - Shirish Patel, who died on Friday at 92. scroll.in/article/1077...

The Journal of Urban Economics turns 50 years old: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

One thing I don’t understand about the incidence of tariffs is how much foreign inputs feature in goods. Ie, coffee beans are roughly 10% of the cost of coffee. So assuming full passthrough, a 10% tariff would increase coffee prices paid by the consumer by 1%. What does that look like in general?

Why do we build #skyscrapers? #CitiesintheSkyBook. buildingtheskyline.org/cities-in-th...

This is a fantastic opportunity for urban and housing economics job market candidates to do a postdoc with @HansKoster9 and Jos van Ommeren workingat.vu.nl/vacancies/po... #urbaneconomics

When home heating prices are lower, fewer people die each winter, particularly in high-poverty communities. That's the punchline of my paper with Janjala Chirakijja and Pinchuan Ong on heating prices and mortality in the US, just published in the Economic Journal. 📉📈 academic.oup.com/ej/advance-a...

Constructing influence: Political turnover reveals quid pro quo arrangements in Mumbai’s real estate. Today on VoxDev, Vaidehi Tandel, Sahil Gandhi & Alex Tabarrok outline their research on the politician-developer nexus in #India: voxdev.org/topic/migrat...