Fostering collaboration

On March 4th and 5th, Wisconsin Real Estate faculty members Stephen Malpezzi, Tim Riddiough, Morris A. Davis and Erwan Quintin attended the fifth installment of the UW-Fed Housing-Urban-Labor-Macro (HULM) conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

The conference, a bi-annual event founded three years ago by Morris Davis, brings together individuals who are pushing the frontier in all aspects of real estate research. The first part of the conference focused on the causes and consequences of the recent subprime crisis and on the effects of various policy responses to the crisis. The second part of the conference dealt with cycles in the market for land and structures. Details and papers are here.

A unique aspect of this increasingly successful event is the collaboration it fosters between academic researchers who study optimal policy responses to various real estate events and the very people who implement these policy responses. The latter include not only Federal Reserve economists but also researchers from Government Sponsored Agencies. One of the highlights of this year’s event was an intense debate over the merits of loan modification policies motivated by a unique study of Countrywide’s court-imposed modification program.

The next installment of the conference will take place at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in September.

Photo by Lance McCord via Flickr