Arpit Gupta

I’m glad this tweet had so much resonance!

A post I wrote a few months ago on what it means for urban policy that housing is largely homothetic (inspired by an @arpitrage.bsky.social tweet, which became the Substack preview of the post): gregshill.substack.com/p/mistaking-...

This relationship also holds up pretty well across cities in the US (migration is one mechanism making it hold). It’s less true across income groups within cities

That is, the paper estimates a partial equilibrium housing demand function, which is a bit sub homothetic

If you change everyone’s income: you get a house price GE effect which turns out roughly homothetic for the rep agent

- now under somewhat inelastic supply, prices go up if incomes rise in aggregate, which keeps budget shares roughly constant. They don’t go up above this because of endogenous sorting q

- allowing demand to change with an income elasticity not much below 1, but holding prices fixed, we get the slightly sub-homothetic curve above. The same would hold in aggregate under fully elastic supply

That paper is what I would have pointed to as well!

- if housing demand stayed fixed, we’d expect housing to rapidly decline as a share of budget like food

UPDATE: more road cutting up in the works

I took that elevator on the way down - it opens up both to the lobby and a back area (for moving? Trash?)

Some scissor stairs in an NYC luxury rental built 1998

Even when New Yorker authors are rioting over a new editor appointment — they still do the pretentious diaeresis thing

Good news everyone: W 4th St in front of NYU yet again under construction

🚨Next time you hire, don’t take it easy! In a new working paper, @elliottash.bsky.social, Jason Sockin, and I show the difficulty of the interview signals to workers whether the job is a good fit. 🚨

Paper link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

NEW PRE-DOC POSITIONS: @arpitrage.bsky.social
and I are hiring for two pre-docs, one to start ASAP and one to start next Fall, to help expand our work using LLMs to measure and study zoning codes in the US.

Please apply here: apply.interfolio.com/176538

🚨New predoc positions!🚨

Join @alexbartik.bsky.social and me to work on developing LLM tools to analyze zoning regulations and their impacts on housing affordability.

One position starting at the "normal" cycle next year, and another ASAP.

Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/176538

Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse (Forthcoming Article) - We show remote work led to large drops in lease revenues, occupancy, and market rents in the commercial office sector. We revalue New York City office buildings taking into acc...

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=...

Keep updating those priors, @paulgp.com

More schools installing AC is its own reward

JOURNAL ARTICLE ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Digital Distractions with Peer Influence: The Impact of Mobile App Usage on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes Getaccess > Panle Jia Barwick, Siyu Chen, Chao Fu, Teng Li The Quarterly Journal of Economics, qjaf048, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaf048 Published: 17 October 2025 66 Cite P Permissions < Share v Abstract Concerns about excessive mobile phone use among youth are mounting. We present estimates of both behavioral and contextual peer effects, along with comprehensive evidence on how students' own and their peers' app usage affect academic performance, physical health, and labor market outcomes. Our analysis draws on administrative data from a Chinese university covering three student cohorts over four years. We exploit random roommate assignments, differential exposure to a policy shock (gaming restrictions for minors), and differential exposure to a discrete event (the introduction of a blockbuster video game) for identification. App usage is contagious: a one s.d. increase in roommates' in-college app usage raises own usage by 5.8%. High app usage is harmful across all measured outcomes. A one s.d. increase in app usage reduces GPAs by 36.2% of a within-cohort-major s.d. and lowers wages by 2.3%. Roommates' app usage reduces a student's GPAs and wages through both disruptions and behavioral spillovers, generating a total negative effect that exceeds half the magnitude of the impact from the student's own app usage. Extending China's three-hour-per-week gaming restriction for minors to college students would boost their initial wages by 0.9%. High-frequency GPS and app usage data show that heavy app users spend less time in study halls, are more frequently late or absent from class, and get less sleep.

Evidence from random roommate assignment and a gaming ban for minors in China once again show what I now believe incredibly strongly: smartphones and social media destroy civilization

via @arpitrage.bsky.social

cc @paulgp.com, Haidt was right about everything

Not high enough

Nothing more beautiful than some pre 1916, no setback, high FAR NYC housing stock

American is still the second largest by seat miles, but they really lag in profitability. Problem is most of the obvious mergers wouldn’t really help them compete in premium.

Alaska is probably the exception and they should merge that

On days like this I have to concede New York City is a functioning communist government

A building grows in Manhattan

The first use of this meme?

Pretty solid Yap stone over here; the crypto of its day

Total fertility rate