Edgar Olsen
Professor
Office Address
Elson Hall, Room 182A
Fields of Interest
Housing Markets and Policies, Welfare Policies
Education
Working Papers
- Alleviating Poverty through Housing Policy Reform
- The Effect of Fundamental Housing Policy Reforms on Program Participation (.pdf)
- Report on Adjusting Poverty Thresholds for Geographic Price Differences (.pdf)
- The Cost-Effectiveness of Alternative Methods of Delivering Housing Subsidies (.pdf)
- Getting More from Low-Income Housing Assistance (.pdf)
- The Future of Public Housing (.pdf)
- Promoting Homeownership among Low-Income Households
- The Simple Analytics of Vouchering Out Unit-Based Housing Assistance (.pdf)
- The Millennial Housing Commission Report: An Assessment
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
- “A Competitive Theory of the Housing Market,” American Economic Review, LIX (September 1969), 612-22
- "An Econometric Analysis of Rent Control," Journal of Political Economy, LXXX , 1081-1100, Nov./Dec. 1972;
- "The Benefits and Costs of Public Housing in New York City" (with David Barton), Journal of Public Economics, XX, 299-332, April 1983;
- "The Demand and Supply of Housing Services: A Critical Survey of the Empirical Literature" in Handbook in Urban Economics, ed., Edwin S. Mills, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1987;
- "The Welfare Economics of Equal Access," (with Diane Lim Rogers), Journal of Public Economics, XLV, 91-105, June 1991;
- “Subsidized Housing, Emergency Shelters, and Homelessness: An Empirical Investigation Using Data from the 1990 Census” (with Dirk Early), Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy, 2 (2002), 1-34;
- “Housing Programs for Low-Income Households” in Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, ed., Robert Moffitt, National Bureau of Economic Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003);
- "Low-Income Housing Policy," New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Second Edition, London:Macmillan, 2008;
- “Fundamental Housing Policy Reforms to End Homelessness” in How to House the Homeless, ed., Ingrid Gould Ellen and Brendan O'Flaherty (New York: Russell Sage, 2010).
- “Geographic Price Variation, Housing Assistance, and Poverty” (with Dirk Early) in Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Poverty, ed., Philip N. Jefferson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
- “The Performance and Legacy of Housing Policies” (with Jens Ludwig) in The Legacies of the War on Poverty, ed., Martha Bailey and Sheldon Danziger (New York: Russell Sage, 2013)
- “U. S. Housing Policy” (with Jeff Zabel) in Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Volume 5, ed., Giles Duranton, J. Vernon Henderson, and William Strange (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 2015)
- “Racial Rent Differences in U.S. Housing Markets: Evidence from the Housing Voucher Program” (with Paul Carrillo and Dirk Early), Journal of Regional Science, 59(4), (September 2019), 669-700
Oped Pieces
- Flying under the Radar Screen: The BBB Act’s Low-Income Housing Provisions
- UVA Living Wage Q&A (.pdf)
- Housing the Poorest Hurricane Victims (.pdf)
- Housing the Poorest Hurricane Victims-NOW (.pdf)
- Rearranging the Deck Chairs in the Housing Market (.pdf)
- Improving the Housing Provisions of the Stimulus Package (.pdf)
- We Don't Need More Housing Projects
Congressional Testimony
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U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget September 16, 2020
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U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development September 22, 2016
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U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies September 21, 2016
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U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs March 12, 2008
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U.S. House Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census February 15, 2006 [oral] [written]
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U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity June 17, 2003
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U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs November 29, 2001
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U.S. House Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, Committee on Financial Services June 21, 2001