This book offers practical instruction on the use of audit studies in the social sciences. It features essays from sociologists, economists, and other experts who have employed this powerful and flexible tool. Readers will learn how to implement an audit study to examine a variety of questions in their own research. The essays first discuss situations where audit studies are the most effective. These tools allow researchers to make strong causal claims and explore questions that are often difficult to answer with observational data. Audit studies also stand as the single best way to conduct research on discrimination. The authors highlight what these studies have uncovered about labor market processes in the past decade. The next section gives some guidance on how to design an audit study. The essays cover the difficult task of getting a study through an institutional review board, the technical setup of matching procedures, and statistical power and analysis techniques. The last part focuses on more advanced aspects. Coverage includes understanding context, what variables may signal, and the use of technology. The book concludes with a discussion of challenges and limitations with an eye towards the future of audit studies. “Field experiments studying and testing for housing and labor market discrimination have, rightly, become the dominant mode of discrimination-related research in economics and sociology. This book brings together a number of interesting and useful perspectives on these field experiments. Many different kinds of readers will find it valuable, ranging from those interested in getting an overview of the evidence, to researchers looking for guidance on the nuts and bolts of conducting these complex experiments.” David Neumark, Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at the University of California – Irvine “For decades, researchers have used experimental audit studies to uncover discrimination in a variety of markets. Although this approach has become more popular in recent years, few publications provide detailed information on the design and implementation of the method. This volume provides the first deep examination of the audit method, with details on the practical, political, analytical, and theoretical considerations of this research. Social scientists interested in consuming or contributing to this literature will find this volume immensely useful.” Devah Pager, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Harvard University

In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.

Over the last 25 years a vast body of literature has been published on neighbourhood effects: the idea that living in more deprived neighbourhoods has a negative effect on residents’ life chances over and above the effect of their individual characteristics. The volume of work not only reflects academic and policy interest in this topic, but also the fact that we are still no closer to answering the question of how important neighbourhood effects actually are. There is little doubt that these effects exist, but we do not know enough about the causal mechanisms which produce them, their relative importance in shaping individual’s life chances, the circumstances or conditions under which they are most important, or the most effective policy responses. Collectively, the chapters in this book offer new perspectives on these questions, and refocus the academic debate on neighbourhood effects. The book enriches the neighbourhood effects literature with insights from a wide range of disciplines and countries.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to modern auction theory and its important new applications. It is written by a leading economic theorist whose suggestions guided the creation of the new spectrum auction designs. Aimed at graduate students and professionals in economics, the book gives the most up-to-date treatments of both traditional theories of 'optimal auctions' and newer theories of multi-unit auctions and package auctions, and shows by example how these theories are used. The analysis explores the limitations of prominent older designs, such as the Vickrey auction design, and evaluates the practical responses to those limitations. It explores the tension between the traditional theory of auctions with a fixed set of bidders, in which the seller seeks to squeeze as much revenue as possible from the fixed set, and the theory of auctions with endogenous entry, in which bidder profits must be respected to encourage participation.