CREDA Real Estate Research Symposium

Nathaniel Baum-Snow’s research spans a wide range of topics in urban and real estate economics. Current active research includes studies about frictions in the process of residential real estate development, the consequences for affordability of expanding housing supply, characterization of wage and productivity differences across locations within cities and impacts of neighborhood environments on children’s long-run outcomes. Baum-Snow received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 2005. He currently holds the Premier’s Research Chair in Productivity and Competitiveness at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management and is in transition to joining the School of Government and Policy at Johns Hopkins University as a full professor. From 2018 to 2025, he was a managing editor at the Journal of Urban Economics. He is now a Coeditor at the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

Eirik Eylands Brandsaas is a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. His research focuses on real estate, homeownership, and household finance. At the Federal Reserve, he covers investment in residential and nonresidential structures. He holds a Ph.D. in economics and finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Simon Büchler is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Farmer School of Business at Miami University. He is also an affiliate of the Urban Economics Lab and the Sustainable Urbanization Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Real Estate and the Center for Regional Economic Development (CRED) at the University of Bern. Trained as a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Bern, Switzerland, Simon did his post-doctoral research at MIT. His research interests include finance, public, urban, and real estate economics.

Larry Cordell is presently a visiting scholar at Penn State University and was formerly the Senior Vice President of the Risk Assessment, Data Analysis and Research (RADAR) Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, comprised of four groups that manage the largest collection of databases on US consumer finance, a fixed income analytics team, a group that estimates the annual bank stress test retail loss models, and a research team focused on key supervisory issues, currently on climate risk. Larry also taught Fixed Income Securities as an adjunct professor in Penn State University’s Master of Finance Program. Prior to that, Larry served as Chief Economist at Radian Group and worked at Freddie Mac among the team that developed Loan Prospector®, the first national automated underwriting system for US mortgages. Larry also headed up the team that developed Early Indicator®, the most widely used behavioral scoring system. Larry has published widely in areas of fixed income, real estate economics and banking. Larry received his PhD in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his B.A. in Economics from St. Louis University.

Zifeng Feng, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Finance in the Department of Economics and Finance at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in finance and real estate. His research lies at the intersection of real estate finance and corporate finance, with recent work on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, climate risk, firm valuation, executive compensation, and generative AI. His articles appear in leading journals, including Real Estate Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and the Journal of Real Estate Research. In the Real Estate Academic Leadership (REAL) rankings published by the Journal of Real Estate Literature, he placed 2nd worldwide for 2021–2025 and has ranked among the top 10 researchers in each of the past four years. Dr. Feng serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management. Before entering academia, he spent more than a decade in real estate consulting and industry practice.

Sean Flynn is in the Department of Real Estate & Urban Land Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He previously held academic appointments at Cornell University, Tulane University, and Colorado State University. He received his PhD in Finance from Arizona State University. Sean’s research focuses on various topics in commercial real estate and corporate finance, including credit ratings, mortgage-backed securities, and financial regulation. His work has been published in Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Management Science.

Shawn Gilligan joined QuadReal in July 2017. As Senior Vice President, North America Research & Strategy, he leads a research team focused on strategic analysis and global macroeconomic trends in support of QuadReal’s investment objectives within Canada and the U.S.

Prior to joining QuadReal, he held various leadership positions managing teams of researchers specializing in macroeconomic forecasting and real estate investment markets in North America.

Shawn holds a Master’s Degree from York University and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from the University of Toronto.

David Glancy is a principal economist at the Federal Reserve Board.  His research focuses on banking and commercial real estate markets.  His current work studies how banks have been navigating recent CRE market strains and how banks meet liquidity needs in periods of stress.  He earned his PhD from Brown in 2016.

Jack Liebersohn is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine. His research is in finance, urban economics, and real estate, with a focus on banking, housing, technological change, and local public finance. He received his Ph.D. in Financial Economics from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2018.

Luis A. Lopez is an Associate Professor in the Stuart Handler Department of Real Estate at the University of Illinois Chicago, a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and a postdoctoral honoree of the Hoyt Weimer School. His research focuses on real estate finance and policy, with recent work examining racial disparities in mortgage and appraisal markets, the effects of government interventions such as the Paycheck Protection Program on commercial mortgage markets, how multifamily financing influences evictions and the broader economy, and the impact of wildfire smoke pollution on municipal healthcare borrowing costs.

His research has been published in leading academic journals, including American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, The Review of Financial Studies, Review of Finance, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and Regional Science and Urban Economics. Dr. Lopez has also conducted research for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He currently serves as the lead principal investigator for research on the Illinois Community Reinvestment Act for the Illinois Commission on Equity and Inclusion. In addition, he is serving a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA) and is a member of the editorial board of Real Estate Economics.

Professor Lopez earned his Ph.D. in Business Administration with a concentration in Real Estate from The Pennsylvania State University. Before pursuing his doctorate, he worked as a Data Analyst for the Lied Institute for Real Estate Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), served as a Realty Technician intern with the Bureau of Land Management, and worked as a real estate agent for a boutique brokerage in Las Vegas. He also holds both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in Economics from UNLV.

Sugata Ray is an Associate Professor of Finance and Real Estate and the William Cary Hulsey Faculty Fellow in the Culverhouse College of Business at the University of Alabama. His research focuses on investments, behavioral finance, and real estate, and has been published in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and Real Estate Economics. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Ray recently served as a visiting IPA Academic Fellow in the Office of Litigation Economics at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He holds a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, and a Ph.D. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Chongyu Wang joined Florida State University in 2023 and currently serves as an Assistant Professor and the Francis Nardozza Fellow of Real Estate. His research focuses on real estate, investment, sustainability, and climate finance, with particular interests in commercial real estate markets, climate risk, and the role of information in investment decisions. His work has been published in the Review of Asset Pricing Studies, the Journal of Regional Science, Real Estate Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, and other outlets. Before joining Florida State University, Chongyu held faculty positions at the University of Hong Kong and Concordia University and previously served as a visiting assistant professor and postdoctoral associate at the University of Florida. He has also received several research grants and manuscript awards, including awards from the Real Estate Research Institute and the American Real Estate Society. Chongyu earned his Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Connecticut and his B.S. in Finance and Engineering Management from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.