Students around the world will now have the opportunity to learn about macroeconomics from a Wisconsin School of Business faculty member. Assistant Professor Morris A. Davis, Real Estate and Urban Land Economics, has authored his first textbook, “Macroeconomics for MBAs and Masters of Finance.”

The book, to be published by Cambridge University Press in December, has been praised for closing a gap between research and textbooks. Edward C. Prescott, 2004 Nobel Laureate and professor at Arizona State University, calls the book, “a dramatic improvement on what is currently available for teaching aggregate economics to MBAs and advanced undergraduates.”

The book covers the foundations of modern macroeconomic theory and provides readers with tools to equip them for advanced studies and professional careers. According to Finn E. Kydland, 2004 Nobel Laureate and professor of economics at University of California at Santa Barbara Davis, has “succeeded in introducing dynamics in a manageable way. At the same time, the book is fun to read.”

Davis received his BA and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He worked at the Federal Reserve Board before coming to the Wisconsin School of Business in 2007. As a professor, Davis has taught both undergraduate and graduate level classes in economics and finance. He will be one of the faculty members lecturing in the new Global Real Estate Master (GREM) program which will bring together students from three top business schools around the world to study real estate at Wisconsin.

Davis is a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, serves on the board of directors at American Capital Agency Corporation and is on the academic advisory council of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He has worked on over a dozen academic research papers, which have been published in publications that include: Journal of Monetary Economics, International Economic Review and Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Davis is often cited in the national media for his expertise in current housing and macroeconomic issues, and is considered to be one of the researchers at the forefront of real estate economics and finance issues.

Assistant Professor of Real Estate Urban Land Economics Morris Davis is critical of a recent move by Congress to extend a tax credit for first-time homebuyers and offer a new credit to people who already own a home but are looking to move.

Davis told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that home prices were stabilizing without further intervention and cautioned that extending the first-time buyer credit will be costly and only pull forward home sales that would have happened at a point in the future anyway. “There’s just a fixed pool of potential first-time homebuyers. So that means if you incent them to buy today, they are not going to be available to buy tomorrow,” said Davis.

Read more.

Morris Davis, assistant professor of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics, was a guest on Marketplace radio to discuss Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s call to action on financial regulation.

Davis discussed with host Bill Radke the implications of regulation and why he believes it will be difficult to monitor systemic risk.

Listen here.

The essence of the WI-FUR plan is to attach a housing “voucher” to each unemployment check that could be directly applied to a mortgage payment.

The U.S. Treasury, according to top Fed officials, is beginning to concentrate very closely on the effect of unemployment on the housing crisis and foreclosures. There is increasing concern that the foreclosure problem cannot be addressed without providing financial assistance to unemployed homeowners.

Proposals to prevent foreclosures by attaching government housing vouchers to unemployment checks is gaining traction among officials. Recent discussions for relief plans have been along the lines of a foreclosure relief plan proposed by three Wisconsin School of Business real estate professors earlier this year. Read recent USA Today coverage here.

“The Wisconsin Foreclose and Unemployment Relief Plan” (WI-FUR), was developed in the Graaskamp Center for Real Estate by Professors Morris A. Davis, Stephen Malpezzi and François Ortalo-Magné. WI-FUR calls for the rapid expansion of two established programs—unemployment insurance and housing vouchers—to prevent a wave of foreclosures among recently unemployed workers.

“In a nutshell, the WI-FUR plan gives unemployed people a housing voucher to enable them to make their mortgage payment,” says Davis. “It doesn’t require any mortgage modification and it’s temporary in nature. You receive a voucher when you are unemployed and then when you are employed, you stop receiving a voucher.”

Davis says the other foreclosure proposals currently being debated, including the “Making Home Affordable” plan put forward earlier by the Obama Administration, have focused on mortgage modifications—to take a person who has a bad or ill-suited subprime mortgage and convert it to a more appropriate 30- year, fixed rate mortgage.

“Those plans really do to nothing to help the unemployed who have completely sensible mortgages but simply can’t afford to make payments on them,” says Davis. “Our plan is the only plan that we know of, outside of one by the Boston Fed, that helps people make mortgage payments while they are unemployed.”

The essence of the WI-FUR plan is to attach a housing “voucher” to each unemployment check that could be directly applied to a mortgage payment. The amount of the voucher would be based on the Fair Market Rent, which is already computed for each county by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The cost of the WI-FUR plan has been calculated by the faculty members, but would depend on parameters set by policymakers in terms of size of the voucher, number of people eligible, and the length of time an individual could receive the vouchers.

“Right now the U.S. is experiencing the greatest housing crisis in its history since the Great Depression, “ Davis says. “As members of one of the top real estate programs in the country, we felt it was our responsibility to come up with a potential solution for this housing crisis and that’s why we developed a foreclosure relief plan.”

Read details on WI-FUR here

As the U.S. unemployment average inches closer to 10 percent, so too has the number of foreclosures across the nation reached record highs. According to RealtyTrac, the number of properties in default, in auction or seized rose 18 percent in August, year-over-year.

Morris Davis, assistant professor of real estate and urban land economics, says the rise in unemployment is having a bigger impact on the nation’s housing market than efforts to curb foreclosures via the administration’s mortgage modification plan. “As long as 15 million Americans are unemployed, record foreclosures will continue,” said Davis.

Read more here.

Morris Davis, an assistant professor in real estate at the Wisconsin School of Business, maintains three databases that he created (with coauthors) over the 2004-2006 period while serving at the Federal Reserve Board.

Davis created the databases to provide estimates of data he viewed as key to understanding house prices that were not available elsewhere at the time. The data is being published in detail by the Lincoln Land Institute of Land Policy.

Realtor Magazine wrote about the new databases.

Read the article here

Learn more about the databases here

Morris Davis, an assistant professor of real estate at the Wisconsin School of Business, was quoted recently in a front-page article in the New York Times on how job losses are pushing safer mortgages into foreclosure.

Davis, along with two other real estate professors from Wisconsin, Stephen Malpezzi and François Ortalo-Magné, have developed a proposal aimed at preventing homeowners nationally from defaulting on their mortgages. Dubbed the “Wisconsin Foreclosure and Unemployment Relief Plan” (WI-FUR), it would expand and combine two established programs—unemployment insurance and housing vouchers—to provide immediate relief and prevent a new wave of foreclosures of recently unemployed workers. 

Read more about the Wisconsin Foreclosure and Unemployment Relief Plan.

Members of the real estate faculty at the Wisconsin School of Business increasingly are quoted in the national media on aspects of the nation’s challenging housing situation.

The popular business-news radio program, “Marketplace,” which airs on public radio stations nationwide, is among the national outlets that often turn to Wisconsin School of Business faculty for input on real estate issues.

Stephen Malpezzi was  recently interviewed on the role apartments may play in leading the recovery of the U.S. housing market.

Listen to or read, “Apartments lead housing market back?”

Morris Davis spoke on the impact of a possible Fed rate cut.

Listen to or read, “Will the Fed cut rates again?”