QuoteOriginally posted by: KackToodlesQuoteOriginally posted by: econphdWhat I'm trying to do is model the movement of house prices as a martingale process, with the introduction of frictions to take into account the time and money spent in any transaction involving houses, and the way these costs differentiate houses from the regular financial products. alternative assets is a good topic. but keep in mind that practitioners will want to make direct connections to the real world. so your model should take into account that real estate prices vary from neighborhood to neighborhood and city to city, region to region. what explains these variations? secondly, transactions costs and mortgage rates play a big role in home prices. and of course, there's there recent housing bubble. you should expect to be quizzed on all of these topical issues during your job interview. thus, you would do yourself a favor to move away from the abstract math of continuous time and martingales and into the nitty gritty math that empiricists use to try and index and measure housing booms and busts. be very familiar with robert schiller's work and books on real estate.QuoteAnother question I have is by the time I graduate I would have taught about 10 classes in Micro and Macro principles, Math, International Trade, and International Monetary Economics. Will that help in anyway during the recruitment process? Presumably you become a better communicator and teacher by teaching all these classes. So your teaching will help you wow your interviewers with your improved verbal skills. that's about it.Do robert schiller's work and books on real estate offer lots of motivation and research ideas?

Thanks. I had no idea Shiller had worked in this area. I knew about his papers on asset pricing but the book seems to be really helpful (though a bit old ). Will keep your suggestions in mind.

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QuoteOriginally posted by: econphdThanks. I had no idea Shiller had worked in this area. and you wrote a thesis on this stuff?! It sounds like you did not really study real estate -- you just studied math, didn't you?

QuoteOriginally posted by: econphdThanks. I had no idea Shiller had worked in this area. I knew about his papers on asset pricing but the book seems to be really helpful (though a bit old ). Will keep your suggestions in mind. a 2 minute google search of schiller's web site will turn up all his recent working papers plus data sets.

Hi KackToodlesI just browsed through Shiller's work but what I'm targeting at is something that is similar to what the Chicago guys are doing. If you know about the the work of Monika Piazzesi, and some students of John Cochrane and Lars Peter Hansen: they are extending the CCAPM to include housing as a specific good. That is what I'm working on, and not into the nitty gritty of real estate economics as such. The idea is tending towards a more general equilibrium model with housing included. I think that explains my naivete. Thanks for the information