My work centers on drawing economic insights about the macroeconomy based on disaggregated mechanisms and empirical patterns. In my first chapter, I study technology upgrading in the Chinese manufacturing sector and its dynamics after trade liberalization. I first document that Chinese firms often engage in capital substitution episodes, during which firm labor productivity increases, labor shares drop, and skill intensity increases. A model in which firms adopt new skill-intensive technology through investment in capital upgrading naturally rationalizes these facts, linking capital substitution events to technological change. Empirically, trade liberalization shocks reduce capital substitution at Chinese firms, raising the possibility that trade liberalization may delay short-run growth. I then build a quantitative GE model with heterogeneous firms, capital upgrading, and trade liberalization shocks. After liberalization in the model, strategically delayed capital upgrading by firms pushes technological and consumption gains further into the future, meaningfully expanding the horizon over which trade gains manifest themselves. In the second chapter, I exploit rich data on tens of millions of housing transactions from Zillow to document poor house price growth in manufacturing-heavy regions in the US. The chapter shows that manufacturing shares strongly predict dampened house price growth, mechanically contributing to a rise in housing wealth inequality across regions. However, this price growth difference is particularly strong for lower-priced houses, amplifying inequality within regions as well. Overall, I find that cross-sectional house price inequality has increased by around 10%, with around a third of this increase due to the relative decline of lower-value homes. In the third chapter, I combine empirical tools and structural modeling to measure the effect of monetary policy on consumption through housing. Exploiting quarterly US data, I estimate empirically that a 1% unexpected interest rate shock causes average house prices to drop by about 1.4% in two years. Feeding this empirical response into an incomplete markets model, I find that aggregate consumption shifts by around 0.3% in response to the shock. A lean-against-the-wind monetary policy can stabilize consumption dynamics along a transition path.

With starting point in current housing policy debates in Sweden, where the deregulated rental market in Finland is used as an example of a better functioning housing market, this thesis aims to investigate if this image is shared by the Finnish experts in rental housing related questions. Based on eight semi-structured interviews, the precarious living conditions on the Finnish rental housing market are revealed and discussed in relation to the theoretical framework of housing inequality. Finland’s market liberal approach to housing provision has created good conditions for investing in housing that is reflected on the supply of rental housing on the private sector. Rental apartments on this sector are small, referred to as ‘tube studios’ and ‘suicide studios’, unaffordable for many, and the legal framework provides little security for the tenants causing uncertainty about the future. Furthermore, a number of reforms are currently being carried out to decrease state support in providing affordable housing and access to social housing, referred to as ARA-housing, is to be limited for the worst-off population. In light of these results this thesis aims to provide an alternative image to the market dominated discourse and argues that behind the numbers of constructed units and vacancy rates, a wide range of precarious housing conditions exist. This precarity affects first and foremost residents on private sector and is expected to become a bigger issue and impact a greater number of people in the future when the political reforms currently under way are rolled out.

The study’s aim was to examine how Swedish municipalities navigates the housing paradox as a right and a commodity and how they manage housing inequality. This was done by analyzing five municipal guidelines for housing provision. The analysis was carried out through a document study and a directed content analysis. The directed content analysis entails that the previous research and literature has formed the basis of the study’s analytical framework.  The study showed that the municipalities described that certain groups have a claimable right to housing. They also described groups that don’t. The municipalities mainly navigate the paradox by providing support actions and by formulating the guidelines. The municipalities point out certain groups that experience a vulnerable position on the housing market. Constituting these groups are mainly the elderly, households with poor resources, students and young adults. The municipalities provide different support actions to support and help these groups on the housing market. The studied municipalities have a housing shortage, which they describe further complicates the vulnerable groups' situation. The study’s conclusions are therefore that navigating the paradox is a hard task for the municipalities and that housing inequality certainly is a problem that further needs to be treated.