ANNOUNCING THE 2018 JOHN R. MEYER DISSERTATION FELLOWS
CAMBRIDGE, MA - Harvard doctoral students studying the impact of climate change on housing prices, changes in rental housing markets after the Great Recession, and the impacts of forest conservation on housing prices in urbanizing rural areas have been named 2018 John R. Meyer Dissertation Fellows by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The 2018 Meyer Fellows are:
Seung Kyum Kim is a licensed landscape architect and LEED accredited professional in the Doctor of Design program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Kim is analyzing how housing markets in several U.S. cities that have experienced natural disasters have responded both to the prospect of more intense storms spurred by climate change and a variety of public and private efforts that aim to reduce those storms' local impacts.
Michael Reher is a doctoral student in economics at Harvard whose research focuses on notable changes in rental housing since the Great Recession, especially for higher-priced units. In particular, he is documenting changes in housing quality, measuring how these changes affect rents for different types of people, and assessing how innovations in property management have contributed to these changes.
Julia Smachylo is an urban designer and registered urban planner in Canada who is also in the GSD's Doctor of Design program. Her research examines benefits, trade-offs, and interactions between forest management property-tax incentive programs, housing policies, and urbanization patterns in the Great Lakes Regions. Her work also tracks how the primary responsibility for environmental management has shifted from local public entities to private individuals and firms.
About the Meyer Fellowship
Meyer Fellows receive a stipend from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and access to the Center’s resources and interdisciplinary network of scholars and practitioners. Fellows are expected to produce a working paper and to present their work in a Housing Research Seminar at JCHS.
The fellowship honors the memory of the late John R. Meyer, who chaired the Joint Center's Faculty Committee from 1997 to 2003 and served as its Interim Director from 1996 to 1998. One of the leading urban economists of his generation, Meyer was the James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Economic Growth Emeritus at the Harvard Kennedy School. He also served as president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, as a professor at Harvard Business School, and as a professor of economics at both Harvard and Yale.
Click here for more information about the fellowship.
Media Contact: Kerry Donahue, (617) 495-7640, [email protected]