I am going to a conference in honor of Chip Case tomorrow

After I do my testimony (written at last!), I am getting on an airplane to Boston, where I will be attending a conference in honor of Chip Case. Along with being a great Wellesley teacher, a terrific housing scholar, and a rare academic entrepreneur, Chip is responsible for generations of economics students at Harvard: he designed the iconic course know as Ec 10. Ec 10 was what turned me into an economist, and for that I am entirely grateful.

I am discussing a paper from John Quigley and Berkeley colleagues on land use regulation and house prices in San Francisco. I will post those comments here after I discuss them in person. John continues to amaze me with the depth of his work--he pulls together very difficult data and then analyzes them using the most rigorous tools going. Although John has never been my teacher per se,and even though I have had great mentors in my career--Kerry Vandell, Pat Hendershott, Buz Brock to some extent and of course Robert Baldwin--I don't know that I have ever learned as much from one man as I have from John Q.

John and Ed Glaeser are the hosts for the conference, which will fill with luminaries with which I don't hold a candle. But I'll have lots of fun anyway.