About

William C. Wheaton is a Post-tenure Professor of Economics at MIT, holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Economics and the Center for Real Estate. He has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1972 and helped to develop the field of urban economics by pioneering the theory of how land, location, and housing markets jointly operate. His expertise includes urban infrastructure and local government finance. Professor Wheaton is an authority on regional economics and is a principal in a consulting firm that provides market analyses for development companies active in the commercial space market. He has actively applied economic research to the real estate industry, helped organize the MIT Center for Real Estate, and taught its core course in Real Estate Economics for over 30 years. He was the first economist to apply econometric methods to the forecasting of real estate markets and is a principal in Torto Wheaton Research, a globally-recognized real estate consulting firm. He received a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Over the years, he has collaborated with many US governmental agencies, the World Bank, and the United Nations, and has served on planning commissions in various towns where he has lived.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Geography
• Computer Science
• Virology
• Economic geography
• Computer Security
• Financial economics
• Archaeology
• Regional science
• Economics
• Econometrics
• Finance
• Business

Selected publications

• Work-From-Home: Commuting and Productivity in Ricardian Cities

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Work-From-Home in Ricardian Cities

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Using AI to Improve Price Transparency in Real Estate Valuation

  2024 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Economics
  • Business
  PublisherDOI

• Doubts about Density: COVID-19 across Cities and Towns

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 17 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Geography
  • Economic geography
  • Virology
  PublisherDOI

• The Geography of COVID-19 growth in the US: Counties and Metropolitan Areas

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 43 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Geography
  • Economic geography
  • Regional science
  PublisherDOI

• Bricks or Clicks? The Efficiency of Alternative Retail Channels

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Will CoWorking Work?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Robots, Automation and the demand for Industrial Space

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Will CoWorking Work?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Do House Price Levels Anticipate Subsequent Price Changes within Metropolitan Areas?

  Real Estate Economics · 2015-07-23 · 19 citations

  articleSenior author

  This research examines the relationship between hedonically controlled housing price levels and subsequent changes in those prices across locations within MSAs. Are areas with a high price relative to an “imputed rent” paying for higher appreciation? In an efficient market ( e.g ., Gordon Growth Model), as fundamentals (impute rent) differ across locations and change over time, anticipation of these should generate a positive correlation between (residual) price levels and subsequent price changes. We undertake these tests in four different MSAs using a panel of repeat‐sale house price indices that have been scaled to price levels with the hedonic attributes of the house and ZIP code. In three markets we find that identical houses in higher priced ZIP codes subsequently appreciate faster. In one market we find that there is little statistical difference.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Denise DiPasquale

  Battery Park

  13 shared

• Raymond G. Torto

  13 shared

• Serguei Chervachidze

  10 shared

• Tracey Seslen

  University of Washington

  8 shared

• Nai Jia Lee

  National University of Singapore

  5 shared

• Gleb Nechayev

  Healthcentric Advisors

  4 shared

• James Costello

  Healthcentric Advisors

  3 shared

• Mark S. Baranski

  3 shared

Labs

• Urban Economics LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Urban Economics

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1972