About

Stuart S. Rosenthal is a professor at the Cornell Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, serving as Chair of the Paul Rubacha Department of Real Estate. He comes to Cornell from Syracuse University, where he held the position of Maxwell Advisory Board Professor of Economics and was a senior research associate at the university's Center for Policy Research. His work encompasses many aspects of the economics of cities, including housing and mortgage markets, local tax policy, spatial patterns of productivity, and land use and costs. Rosenthal's expertise has contributed to critical discourse related to real estate markets from multiple perspectives, making him well-suited to lead and shape real estate education at Cornell. He serves on the editorial boards of various academic journals and has been a co-managing editor of the Journal of Urban Economics since 2007. His research has been published in prominent journals such as the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Urban Economics, and Real Estate Economics. Rosenthal is a Fellow of the Homer Hoyt School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Urban Economics and the Regional Science Association International. He has served on the council for the Urban Economics Association, the Board of Directors of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA), and as an executive officer of AREUEA from 2013 to 2015. From 2017 to 2021, he served as chair of the Syracuse Department of Economics. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA in economics from Bowdoin College. His recent courses include 'The Economics of Urban Real Estate Markets and the Built Environment' and 'Urban and Real Estate Economics'.

Research topics

• Economics
• Economic geography
• Economic growth
• Business
• Geography
• Mathematics
• Market economy
• Finance
• Macroeconomics
• Economy
• Microeconomics
• Geometry
• Transport engineering

Selected publications

• Tenant Riskiness, Contract Length, and the Term Structure of Commercial Leases

  Management Science · 2025-08-29 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  This paper explores the connection between tenant riskiness, commercial lease length, and the term structure of lease contracts. Theory shows that the possibility of default on a long-term lease generates a risk/lease-length connection. The empirical work uses a large CompStak lease data set combined with tenant characteristics (including risk) from Dun & Bradstreet (D&B). Regressions show that lease length is inversely related to the D&B risk measures, as predicted, and that risky tenants pay a higher rent premium for long-term contracts than low-risk tenants. The presence of such tenants thus raises the slope of the term structure of commercial rents. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance. Supplemental Material: The data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.04959 .

  PublisherDOI

• JUE 2007–2023: Rising impact

  Journal of Urban Economics · 2024-11-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Agglomeration Economies and the Built Environment: Evidence from Specialized Buildings and Anchor Tenants

  Journal of Urban Economics · 2024-05-21 · 5 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Tenant Riskiness, Contract Length, and the Term Structure of Commercial Leases

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Special Issue of JUE Insight Papers: Introduction

  Journal of Urban Economics · 2023-01-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• JUE Insight: Using the mode to test for selection in city size wage premia

  Journal of Urban Economics · 2022-08-02 · 2 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Spread and Consequences of COVID-19 for Cities: An Introduction

  Journal of Urban Economics · 2022-01-01 · 7 citations

  editorialOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Forced moves and home maintenance: The amplifying effects of mortgage payment burden on underwater homeowners

  Real Estate Economics · 2021-08-31 · 1 citations

  articleCorresponding

  Abstract Although well‐known that high current loan‐to‐value ratio (CLTV) is necessary for mortgage default, the amplifying effect of high payment‐to‐income ratios (PTI) that can force families to move has received limited attention. Using the 1985–2013 American Housing Survey panel, we show that high CLTV by itself has little effect on mobility, but high PTI prompts families to move and especially so when CLTV is high. Evidence also indicates that high PTI and CLTV discourage home maintenance. Our estimates suggest that loan modifications that lower PTI will likely be more effective at helping underwater families to remain in their homes and avoid mortgage default as compared to policies that lower CLTV.

  PublisherDOI

• JUE insight: Are city centers losing their appeal? Commercial real estate, urban spatial structure, and COVID-19

  Journal of Urban Economics · 2021 · 167 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Economic geography
  • Geography
  PublisherDOI

• Special issue on delineation of urban areas

  Journal of Urban Economics · 2021-04-21 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• William C. Strange

  University of Toronto

  33 shared

• Stuart A. Gabriel

  Anderson University - South Carolina

  32 shared

• John V. Duca

  Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

  17 shared

• Donald R. Haurin

  The Ohio State University

  8 shared

• Jan K. Brueckner

  6 shared

• William H. Hoyt

  University of Kentucky

  5 shared

• Crocker H. Liu

  5 shared

• Eleonora Patacchini

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• RSAI Walter Isard Award for Scholarly Achievement (2013)
• Fellow of the Homer Hoyt School of Advanced Studies in Real…
• Fellow of the Regional Science Association International (RS…