June 1, 2022
John M. Clapp is Senior Departmental Fellow, Department of Land Economy, Cambridge University and he is affiliated with the University of Connecticut’s Economics Department. He is a faculty member at the Hoyt Center in West Palm Beach.
A 2019-20 grant from the Real Estate Research Institute (RERI) in Chicago provided support for his effort to repurpose unproductive retail centers. According to one report, “Retail sales and brick-and-mortar stores account for 20 percent of GDP. Disruption to that sector affects the general economy, jobs, tax revenue and more. People see the eyesores that a store closing creates, and town governments are acutely aware of the problem.’’
Prof. Clapp is a 2019-21 fellow of the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass. His research there is focused on separating urban land and structure values, in order to obtain more accurate valuations over space and time. Separately valuing urban land and structures is a challenge because structures change the value of the land underneath them. For example, proximity to transportation hubs or to any major urban destination changes property value and influences optimal structure characteristics.
His foundational research on real estate valuation has resulted in numerous articles in scholarly journals including The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Journal of Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics, The Journal of Housing Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Economic Journal, Journal of Property Tax Assessment and Administration and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. They have assisted with analysis of the aging of the housing stock, forces driving the evolution of urban areas, the value of public schools, retail closures and methods for property tax assessment.
He received his B.A. in economics magna cum laude from Harvard College, and an MBA and Ph.D. from Columbia University. To obtain a draft of any papers listed on Clapp’s vita, please email john.clapp@uconn.edu.
