Lauren Lambie-Hanson

Lauren Lambie-Hanson is a special advisor in the Consumer Finance Institute (CFI) at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Her principal areas of research include many aspects of the residential mortgage market, access to credit, and community development. Her published research includes studies of the causes and consequences of foreclosures, the effects of the Community Reinvestment Act, and the increasing role of institutional investors in the residential mortgage market, as well as studies of reverse mortgages and biases in the appraisal process. Recently, she coauthored a paper documenting the substantial differences by race and ethnicity in access to home equity through mortgage products — differences that, in turn, have implications for future wealth accumulation across those groups.

Lauren has published in academic journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and the Journal of Urban Economics, as well as several book chapters. As a subject matter expert in mortgage risk, foreclosures, and real estate economics, Lauren was elected to the board of directors of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, and she was chair of its Women in Real Estate Network. Currently, she is a member of the Journal of Housing Economics editorial board and the Urban Institute Housing Finance Policy Center’s Academic Research Council. She has taught economics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Institute of Government and at Haverford College.

Lauren worked in the Boston Fed’s Research Department before joining the Philadelphia Fed in 2013. She has a Ph.D. in urban and regional studies from MIT and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.