James R. Follain, a senior fellow, is an economist with extensive academic and other professional experience in the empirical analysis of housing and mortgage markets and public policies that affect them. Follain has conducted research and written on the risks of mortgage lending, the tax treatment of housing, mortgage choice, suburbanization, property and land taxes, and the current mortgage crisis. He served as professor of economics and finance at the University of Illinois and Syracuse University. He received his doctorate in economics from the University of California, Davis in 1976.