Christina Plerhoples Stacy is a principal research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where she specializes in urban economics, housing, and transportation.

Stacy’s research includes a national study on land-use reforms and their impact on housing affordability, a randomized controlled trial of an unconditional and conditional cash transfer program aimed at reducing youth violence exposure, and evaluations of the Economic Development Administration and the New Markets Tax Credit.

Stacy’s work examines how rent control and inclusionary zoning affect the affordable housing supply and access to opportunity for people of color. She is also part of a team building a housing market forecasting model to study how public policies, combined with demographic change, could influence the housing market.

In the transportation realm, Stacy’s work examines how autonomous vehicles can best be regulated to increase equity, and she and a team are creating tools to simulate the local-level impacts of transit modifications on equity.

Finally, Stacy is collaborating with partners nationwide to provide data and evidence to help local leaders use federal recovery dollars in an inclusive and equitable manner.

Stacy is vice chair of the board for Housing Alexandria and an advisory board member for the University of Pittsburgh’s master of quantitative economics program. Before joining Urban, Stacy earned her bachelor’s degree from Boston College, her master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and her doctoral degree in agricultural, food, and resource economics from Michigan State University.