Max Besbris

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Department of Sociology

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Curriculum Vitae

Biography

I am an economic, environmental, and urban sociologist interested in questions of stratification and decision making. Empirically, I study residential mobility and immobility, housing costs and housing market intermediaries, and how climate change is impacting housing markets more generally. In my work, I employ various methods and often combine different types of data collection and analysis strategies. 

Previous/ongoing large projects include an ethnographic study augmented with spatial cross regressions on how real estate agents affect prospective homebuyers’ mobility and price preferences, a longitudinal interview and observational study on how inequality grows between households in a middle-class community after a climate disaster, and computational and experimental work on how neighborhood reputations matter for mobility, consumer decisions, and how rental housing is advertised online.

Newer work 1) examines the changing relationship between housing costs and fertility, 2) measures the effects of shocks like nearby gun violence or climate disasters on rental markets, 3) uses a life course perspective to see how exposure to climate hazards impacts individual- and household-level financial outcomes and mobility, and 4) investigates how home insurance companies use and interpret climate data analytics in determining rates, continued service provision, and overall strategy.

Selected Publications:

Besbris, Max, Ariela Schachter, and John Kuk. 2026. “Neighborhood Desirability and Decision-Making in Online, Multiracial, Metropolitan America.” American Sociological Review 91:595-622.

Besbris, Max, Manuel Pastor, Anna Rhodes, Wolfram Schlenker, and Pamela Winston (Eds). 2026. “The Social, Political, and Economic Consequences of Climate Hazards.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 12:1-271.

Rhodes, Anna and Max Besbris. 2022. Soaking the Middle Class: Suburban Inequality and Recovery from Disaster. New York: Russell Sage.

Besbris, Max. 2020. Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Besbris, Max and Shamus Khan. 2017. “Less Theory. More Description.” Sociological Theory 35: 147-153.

Besbris, Max, Jacob William Faber, Peter Rich, and Patrick Sharkey. 2015. “Effect of Neighborhood Stigma on Economic Transactions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112: 4994-4998.