Working Papers
Building Segregation: The Long-Run Neighborhood Effects of American Public Housing (Job Market Paper)
Abstract (click to expand)
This paper studies the long-term neighborhood effects of the American public housing program, one of the largest and most controversial American urban policies of the 20th century. I construct a new national dataset tracking the locations, completion dates, and characteristics of over 1 million public housing units built between 1935 and 1973, which I link to neighborhood-level data from 1930 to 2010. I first show that public housing projects were systematically targeted towards initially poorer, more populated neighborhoods with higher Black population shares, reflecting the program's slum clearance goals and racialized site selection politics. Using a stacked matched difference-in-differences approach, I estimate causal effects of public housing construction on neighborhood change by comparing treated neighborhoods to matched control areas within the same county based on pre-treatment characteristics that predict placement. Public housing neighborhoods experienced large, persistent increases in Black population and population shares and substantial declines in median incomes and rents. Geographic spillovers to nearby neighborhoods were limited: median incomes declined modestly, but demographic composition remained relatively stable on average. I find evidence consistent with neighborhood tipping dynamics: neighborhoods with initial Black shares in a plausible tipping range experienced substantial white population outflows in response to public housing construction. Linking to modern mobility data, I show that children from low-income families who grew up in public housing neighborhoods experienced significantly lower rates of upward mobility. These findings demonstrate that, despite intentions of slum clearance and neighborhood revitalization, public housing reinforced existing patterns of economic and racial segregation and reduced long-run economic opportunity, although effects were largely confined to project neighborhoods themselves.Taming the Growth Machine: The Long-Run Consequences of Federal Urban Planning Assistance (with Tianfang Cui) [Online Appendix]
Abstract (click to expand)
We study how the federal Urban Planning Assistance Program, which subsidized growing communities in the 1960s to hire urban planners to draft land-use plans, affected housing supply. Using newly digitized records merged with panel data across municipalities on housing and zoning outcomes, we exploit eligibility thresholds and capacity to approve funds across state agencies to identify effects. Planning assistance caused municipalities to build 20% fewer housing units per decade over the 50 years that followed. Regulatory innovation steered construction in assisted areas away from apartments and toward larger single-family homes. Textual evidence related to zoning and development politics further shows that, since the 1980s, assisted communities have disincentivized housing supply by passing on development costs to developers. These findings suggest that federal intervention in planning helped institutionalize practices that complicate community growth, with subsequent consequences for national housing affordability.Work in Progress
The Effects of the H-1B Program on Small Firms: Evidence From Visa Lotteries (with Giovanni Peri, Kevin Shih, Parag Mahajan, and Nicolas Morales)
Trade, Protection, and Structural Transformation in the Late 19th Century United States
Pre-PhD Publications
Globalization and the Reach of Multinationals: Implications for Portfolio Exposures, Capital Flows, and Home Bias
(with Carol Bertaut and Stephanie Curcuru)
Journal of Accounting and Finance, 2021
Abstract (click to expand)
The growing use of low-tax jurisdictions as locations for firm headquarters, proliferation of offshore financing vehicles, and growing size, number, and geographic diversity of multinational firms have clouded the view of capital flows and investor exposures from standard sources such as the IMF Balance of Payments and the Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey. We use detailed, security-level information on U.S. cross-border portfolio investment to uncover the extent of distortions in the official U.S. statistics. We find that nearly a third of U.S. cross border portfolio investment is allocated to a country different from its primary economic exposure by standard reporting conventions. About one-fourth of the stock of global cross-border portfolio investment is similarly distorted, with exposures to emerging markets likely understated by about a third. Estimates of the international exposures of U.S. investors are even larger when we distribute exposure according to the geographic distributions of firm-level sales. Our results have implications for conclusions we draw about the factors influencing capital flows, in particular those to emerging markets.Globalization and the Geography of Capital Flows
(with Carol Bertaut and Stephanie Curcuru)
FEDS Notes, September 2019