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Working Paper
11.29.2022 |
WP 19-18R
What drives the dynamics of the racial wealth gap? We answer this question using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium heterogeneous-agents model. Our calibrated model endogenously produces a racial wealth gap matching that observed in recent decades along with key features of the current cross-sectional distribution of wealth, earnings, intergenerational transfers, and race. Our model predicts that equalizing earnings is by far the most important mechanism for permanently closing the racial wealth gap. One-time wealth transfers have only transitory effects unless they address the racial earnings gap, and return gaps only matter when earnings inequality is reduced.
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Working Paper
10.19.2022 |
WP 20-36R
This paper studies how design features influence the success of Housing Mobility Programs (HMPs) in reducing racial segregation. Targeting neighborhoods based on previous residents' outcomes does not allow for targeting race-specific outcomes, generates uncertainty when targeting income-specific outcomes, and generates bias in ranking neighborhoods' effects. Moreover, targeting opportunity bargains based on previous residents' outcomes selects tracts with large disagreements in current and previous residents' outcomes, with such disagreements predicted by sorting since 1990. HMP success is aided by the ability to port vouchers across jurisdictions, access to cars, and relaxing supply constraints, perhaps by targeting lower-ranked neighborhoods.
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Working Paper
07.14.2022 |
WP 18-07R3
This paper quantifies the relationship between local opioid prescription rates and labor market outcomes in the United States between 2006 and 2016. To understand this relationship at the national level, we assemble a data set that allows us both to include rural areas and to estimate the relationship at a disaggregated level. We control for geographic variation in both short-term and long-term economic conditions. In our preferred specification, a 10 percent higher local prescription rate is associated with a lower prime-age labor force participation rate of 0.53 percentage points for men and 0.10 percentage points for women. We focus on measuring the impact of opioid prescriptions on labor markets, so we evaluate the robustness of our estimates to an alternative causal path, unobserved selection, and an instrumental variable from the literature.
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Working Paper
12.01.2020 |
WP 20-37
The Opportunity Atlas (OA) is an innovative data set that ranks neighborhoods according to children’s adult outcomes in several domains, including income. Conceptually, outcomes offer new evidence about neighborhood effects when measured in isolation from neighborhood sorting. This paper shows that neighborhood sorting contributes to OA estimates. We document cases in which small sample sizes and changes over time can explain disagreements between OA rankings and those based on contemporaneous variables. Our results suggest caution for interpretations of the OA data set at a granular level, particularly for predictions about the outcomes of black children in high-income neighborhoods.
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Working Paper
11.24.2020 |
WP 20-36
There is currently interest in crafting public housing policy that combats, rather than contributes to, the residential segregation in American cities. One such policy is the Housing Mobility Program (HMP), which aims to help people move from disinvested neighborhoods to ones with more opportunities. This paper studies how design features influence the success of HMPs in reducing racial segregation. We find that the choice of neighborhood opportunity index used to define the opportunity areas to which participants are encouraged to move has limited influence on HMP success. In contrast, we find that three design features have large effects on HMP success: 1) whether the geographic scope is confined to the central city or is implemented as a metro-level partnership; 2) whether the eligibility criteria are race-based, race-conscious, or race-neutral; 3) whether tenant counseling, tenant search assistance, and landlord outreach are successful in relaxing rental housing supply constraints.
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Working Paper
12.13.2019 |
WP 12-08R3
This paper estimates neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment. We propose and implement a new strategy for identifying transition-specific effects that exploits identification of the unobserved component of a neighborhood choice model. Estimated Local Average Treatment Effects (LATEs) are large, result from moves between the first and second deciles of the national distribution of neighborhood quality, and pertain to a subpopulation of nine percent of program participants.
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Working Paper
11.21.2019 |
WP 19-02R2
Landlords in high-opportunity neighborhoods screen out tenants using vouchers. In our correspondence experiment, signaling voucher status cuts landlord responses in half. This voucher penalty increases with posted rent and varies little with signals of tenant quality and race. We repeat the experiment after a policy change and test how landlords respond to raising voucher payment limits by $450 per month in high-rent neighborhoods. Most landlords do not change their screening behavior; those who do respond are few and operate at small scale. Our results suggest a successful, systematic policy of moving to opportunity would require more direct engagement with landlords.
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Working Paper
11.15.2019 |
WP 18-07R2
The second revision of this working paper studies the relationship between local opioid prescription rates and labor market outcomes for prime-age men and women between 2006 and 2016. We estimate three panel models to control for evolving local economic conditions: a difference-in-differences specification, a specification with specific controls for economic conditions, and a model that focuses on a comparison group of place with similar performance in 2000. These modelling approaches find a range of statistically significant and economically substantial results for both prime-age men and women.
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Working Paper
10.08.2019 |
WP 19-18
We reconcile the large and persistent racial wealth gap with the smaller racial earnings gap, using a general equilibrium heterogeneous-agents model that matches racial differences in earnings, wealth, bequests, and returns to savings. Given initial racial wealth inequality in 1962, our model attributes the slow convergence of the racial wealth gap primarily to earnings, with much smaller roles for bequests or returns to savings. Cross-sectional regressions of wealth on earnings using simulated data produce the same racial gap documented in the literature. One-time wealth transfers have only transitory effects unless they address the racial earnings gap.
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Working Paper
10.08.2019 |
WP 1808R
Why do high-income black households live in neighborhoods with characteristics similar to those of low-income white households? We find that neighborhood sorting by income and race cannot be explained by financial constraints: High-income, high-wealth black households live in similar-quality neighborhoods as low-income, low-wealth white households. We provide evidence that black households sort across neighborhoods according to some non-pecuniary factor(s) correlated with the racial composition of neighborhoods. Black households sorting into black neighborhoods can explain the racial gap in neighborhood quality at all income levels. The supply of high-quality black neighborhoods drives the neighborhood quality of black households.
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Working Paper
08.30.2019 |
WP 19-02R
Despite being eligible for use in any neighborhood, housing choice vouchers tend to be redeemed in low-opportunity neighborhoods. This paper investigates how landlords contribute to this outcome and how they respond to efforts to change it. We leverage a policy change in Washington, DC, that increased voucher rental payments only in high-rent neighborhoods. Using two waves of a correspondence experiment that bracket the policy change, we show that most opportunity landlords screen out prospective voucher tenants, and we detect no change in average screening behavior after a $450 per month increase in voucher payments. In lease-up data, however, enough landlords do respond to increased payments to equalize the flow of voucher tenants into high- vs. low-rent neighborhoods. Using tax data and listings from a website specializing in subsidized housing, we characterize a group of marginal opportunity landlords who respond to higher payments. Marginal opportunity landlords are relatively rare, list their units near market rates, operate on a small scale, and negatively select into the voucher program based on hard-to-observe differences in unit quality.
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Working Paper
03.01.2019 |
WP 18-07R
Our first revision of this working paper improves the joint measurement of labor market outcomes and prescription rates in the rural areas where nearly 30 percent of the US population lives. We find that increasing the local prescription rate by 10 percent decreases the prime-age employment rate by 0.50 percentage points for men and 0.17 percentage points for women. Our estimates imply that prescription opioids can account for 44 percent of the realized national decrease in men’s labor force participation between 2001 and 2015.
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Working Paper
01.18.2019 |
WP 19-02
Despite being eligible for use in any neighborhood, housing choice vouchers tend to be redeemed in low-opportunity neighborhoods. This paper investigates whether landlord behavior contributes to this outcome by studying the recent expansion of neighborhood-based voucher limits in Washington, DC. We conduct two waves of a correspondence experiment: one before and one after the expansion. Landlords heavily penalize tenants who indicate a desire to pay by voucher. The voucher penalty is larger in high-rent neighborhoods, pushing voucher tenants to low-rent neighborhoods. We find no evidence that indexing rents to small areas affects landlord acceptance of voucher tenants. The data can reject the claim that increasing rent limits by less than $3,000 per month can eliminate the voucher penalty. Neighborhood rent limits do shift lease-up locations toward high-rent neighborhoods in the year after the policy change, an effect that is large relative to the number of voucher households that move but small relative to all voucher tenants.
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Working Paper
06.13.2018 |
WP 18-08
Why do high-income blacks live in neighborhoods with characteristics similar to those of low-income whites? One plausible explanation is wealth, since homeownership requires some wealth, and black households hold less wealth than white households at all levels of income. We present evidence against this hypothesis by showing that wealth does not predict sorting into neighborhood quality once race and income are taken into account. An alternative explanation is that the scarcity of high-quality black neighborhoods increases the cost of living in a high-quality neighborhood for black households with even weak race preferences. We present evidence in favor of this hypothesis by showing that sorting into neighborhood racial composition is similar across wealth levels conditional on race and income.
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Working Paper
05.15.2018 |
WP 18-07
Our original working paper on opioids and the labor market finds evidence that opioid availability decreases labor force participation while a large labor market shock does not influence the share of opioid abusers. We first identify the effect of availability on participation using a combination of the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) county-level prescription data to examine labor market patterns across both rural and metropolitan areas of the United States from 2007 to 2016. We also investigate the possibility of reverse causality, using the Great Recession as an instrument to identify the effect of weak labor demand on opioid abuse.
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Working Paper
05.12.2017 |
WP 17-07
This paper performs a subgroup analysis on the effect of receiving a Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing voucher on test scores. I find evidence of heterogeneity by number of children in the household in Boston, gender in Chicago, and race/ethnicity in Los Angeles. To study the mechanisms driving voucher effect heterogeneity, I develop a generalized Rubin Causal Model and propose an estimator to identify transition-specific Local Average Treatment Effects (LATEs) of school and neighborhood quality.
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Working Paper
01.20.2016 |
WP 16-04
This paper presents a generalization of the DeGroot learning rule in which social learning can lead to polarization, even for connected networks.
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Working Paper
10.21.2015 |
WP 15-25
This paper studies related counterfactual policies using an overlapping-generations dynamic general equilibrium model of residential sorting and intergenerational human capital accumulation.
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Working Paper
06.01.2015 |
WP 10-22R
This paper estimates the effect that the closure and demolition of roughly 20,000 units of geographically concentrated high-rise public housing had on crime in Chicago.
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Working Paper
03.25.2015 |
WP 15-05
Under different definitions, notationally similar causal effects make distinct claims about the results of interventions to the system under investigation.
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Working Paper
03.25.2015 |
WP 15-06
This paper presents a reanalysis of the MTO experiment and literature. Results illustrate why the implicit identification strategies used in the literature on MTO can be misleading.
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Working Paper
10.22.2014 |
WP 14-24
This paper quantitatively compares water infrastructure interventions that prioritize equity with those that prioritize efficiency.
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Working Paper
09.01.2014 |
WP 12-33R
This paper shows that treatment effects of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility program should not be interpreted as evidence on neighborhood effects.
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Working Paper
08.01.2014 |
WP 12-08R2
This paper finds evidence of positive neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment.
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Working Paper
06.15.2014 |
WP 13-02R
This paper quantitatively characterizes the
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Working Paper
08.19.2013 |
WP 13-10
I show there is a tradeoff between identification and prediction driven by a fact I call the problem of context: Treatment always influences the outcome variable in combination with covariates.
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Working Paper
08.19.2013 |
WP 13-10R
I show there is a tradeoff between identification and prediction driven by a fact I call the problem of context: Treatment always influences the outcome variable in combination with covariates.
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Working Paper
02.15.2013 |
WP 13-02
This paper quantitatively characterizes the
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Working Paper
02.01.2013 |
WP 12-12R2
This paper uses an overlapping-generations dynamic general equilibrium model of residential sorting and intergenerational human capital accumulation to investigate the effects of neighborhood externalities.
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Working Paper
11.01.2012 |
WP 12-12R1
This paper uses an overlapping-generations dynamic general equilibrium model of residential sorting and intergenerational human capital accumulation to investigate the effects of neighborhood externalities.
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Working Paper
10.01.2012 |
WP 12-01R
This paper evaluates a new technology for providing water.
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Working Paper
10.01.2012 |
WP 12-08R1
This paper finds evidence of positive neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment.
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Working Paper
05.09.2012 |
WP 12-12
This paper uses an overlapping-generations dynamic general equilibrium model of residential sorting and intergenerational human capital accumulation to investigate the effects of neighborhood externalities.
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Working Paper
03.30.2012 |
WP 12-08
This paper finds evidence of positive neighborhood effects on adult labor market outcomes using the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility experiment.
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Working Paper
03.01.2012 |
WP 11-26R
This paper presents evidence that instrumental variable frameworks do not identify age effects for the youngest children of a cohort using the results of statistical tests for essential heterogeneity in initial enrollment decisions.
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Working Paper
01.02.2012 |
WP 12-01
This paper evaluates a new technology for providing water.
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Working Paper
10.20.2011 |
WP 11-26
This paper presents evidence that instrumental variable frameworks do not identify age effects for the youngest children of a cohort using the results of statistical tests for essential heterogeneity in initial enrollment decisions.
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Working Paper
09.08.2011 |
WP 11-22R
This paper shows that treatment effects of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing mobility program should not be interpreted as evidence on neighborhood effects.
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Working Paper
01.04.2011 |
WP 11-01
This paper has been updated and expanded. For the new version, see WP 11-22.
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Working Paper
12.02.2010 |
WP 10-22
This paper estimates the effect that the closure and demolition of roughly 20,000 units of geographically concentrated high-rise public housing had on crime in Chicago.
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Working Paper
09.13.2010 |
WP 10-12
This paper shows how delayed entry into kindergarten can make it all but impossible to interpret estimates obtained through a framework that uses the date of birth as an instrument to study the causal effects of educational attainment.
