Home Research CV

Working Papers

• “Local Discretion in Low-Income Housing Policy: Evidence from France”
  • Abstract: Governments seek to promote affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods while preserving local municipal discretion over land use. Municipalities who retain local discretion better cater to local preferences, but only internalize preferences of incumbent residents and underprovide affordable housing. I quantify the trade-off in allowing municipal discretion over affordable housing provision when residents dislike low-income neighbors. I leverage a discontinuity in a French policy which allows municipalities to build more social housing or pay a fine. Limiting local discretion increases social housing by 31% and induces a compositional shift in private housing: high-income households move out and low-income households move in. I then estimate a structural location choice model to quantify the welfare effects of local discretion over social housing. Using the policy to identify preferences for low-income neighbors, I find that all households dislike low-income peers, especially high-income households who are willing-to-pay €538 per month to avoid a 20 p.p. increase in the share of low-income residents. Prohibiting local discretion by distributing social housing uniformly across municipalities increases the median municipal share of low-income households from 24% to 26%, although it would be twice larger without subsequent migration. While entirely removing local discretion reduces socioeconomic segregation, private residents bear large welfare cost which are unlikely to be offset by the welfare gains to social housing recipients moving to wealthier neighborhoods.
  • Link to PDF

Works in Progress

• “Zoning Against Neighborhood Change”
  • Abstract: I quantify the insurance value embedded in residential zoning regulations. Zoning restricts neighbors’ efforts to redevelop their property and thus raises property values by providing insurance against local shocks. I develop a structural location choice model where risk-averse households derive utility from local amenities. These amenities are exposed to shocks and risk-averse households are willing to pay a risk-premium for zoning rules that will attenuate these shocks. To bring the model to data, I leverage the implementation in 2016 of a California law that permits many homeowners to construct additional dwelling units (ADUs) on their lot, thereby increasing density. Some homeowners within the same neighborhood remain ineligible to build ADUs and only bear the cost of this deregulation without benefiting. At the neighborhood level, this induces variation in potential housing density increases across neighborhoods. The model will match observed household sorting patterns in response to the law to identify the insurance value of zoning. I measure household-level mobility using Infutor data, while information on new housing development is drawn from the California Housing Element Annual Progress Reports. The estimated model will be used to quantify the welfare effects of counterfactual simulations of alternative zoning regimes.

• “Right to Rent: The Impact of Energy Efficiency Efforts on Housing and Rental Markets”

• Tiered Water Pricing: Drought Control or Redistribution Tool?

Research Interests

• Industrial Organization
• Public Economics
• Urban Economics