Research

In this paper, I outline the first structural model of both household and landowner decision making under modern rent control policy. This represents a significant advancement in the rent control literature, as it allows me to evaluate rent control in a general equilibrium context. I estimate the model using publicly available data in San Francisco, CA, and simulate the removal of rent control over the 2010-2019 period to illustrate the ongoing role of the policy in gentrification and housing affordability dynamics. I anticipate that rent control ultimately encourages landowners to convert older rent controlled properties into owner occupied or renovated housing, both of which are more expensive and likely only affordable to richer, gentrifying households.

In this paper, I outline an empirically tractable theoretical model of the simultaneous spatial sorting of households and firms across cities and locations within cities to better understand the role of firm sorting in gentrification. Firms are monopolistically competitive and categorized as tradable and non-tradable; households are heterogeneous in their education (“skill”) level and choose sectors in which to work. After calibration, I demonstrate the potential of the model by simulating sorting patterns in two major US cities, Seattle and Detroit, for the years 1990 and 2018. I demonstrate that increasing the hours worked by skilled households causes these households to migrate towards city centers; reducing the mobility of firms leads to a significant attenuation of this trend.

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