"New Residential Investment and Gentrification", with Luis Baldomero-Quintana
This paper supersedes the previous working paper titled, "Do Property Tax Incentives for New Construction Spur Gentrification? Evidence from New York City"
We provide empirical evidence that new residential construction leads to gentrification in nearby city blocks. Between 2006 and 2008, developers in New York City rushed to claim expiring property tax incentives and built more units. We instrument number of new units built by the number of vacant parcels available before the expiration of the tax incentives. Using novel spatial building-level data, we find that existing buildings' rents increased by 1.8% in response to 1% increase in rental stock within a 150 meters radius. We provide empirical evidence that the new buildings generated new amenities thus attracting high income households in nearby urban blocks. The results indicate new construction spurred gentrification.
Awards: Honorable Mention, Best Student Paper, Urban Economics Association Philadelphia 2019.
Presented at: Urban Economics Association Philadelphia; Association for Public Policy and Management meetings Denver; National Tax Association Meetings Tampa; ZEW Advances in Empirical Public Economics 2018; Fiscal Policy Breakfast, NY Federal Reserve Bank; Mayor's Office of Management and Budget; Independent Budget Office, New York; Young Economists Symposium, Columbia.
“Merging to Dodge Taxes? Unexpected Consequences of VAT Adoption in India”
This paper investigates whether tax evasion creates incentives among firms to reorganize their production under Value- added Tax (VAT). VAT is world’s most popular consumption tax and is considered revenue efficient since cross-reporting of firm-to-firm transactions facilitates self-enforcement. However, the ability to evade tax on consumer transactions creates incentives for the last two firms in the production chain to integrate vertically. In this paper, I test this hypothesis by using a quasi-experiment in India where the sales tax was replaced with VAT in a staggered manner between 2003 and 2008, changing tax evasion opportunities along the production chain. A differences-in-differences analysis reveals that after the reform, treated firms sourced more “upstream” products and had greater vertical mergers, indicating greater vertical integration under VAT. In addition, the effect is largest for firms that are closest to the final demand indicating that tax-evasion is one of the channels. Overall, the results suggest that VAT is no longer production efficient in settings of low compliance.
Awards: Rueben’s Fellowship, Columbia Economics Department, 2017.
Presented at: National Tax Association Meetings Tampa; Conference on Value Added of Value Added Taxes, World Bank, DC; Conference on Public Finance in Developing countries, Zurich; Young Economists Symposium, NYU; Development and Political Economy Conference, UC Berkeley; Ph.D. Conference, University of Warwick, UK.
“Safer Elections, Women Turnout, and Political Outcomes: Evidence from India”
This paper measures the effects of improving security at the polling booths in a significant state election in India. Using a novel dataset on voting and political outcomes at the booth level and a regression discontinuity design, I find that the women share in total turnout is higher by 1.4 percentage points in the booths with a greater probability of treatment. Additionally, there are effects on political outcomes. In particular, the incumbent party, corrupt candidates lose, whereas the educated candidates gain vote shares, as a result of poll-booth safety. Overall, the evidence suggests that improving safety in elections has consequences for the political-economic equilibrium.
Awards: Harriss Prize for Best Second year paper, 2016.
Presented at: Annual Conference on Economic Growth and Development, ISI Delhi; APPAM Regional Student Conference, D.C., 2017.