Public Housing and Urban Gentrification (with David Jinkins, Ismir Mulalic).

Short description:  Cities in high-income countries have undergone several profound transformations since the late twentieth century, collectively known as urban gentrification. Housing prices have increased, high-income groups have gradually replaced low-income groups in central neighborhoods, and city centers have become hubs of consumption. In practice, cities and their housing markets are shaped not only by market dynamics but also by state interventions such as the provision of public housing. The interaction  between public housing and urban gentrification, however, is not well-understood. In this paper, we study how public housing affects the evolution of gentrifying cities. A structural model with public housing access lotteries and trade-cost-weighted amenity consumption quantifies how public housing supply and privatization shape gentrification dynamics and welfare.