Although social housing is prevalent in many developed countries, there is no consensus over how to design allocation rules. Measuring the impact of a change in rules requires predicting how applicants will respond. In a context where rents are fixed, application data scarce, and allocation rules lack transparency, disentangling an applicant preferences from their probability to receive an offer is challenging. This paper develops a dynamic framework which makes use of a novel, comprehensive dataset of French social housing applications to separately identify preferences of applicants to social housing from their expectations over future offers and the allocation rules. This allows to compare the welfare impact of changes in the allocation rules. Results indicate that the current system favors households with French nationality, and disadvantages precarious households like single mothers compared to the rest of the population. Counterfactual analysis suggests removing the dependence of allocation rules on waiting time would improve welfare.
This paper examines the conditions under which affirmative action policies in school admissions effectively reduce socioeconomic (SES) inequalities in access to education. We analyze a 2016 Chilean reform that centralized pre-K school applications, prohibited selective admissions in private schools, and implemented affirmative action quotas for low-SES students. Leveraging the reform's sequential rollout, we find, surprisingly, that it did not significantly reduce school segregation or enhance school quality for low-SES students. To interpret these results, we estimate a structural demand model using students' rank-ordered preferences, incorporating substantial heterogeneity in both observable and unobservable dimensions. We document considerable preference heterogeneity across SES groups, which helps explain persistent school segregation patterns. Counterfactual simulations suggest that higher affirmative action quotas could effectively decrease segregation; however, excessively large quotas risk inducing reverse-segregation, where low-SES students become disproportionately concentrated in high-quality schools. Our findings provide valuable guidance for policymakers on selecting optimal quota levels in affirmative action programs aimed at mitigating school segregation.
Social housing constitutes a significant part of the housing stock in many developed countries, but the determinants of its allocation are often opaque. Local authorities typically do not fully disclose their selection criteria, allowing for potential manipulation. Qualitative evidence suggests mayors may influence the process for electoral motives, directing social housing to populations that enhance reelection prospects. This paper investigates whether social housing in France is allocated opportunistically by examining the presence of a local political cycle in the assignment of social housing units. Using data on social housing assignments, I analyze whether the demographic composition of assignees changes around municipal elections. The empirical strategy leverages the timing and results of municipal elections and the structure of the French social housing system, where some units are administered nationally and are thus unaffected by local elections. Results show little to no evidence of opportunistic behavior, indicating that social housing allocations vary more by the political leaning of the municipality's mayor rather than following a political cycle.