Work in progress

Neighborhood change and local economic activity (with Hector Blanco)

Draft available upon request.

The impact of gentrification on the economic opportunities of local residents is still unclear. We study how urban renewal programs affect the distribution of local firms and employment opportunities. We use the ‘regeneration’ of public housing developments in London (UK) into mixed-income housing as a natural experiment that increased the proportion of high-income households living in the affected neighborhoods. Over a nine-year period, we show that regenerations resulted in a spatial reshuffling of firms located within 1.2km from the site, without affecting their total number. Local firms experience an increase in employment of about 2-4%. Such increase is temporary, however, suggesting that housing regenerations did not generate persistent employment opportunities for incumbent residents.

Price responses to affordable housing under mandatory inclusionary zoning (with Hector Blanco)

Many housing assistance programs incentivize policies that involve a combination of affordable and market-rate units in the same building, i.e., mixed-income housing. Although prior research suggests that households in the private market are willing to pay to live in areas with higher-income neighbors, little is known about the magnitude of these preferences within a given building. This paper estimates the price response of market-rate units in mixed-income buildings to the share of affordable housing. We exploit variation from London’s mandatory inclusionary zoning program, under which new residential buildings are required to maintain a minimum amount of affordable housing set by each of the 33 city boroughs and that can vary on a case-by-case basis. Using an instrumental variables approach that leverages the discretionary part of the decision process, our preliminary results suggest that an increase in affordable housing in a mixed-income building significantly decreases the sale and rental prices of market-rate units in the same building. 

Disruption in the Classroom

Many countries support the education of children with learning and behavioural difficulties in mainstream schools. However, there is little evidence on the effects of such inclusion policies on the academic achievement of targeted children and their classmates. I address this question by considering public schools in England, where a Maimonides' rule for class size formation yields quasi-experimental variation in the number of students with severe special educational needs (SEN). Instrumental variables estimates show no sizeable impact of the number of SEN students on the academic performance of their classmates. This result is not driven by additional resources that may be carried by SEN students, such as larger funding or additional teachers.