Neighborhood change and local economic activity (with Hector Blanco)
RF Berlin Discussion Paper 209/26 / CESifo WP 12891, July 2026
We study how neighborhood change shapes local business demographics and employment. We use the regeneration of London public housing into mixed-income housing as a natural experiment that led to a large influx of more affluent households. In a difference-in-differences design comparing nearby businesses to those located farther away, we find that regenerations shift business composition – in both counts and employment – away from small local shops and toward larger general retail establishments and dining services that cater to the new residents. While we find no effect on total local employment on average, employment does increase in the areas most disadvantaged at baseline, suggesting that neighborhood change can expand local employment opportunities in these areas.
The organizational economics of school chains (with Elisabetta Pasini and Olmo silva)
CEP Discussion Paper No. 1993, April 2024; IZA Discussion Paper No. 15442, July 2022
Revise & Resubmit, Economic Journal
We use the insights of the organizational economics of firms to study the organization of school chains. We match information on decentralization of activities for approximately 400 chains and 2,000 schools in England to student- and school-level administrative records. Chains with a larger share of schools whose leadership background is aligned with the chain expertise, younger chains, and chains close to the productivity frontier decentralize more. We also investigate the link between chain decentralization and average school performance – and find no significant association. This is consistent with the intuition that chains choose their organization in ways that maximize output (i.e., students’ learning), so the equilibrium relationship between performance and organizational set-up is flat. However, this finding masks important heterogeneities, with weaker schools within chains losing out from decentralization.