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Working Paper
Supply Shock Versus Demand Shock: The Local Effects of New Housing in Low-Income Areas
We study the local effects of new market-rate housing in low-income areas using microdata on large apartment buildings, rents, and migration. New buildings decrease nearby rents by 5 to 7 percent relative to locations slightly farther away or developed later, and they increase in-migration from low-income areas. Results are driven by a large supply effect—we show that new buildings absorb many high-income households—that overwhelms any offsetting endogenous amenity effect. The latter may be small because most new buildings go into already-changing areas. Contrary to common concerns, new ...
Working Paper
Off the Beaten Tract: Constructing a New Neighborhood Geography Using Revealed Preference
We construct a new neighborhood geography using a revealed preference intuition: If people disproportionately move within neighborhoods, their boundaries can be backed out from migration flows. Our “districts,” which consist of about nine census tracts each, correspond to recognizable local areas, as their boundaries align with physical barriers, sharp demographic changes, and local government borders. To illustrate applications, we first show that tract-level analyses of neighborhood sorting miss important broader patterns. Second, aggregating tract-level intergenerational mobility ...