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Nathaniel Baum-Snow Brown University Department of Economics, Box B Providence, RI 02912 Phone: (401) 863-2697 Nathaniel_Baum-Snow {at} brown {dot} edu
CV: pdf
Work In Progress School Desegregation, School Choice and Changes in Residential Location Patterns by Race (with Byron Lutz)
The Effects of Low Income Housing Developments on Neighborhoods (with Justin Marion) i
Mismeasurement of Usual Hours Worked and Its Impact on Measured Wages and Wage Gaps Over Time (with Derek Neal)
Urban Employment Decentralization and Innovations to the Transportation Infrastructure (New Version Coming Soon) Understanding the City Size Wage Gap (with Ronni Pavan)
Publications Did Highways Cause Suburbanization? (Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2007)
Effects of Urban Rail Transit Expansions: Evidence from Sixteen Cities (with Matthew E. Kahn) Brookings Papers on Urban Affairs, 2005
Suburbanization and Transportation in the Monocentric Model (Journal of Urban Economics, Nov. 2007)
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Abstract: This paper presents a version of the monocentric city model that incorporates heterogeneous commuting speeds by introducing radial commuting highways. This model implies that metropolitan area population spreads out along new highways, which are positively valued by residents. Simulations of conservative specifications of the model imply that each additional highway ray causes about a 10 percent decline in central city population. Given observed central population declines and urban highway construction between 1950 and 1990, this model implies that highways can account for an important part of urban population decentralization. |
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This paper investigates the extent to which desegregation of central metro area public school districts led to population declines in central cities, movement to private schools and changing demographic compositions of neighborhoods. Our investigation using census data confirms past results using district enrollment data that school desegregation has led to central district white enrollment declines of about 15 percent. Consistent with evidence in Guryan (2004), we also find that desegregation significantly increased black enrollment in central districts by about 20 percent outside of the South. We show that these enrollment changes manifest themselves almost entirely in residential relocation to and from neighborhoods near the boundaries of central school districts. The spatial patterns in population, public school and private school enrollment responses to desegregation closely match those predicted by a land use and Tiebout sorting model.
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This paper evaluates the impacts of new housing developments funded with the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the largest federal project based housing program in the U.S., on the neighborhoods in which they are built. A discontinuity in the formula determining the magnitude of tax credits as a function of neighborhood characteristics generates pseudo-random assignment in the number of low income housing units built in similar sets of census tracts. Estimates indicate that a 30 percent increase in the tax credit generates an increase of approximately 6 low income housing units on a base of 7 units per tract, and that developers differentially select gentrifying neighborhoods as locations for their developments. These additional new low income developments cause homeowner turnover to rise in neighborhoods near the 30th percentile of the income distribution and raise property values in declining areas. LIHTC units significantly crowd out nearby new construction in gentrifying areas but do not displace new construction in stable or declining areas. |