Research

 

Working Papers

 

Does Building New Housing Cause Displacement?: The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco

San Francisco is gentrifying rapidly as an influx of high-income newcomers drives up housing prices and displaces lower-income longtime residents. In theory, increasing the supply of housing should mitigate increases in rents. However, new construction could also increase demand for nearby housing by improving neighborhood quality. The net impact on nearby rents depends on the relative sizes of these supply and demand effects. This paper identifies the causal impact of new construction on nearby rents, displacement, and gentrification by exploiting random variation in the location of new construction induced by serious building fires. I combine parcel-level data on new construction with an original dataset of historic Craigslist rents and panel data on individual migration history to test the impact of proximity to new construction. I find that rents fall by 2% for parcels within 100m of new construction. Renters' risk of being displaced to a lower-income neighborhood falls by 17%. Both effects decay linearly to zero within 1.5km. Next, I show evidence of a hyperlocal demand effect, with building renovations and business turnover spiking and then returning to zero after 100m. I find that gentrification follows the pattern of this demand effect: parcels within 100m of new construction are 2.5 percentage points (29.5%) more likely to experience a net increase in richer residents. Affordable housing and endogenous construction do not affect displacement or gentrification. These findings suggest that increasing the supply of market rate housing has beneficial spillover effects for incumbent residents, reducing rents and displacement pressures while improving neighborhood quality.

Reproductive Policy Uncertainty and Defensive Investments in Contraceptive Choice

with Joanna Venator

We investigate the role of policies governing abortion access and insurance coverage for contraception in determining women’s contraceptive choice and welfare. Using Planned Parenthood data on individual contraceptive choices in a difference-in-differences design, we provide causal evidence on how both realized and expected policy change affects contraceptive choice. Next, we build a model of dynamic discrete choice under uncertainty that recognizes forward-lookingness and the multiple attributes bundled into each contraceptive method, including cost, efficacy, comfort, and side effects. We show that restrictive policy causes women to make defensive investments in more effective and/or longer-lasting contraception, shifting them away from their preferred methods and driving large welfare losses even among women who avoid pregnancy. We estimate that eliminating abortion access and insurance coverage for contraception would reduce welfare by $348 billion for women in their 20s alone, while providing free abortion access and free contraception would increase welfare by $57 billion.

Poisoned by Policy: The Impact of the Flint Water Crisis on Political Participation

with Eleanor Wiseman

We study changes in voting, new voter registration, and candidate choice in response to a criminal government failure known as the Flint water crisis which exposed one in twelve households in Flint, MI to lead in their tap water. We compare outcomes for voters who received home lead test results just before versus just after an election. We find that the crisis, widely understood as the result of institutional racism, caused stark racial divergence in political participation between Black and White voters. Black voters increased turnout, accelerated registration, and rejected the incumbent, while White voters did not react.