Creating High-Opportunity Neighborhoods: Evidence from the HOPE VI Program -- by Raj Chetty, Rebecca Diamond, Thomas B. Foster, Lawrence F. Katz, Sonya Porter, Matthew Staiger, Laura Tach
We study whether low-economic-mobility neighborhoods can be transformed into high-mobility areas by analyzing the HOPE VI program, which invested $17 billion to revitalize 262 distressed public housing developments. We estimate the program’s impacts using a matched difference-in-differences design, comparing outcomes in revitalized developments to observably similar control developments using anonymized tax records. HOPE VI reduced neighborhood poverty rates by attracting higher-income families to revitalized neighborhoods, but had no causal impact on the earnings of adults living in public housing units. Children raised in revitalized public housing units earned more, were more likely to ..
NBER > Working PapersIs the Environmental Exposure Gap Shrinking? Evidence from an Extreme Multi-exposure Index -- by Glenn Sheriff, Danae Hernandez-Cortes, TC Chakraborty, Theresa DeConcini
Demographic disparities in exposure to various sources of environmental stress are well documented. While specific stressors are linked to adverse health outcomes, there is uncertainty about how they interact. A first step towards evaluating these joint impacts is to understand the degree to which the same individuals are exposed to extreme simultaneous exposure to each stressor. Here, we adapt the Alkire-Foster multi-dimensional poverty measure to rank exposures to multi-dimensional environmental harm in a way that accounts for the frequency, breadth, and severity of exposure among the extremely exposed. This measure can be used to normatively compare distributions of extreme simultaneous e..
NBER > Working PapersThe Macroeconomic Effects of Neighborhood Policies: a Dynamic Analysis -- by Alessandra Fogli, Veronica Guerrieri, Mark Ponder, Marta Prato
We study the macroeconomic effects of neighborhood-specific policies in a general equilibrium model of a city with endogenous residential sorting and educational investment. A key feature of the model is the presence of endogenous local spillovers that depend on the distribution of families across neighborhoods. We analyze three policies: a housing-voucher policy inspired by the MTO program, which enables poor families to relocate to low-poverty neighborhoods; a place-based transfer (PBT) policy that provides monetary transfers to families in poor neighborhoods; and a place-based investment (PBI) policy that invests resources in local institutions, such as public schools, to directly enhance..
NBER > Working PapersEstimating Demand Systems with Bidding Data -- by Jason Allen, Jakub Kastl, Milena Wittwer
We introduce a framework for estimating demand across multiple assets with bidding data. Unlike existing methods, our approach does not rely on price instruments, which are often difficult to obtain. We describe the data requirements for implementation and illustrate its versatility using two applications: message-level data from Nasdaq and bidder-level data from Canadian Treasury bill auctions. We argue that understanding demand systems is a crucial factor in assessing the impact of market design on price stability and liquidity.
NBER > Working PapersLearning to Quit? A Multi-Year, Multi-Site Field Experiment with Innovation-Driven Entrepreneurs -- by Esther Bailey, Daniel Fehder, Eric Floyd, Yael Hochberg, Daniel J. Lee
We use a randomized experiment with 553 science- and technology-based startups in 12 co-working spaces across the US to evaluate the effects of intensive, short-term entrepreneurial training programs on survival and performance for innovation-driven startups. Treated startups are more likely to shut down their businesses and do so sooner than control startups. Conditional on survival, however, treated startups are more likely to raise external funding for their ventures, raise funding faster, and raise more funding than the control group; they also exhibit higher employment and revenue. Treated founders are less likely to found a new startup after shutdown. Our findings are consistent with p..
NBER > Working PapersWedges: A Microeconomic Perspective on Misallocation -- by Lauren F. Bergquist, Danial Lashkari, Eric Verhoogen
This chapter takes stock of what has been learned from the recent micro-development literature about wedges—mechanisms generating dispersion in marginal revenue products of factors across firms, which are commonly interpreted as indicators of misallocation. We present a general theoretical framework that allows us to consider several different types of wedges simultaneously. We argue that it is important to distinguish between between technological wedges, which are present even in the efficient allocation that would be chosen by the social planner, and distortionary wedges, which are present in market equilibrium but not the social planner's allocation. Not all wedges, as we have defined ..
NBER > Working PapersWhat Happens When Dating Goes Online? Evidence from U.S. Marriage Markets and Health Outcomes -- by Daniel Ershov, Jessica Fong, Pinar Yildirim
This paper studies how online dating platforms have impacted marital outcomes, assortative matching, and sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates in the United States. We construct county-level measures of online dating usage using data from website-based platforms (2002–2013) and mobile app-based platforms (2017–2023). Leveraging county-level variation and an instrumental variable strategy, we show in the desktop era, a 1% increase in online dating sessions raises divorce rates by 0.50%, while in the mobile era, a 1% increase in online dating activity lowers marriage and divorce rates by 0.40% and 0.33%, respectively. We also document shifts in assortative matching. Desktop sites reduce..
NBER > Working PapersThe Redistributive Effects of Federal Medicaid Outlays Across Counties: Evidence from the ACA -- by Laura Montenovo, Kosali I. Simon, Coady Wing
We examine how Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act reshaped federal transfer inflows to counties using state Medicaid expansions between 2014 and 2017. We show that the ACA expansion increased federal Medicaid transfers by $361 per capita in expansion counties. Using our estimates, we forecast that non-expansion counties would gain $554 per capita if they expanded Medicaid. These transfers flow to counties with lower tax capacity and lower gross income. Our findings suggest that Medicaid expansion was a health policy intervention that also functioned as a budgetary mechanism reshaping federal to local transfers and fiscal smoothing across U.S. counties.
NBER > Working Papers