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Working Paper
The Bronx is Burning: Urban Disinvestment Effects of the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements
In response to private insurers’ postwar withdrawal from urban neighborhoods, roughly half of U.S. states developed programs in the late 1960s that offered residual property insurance to property owners denied in the private market. These plans, known as Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) plans after 1968, inadvertently encouraged moral hazard through underwriting restrictions, risk pooling, and generous payouts. We use a triple-difference design to estimate FAIR’s impact, comparing: (1) pre- and post-FAIR participation periods, (2) neighborhoods likely offered FAIR plans versus ...
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How Common Was Blockbusting in the Postwar U.S.?
This article documents the prevalence of blockbusting—the orchestration of racial turnover in urban neighborhoods—throughout many major U.S. cities from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Working Paper
The Effects of the Great Migration on Urban Renewal
The Great Migration significantly increased the number of African Americans moving to northern and western cities beginning in the first half of the twentieth century. We show that their arrival shaped slum clearance and urban redevelopment efforts in receiving cities. To estimate the effect of migrants, we instrument for Black population changes using a shift-share instrument that interacts historical migration patterns with local economic shocks that predict Black out-migration from the South. We find that local governments responded by undertaking more urban renewal projects that aimed to ...
Working Paper
Freeway Revolts! The Quality of Life Effects of Highways
Why do freeways affect spatial structure? We identify and quantify the local disamenity effects of freeways. Freeways cause slower growth in central neighborhoods (where local disamenities exceed regional accessibility benefits) compared with outlying neighborhoods (where access benefits exceed disamenities). A quantitative model calibrated to Chicago attributes one-third of the effect of freeways on central-city decline to reduced quality of life. Barrier effects are a major factor in the disamenity value of a freeway. Local disamenities from freeways, as opposed to their regional ...
Working Paper
Lockdowns and Innovation: Evidence from the 1918 Flu Pandemic
Does social distancing harm innovation? We estimate the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)—policies that restrict interactions in an attempt to slow the spread of disease—on local invention. We construct a panel of issued patents and NPIs adopted by 50 large US cities during the 1918 flu pandemic. Difference-in-differences estimates show that cities adopting longer NPIs did not experience a decline in patenting during the pandemic relative to short-NPI cities, and recorded higher patenting afterward. Rather than reduce local invention by restricting localized knowledge ...
Working Paper
Freeway Revolts!
Freeway revolts were widespread protests across the U.S. following early urban Interstate construction in the mid-1950s. We present theory and evidence from panel data on neighborhoods and travel behavior to show that diminished quality of life from freeway disamenities inspired the revolts, a?ected the allocation of freeways within cities, and changed city structure. First, actual freeway construction diverged from initial plans in the wake of the growing freeway revolts and subsequent policy responses, especially in central neighborhoods. Second, freeways caused slower growth in population, ...
Working Paper
The Bronx Is Burning: Urban Disinvestment Effects of the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements
We study the unintended effects of Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) plans developed by 26 states in the 1960s to address insurance redlining in urban neighborhoods. FAIR plans’ problematic features included prohibitions on considering environmental hazards in underwriting, mandatory insurer participation that diluted underwriting incentives, and payouts exceeding market values in declining areas. Using a triple-difference design comparing pre/post-FAIR periods, neighborhoods with/without likely FAIR access, and participating/nonparticipating states, we find that FAIR ...
Working Paper
The Effects of the Great Migration on Urban Renewal
The Great Migration significantly increased the number of African Americans moving to northern and western cities beginning in the first half of the twentieth century. We show that their arrival shaped “slum clearance” and urban redevelopment efforts in receiving cities. To estimate the effect of migrants, we instrument for Black population changes using a shift-share instrument that interacts historical migration patterns with local economic shocks that predict Black out-migration from the South. We find that local governments responded by undertaking more urban renewal projects that ...
Working Paper
The Racial Dynamics of U.S. Neighborhoods and Their Housing Prices from 1950 Through 1990
We characterize the dynamics of neighborhood racial composition by using the k-medians machine learning technique to group neighborhoods into five different patterns according to the evolution of the Black population share of census tracts from 1950 through 1990. The procedure classifies tracts into groups that: always have a high Black population share, always have a low Black population share, have a steep increase in the Black population share from 1950-1960, or 1960-1970, and those that have a gradual increase in the Black population share from 1950-1990. We calculate the growth in median ...
Working Paper
The Effects of the Great Migration on Urban Renewal
The Great Migration significantly increased the number of African Americans moving to northern and western cities beginning in the first half of the twentieth century. We show that their arrival shaped “slum clearance” and urban redevelopment efforts in receiving cities. To estimate the effect of migrants, we instrument for Black population changes using a shift-share instrument that interacts historical migration patterns with local economic shocks that predict Black out-migration from the South. We find that local governments responded by undertaking more urban renewal projects that ...