Essays in Urban Economics

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three chapters that use administrative US Census Bureau data to study how urban change in the United States impacts low- and middle-income households. The first chapter (co-authored with Robert French) evaluates how new suburban housing impacts urban housing affordability. We do so by constructing and analyzing residential vacancy chains'' -- the series of moves across housing units initiated by new housing construction. We find that vacancy chains are short, and that new suburban housing has little impact on urban affordability. The second chapter (co-authored with Robert French and Ashvin Gandhi) evaluates how gentrification impacts low-income incumbent renters. We show that low-income renters are primarily affected through changes in the characteristics of neighborhoods other than their home neighborhood. The third chapter studies heterogeneity in the hyper-local effects of new market-rate housing construction in dense urban neighborhoods. I estimate these effects by employing a spatial difference-in-differences research design. The key dimension of heterogeneity that I explore is a measure of local housing misalignment'', which captures how local sociodemographics have changed relative to local housing composition.