Publications:
“Appraising Home Purchase Appraisals” (with Paul Calem, Lauren Lambie-Hanson, and Leonard Nakamura), Real Estate Economics, March 2021, vol. 94, issue S1, pp. 134-168.
Working Papers/Works in Progress:
“Occupational Licensing and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from Real Estate” (Job Market Paper)
Abstract and Draft Available Upon Request
“Household Mobility, Networks, and Gentrification of Minority Neighborhoods in the US” with Fernando Ferreira and Benjamin Smith
Abstract: In this paper we estimate how Black and Hispanic neighborhoods change after recent gentrification shocks, their impact on movers, and the subsequent spatial distribution of minorities within a labor market area. We focus on the largest 50 Metropolitan Areas in the United States, and use a new high frequency data set on individual household moves from 2009 to 2020. We first report that household moves from a given neighborhood are concentrated to a few destinations. For minority neighborhoods, destinations tend to have similar minority shares but are farther away from downtown. Those mobility patterns are partially explained by neighborhood networks, which are inferred based on excess mobility from earlier periods. Using Bartik-style labor market income shocks, we find that gentrification has five main effects on Black neighborhoods: It increases house prices; It reduces the share of Black households and increases the share of White households; It increases the share of movers going to top 1 and 2 destinations based on a neighborhood network index; It increases the share of households moving out of the MSA; and finally, it does not change the pattern of households moving to neighborhoods with similar Black shares that are farther way from downtown areas. Hispanic neighborhoods, on the other hand, have negligible effects from gentrification. Despite those effects on Black neighborhoods, aggregate measures of racial segregation were not affected by recent gentrification.
“Agents and the Gender Gap in Negotiations” with Tomer Mangoubi
Abstract: Gender gaps in negotiation strategies and outcomes are widely documented. In many negotiation settings, an agent (e.g. a talent agent, real estate agent, lawyer, etc.) negotiates on behalf of a principal. However, the effect of agents on negotiation gender gaps remains unexplored. In our experiment, where participants play a take-it-or-leave-it offer negotiation game, we find that there is a gender gap in negotiation strategies absent agents. Introducing agents who negotiate on behalf of their clients entirely closes this gender gap. Evidence suggests that agents close the gap because they believe there to be no gender-gap in negotiation-relevant quantities such as reservation prices among the clients they represent.
“Do Collective Bargaining Laws Change the Financing of Public Sector Pension Plans”
Abstract: Despite the growing public employee pension obligations nationwide, there is little empirical knowledge about the role of labor union bargaining power as a determinant of pension financing. This paper tests if the passage of state-level laws legalizing collective bargaining for public employees affects employer and employee contributions and benefit payments. The empirical work uses a newly updated database of collective bargaining laws for various public sector employee groups in each state and applies a triple difference design based on variation by state, time, and union occupation. Using the universe of pension plans from 1987 onward, I find that collective bargaining laws fail to have a significant impact on plan revenues and expenditures. Event study evidence also shows that the financing of public pension plans for employees who eventually get collective bargaining rights progresses similarly to plans for employees who do not.
“COVID Spillovers and Implications for Federal Policy” with Robert Inman
Abstract and Draft Available Upon Request
