My research focuses on both urban and development economics. My job market paper uses the Historic 1917 Halifax Explosion to show both (i) that a municipality's role in re-planning city street networks can generate significant property value, and (ii) how positive spillovers between properties can be leveraged to generate surplus property value, and when such schemes can be inefficient.
Housing Booms and Urban Frictions: The Impact of the 1917 Halifax Explosion on Local Property Values
Job Market Paper - (Available Here - as PDF)
This paper uses the 1917 Halifax Explosion as a natural experiment to study the effects of two important urban frictions on local property values: the durability of buildings and the coordination problems associated with re-planning. The structure of this particular explosion allows for division of the reconstruction efforts into two areas. In the first, the street network remained the same and the housing stock was updated. In the second, there was both a significant re-planning of the area and an updating of the housing stock. This paper uses areas sufficiently outside of the explosion area as a control group to estimate the impact of this reconstruction on property values. These estimates show large property value increases resulting from this reconstruction, with the re-planning and the updating of the housing stock together generating significantly more value than the updating of the housing stock alone. The total estimated value increase is significantly less than any reasonable cost benchmark for the reconstruction in this example however, despite significant estimated positive spillovers into the unaffected areas. This is because the Halifax Explosion occurred in a less dense area on the edge of the city, which limited the reconstruction’s positive spillover effects. This reconstruction also caused increases in the earnings of the individuals who chose to locate within these areas after the explosion. I present suggestive evidence that this is driven by the re-sorting of higher-earnings individuals into these areas as opposed to localized post-reconstruction efficiency gains.
Internet Expansion & School Performance: Evidence from Colombia (with Juan P. Uribe)
We study the impact of a large public-policy push expanding internet access on secondary school test scores in Colombia. We use an instrumental variable approach exploiting the costliness of extending the existing internet infrastructure to connect new areas to identify causal impacts. We find that this internet expansion did have an effect on math test scores, which was concentrated in the bottom third of the test score distribution. Our estimates suggest that every 10% increase in the number of test-takers with access to the internet resulted in a 0.06 SD increase in math scores for this group. We find no significant effects on language test scores. We also show that this expansion did not result in increased rates of test-taking students participating in the labor force or in increased family incomes during this period, ruling out that these results may be driven by either substitution effects in the students time use or income effects resulting from increased family incomes.
Research in Progress
Institutional Fit and Income Growth: Evidence from Canada’s First Nations Bands and Custom Code Election Systems
This paper studies the impact of allowing communities to design their own election systems on medium-term income growth. Local election systems are important democratic institutions and where mismatches between these systems and communities’ needs arise, it may lead to inefficiencies that hinder development. Studying Canada’s First Nations communities provides an opportunity to study this mismatch and to quantify its impact on local economic growth. Specifically, I study a 1988 amendment that allowed First Nations communities previously under a one-size-fits-all federally administered election system to opt out and design their own custom election code instead. I use a difference-in-differences methodology to study the impact of converting to a custom code on the growth of band-level income per capita, using both bands who did not convert and bands who already existed on separate custom codes as different counterfactual groups. I find that bands that converted to a custom code system after 1988 saw income per capita growth of 8.2% as a result of the change. There are various potential mechanisms for this effect, including longer term limits, changes in the turnover of elected officials, or changes to the investment patterns of First Nation Band funds.
Housing Booms and Urban Frictions: The Impact of the 1917 Halifax Explosion on Local Property Values
Job Market Paper - (Available Here - as PDF)
This paper uses the 1917 Halifax Explosion as a natural experiment to study the effects of two important urban frictions on local property values: the durability of buildings and the coordination problems associated with re-planning. The structure of this particular explosion allows for division of the reconstruction efforts into two areas. In the first, the street network remained the same and the housing stock was updated. In the second, there was both a significant re-planning of the area and an updating of the housing stock. This paper uses areas sufficiently outside of the explosion area as a control group to estimate the impact of this reconstruction on property values. These estimates show large property value increases resulting from this reconstruction, with the re-planning and the updating of the housing stock together generating significantly more value than the updating of the housing stock alone. The total estimated value increase is significantly less than any reasonable cost benchmark for the reconstruction in this example however, despite significant estimated positive spillovers into the unaffected areas. This is because the Halifax Explosion occurred in a less dense area on the edge of the city, which limited the reconstruction’s positive spillover effects. This reconstruction also caused increases in the earnings of the individuals who chose to locate within these areas after the explosion. I present suggestive evidence that this is driven by the re-sorting of higher-earnings individuals into these areas as opposed to localized post-reconstruction efficiency gains.
Internet Expansion & School Performance: Evidence from Colombia (with Juan P. Uribe)
We study the impact of a large public-policy push expanding internet access on secondary school test scores in Colombia. We use an instrumental variable approach exploiting the costliness of extending the existing internet infrastructure to connect new areas to identify causal impacts. We find that this internet expansion did have an effect on math test scores, which was concentrated in the bottom third of the test score distribution. Our estimates suggest that every 10% increase in the number of test-takers with access to the internet resulted in a 0.06 SD increase in math scores for this group. We find no significant effects on language test scores. We also show that this expansion did not result in increased rates of test-taking students participating in the labor force or in increased family incomes during this period, ruling out that these results may be driven by either substitution effects in the students time use or income effects resulting from increased family incomes.
Research in Progress
Institutional Fit and Income Growth: Evidence from Canada’s First Nations Bands and Custom Code Election Systems
This paper studies the impact of allowing communities to design their own election systems on medium-term income growth. Local election systems are important democratic institutions and where mismatches between these systems and communities’ needs arise, it may lead to inefficiencies that hinder development. Studying Canada’s First Nations communities provides an opportunity to study this mismatch and to quantify its impact on local economic growth. Specifically, I study a 1988 amendment that allowed First Nations communities previously under a one-size-fits-all federally administered election system to opt out and design their own custom election code instead. I use a difference-in-differences methodology to study the impact of converting to a custom code on the growth of band-level income per capita, using both bands who did not convert and bands who already existed on separate custom codes as different counterfactual groups. I find that bands that converted to a custom code system after 1988 saw income per capita growth of 8.2% as a result of the change. There are various potential mechanisms for this effect, including longer term limits, changes in the turnover of elected officials, or changes to the investment patterns of First Nation Band funds.