This dissertation comprises three chapters on topics related to low-income housing policies in the United States. Each chapter uses econometric methods to analyze data from administrative sources, aiming to establish causal relationships between variables of interest. In the first chapter, I provide evidence on how the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit policy impacts children's short- and medium-run human capital formation. I construct a novel dataset using the San Diego Unified School District administrative data and the California LIHTC database. Combining propensity score matching and difference-in-differences, I find an 0.28 percentage points decrease in the absenteeism rate, a 0.049 standard deviation increase in standardized English scores, and a 0.048 standard deviation increase in standardized math scores for students who moved into LIHTC during the study period. I also find positive effects on high school completion, college enrollment, and college completion. In the second chapter, I explore the impact of LIHTC on homelessness. Although an increase in affordable housing supply is observed, the effect on households at risk of homelessness is unclear. Combining point-in-time homeless counts and the LIHTC database from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, I construct a panel dataset that allows me to examine changes in homelessness on the Continuum of Care level from 2009 to 2019. With a first-differenced model, I find that one additional LIHTC unit is associated with a decrease of 1.1 homeless people. I also find that sheltered families and children are the primary beneficiaries of new LIHTC units. In the third chapter, I estimate the impact of the right-to-counsel policy in housing courts. New York City introduced a novel policy in 2018 to provide the right to counsel in housing courts for income-eligible tenants facing eviction. This policy allows low-income households better access to the formal justice system. Taking advantage of the staggered roll-out schedule on the zip code level, I estimate the causal effect of the policy change using a difference-in-differences approach. Despite no statistically significant impact on eviction filings, I find a 16.9 percent decrease in quarterly evictions. The results demonstrate positive impacts of tenant representation on evictions in the short run.

Over 700,000 people moved for health reasons in the last year, and many more moved for reasons in which health was implicated, such as to escape climate hazards. Changes in the extent to which a residence promotes health should change housing prices--an important health and social exposure in its own right, as well as a mechanism through which numerous other features of a place are reshaped--yet the relationships between residential mobility, health, and housing markets remain poorly understood. This dissertation comprises three papers on the association of residential mobility with health and housing. In the first paper, I evaluate the effect of a localized change in healthcare access--the 2006 Massachusetts Healthcare Reform--on housing prices and interstate migration along the state border. I find an increase in the prices of affordable housing that is offset by a commensurate decrease in the price of luxury housing; I also observe a small increase in migration into Massachusetts versus into neighboring states. My second paper seeks to better understand the effects of climate migration on housing markets. Examining the impacts of displacement due to Hurricane Katrina, I show that housing prices decreased in destination neighborhoods that received the largest numbers of movers, relative to neighborhoods that did not receive large inflows. Effects are larger in predominantly Black destination neighborhoods than in predominantly White destination neighborhoods. I also find larger effects in places that received more economically disadvantaged movers relative to similar neighborhoods that received more advantaged movers. My third paper describes a collaboration with the Healthy Neighborhoods Study Consortium, for whom I constructed a data set of estimated moving flows between Massachusetts neighborhoods. I then created a web-based app to make the resulting estimates accessible to planners, community organizations, and residents. An overarching theme of this work is the recognition that communities share housing and health challenges with the places to which former residents move and the places from which new residents arrive.

In this dissertation, I study topics in Empirical Microeconomics. In the first chapter, I use data from England to study the regulation of housing development and its effects. First, I examine the determinants of development policy and how policies interact between jurisdictions. I find that policies are largely driven by house prices, density, population growth, and political control of the local council. I also find evidence that suggests that housing policies are strategic complements. Second, I consider the effect of policy on housing prices by employing a difference-in-differences framework with an instrumental variable. I find that tighter housing policies raise prices, albeit at very marginal magnitudes: A one standard deviation increase in housing policy tightness results in a 6% increase in housing prices. In the second chapter, I use data from Wisconsin to study equilibrium equity-efficiency implications in the market for public school teachers. I build a model where teachers differ in their comparative advantages in teaching low- or high-achieving students. School districts, which serve different student bodies, use both wage and hiring strategies to compete for their preferred teachers. I find that all else equal, giving districts control over teacher pay would lead to more efficient teacher-district sorting but larger educational inequality. Teacher bonus programs that incentivize comparative advantage-based sorting, combined with bonus rates favoring districts with more low-achieving students could improve both efficiency and equity. In the third chapter, I combine GPS data on changes in average distance traveled by individuals at the county level with COVID-19 case data and other demographic information to estimate how individual mobility is affected by local disease prevalence and restriction orders to stay-at-home during the initial stage of the pandemic. I find that a rise in local infection rate from 0% to 0.003% is associated with a reduction in mobility by 2.31%. An official stay-at-home restriction order corresponds to reducing mobility by 7.87%. Counties with larger shares of the population over age 65, a lower share of votes for the Republican Party in the 2016 Presidential Election, and higher population density are more responsive to disease prevalence and restriction orders.

This survey of transportation economic policy pays homage to Techniques of Transportation Planning by John R. Meyer. It covers the basic analytic methods used in transportation economics and policy analysis, focuses on the automobile, and covers key urban public transportation issues.

Few United States government programs are as controversial as those designed to aid the poor. From tax credits to medical assistance, aid to needy families is surrounded by debate—on what benefits should be offered, what forms they should take, and how they should be administered. The past few decades, in fact, have seen this debate lead to broad transformations of aid programs themselves, with Aid to Families with Dependent Children replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit growing from a minor program to one of the most important for low-income families, and Medicaid greatly expanding its eligibility. This volume provides a remarkable overview of how such programs actually work, offering an impressive wealth of information on the nation's nine largest "means-tested" programs—that is, those in which some test of income forms the basis for participation. For each program, contributors describe origins and goals, summarize policy histories and current rules, and discuss the recipient's characteristics as well as the different types of benefits they receive. Each chapter then provides an overview of scholarly research on each program, bringing together the results of the field's most rigorous statistical examinations. The result is a fascinating portrayal of the evolution and current state of means-tested programs, one that charts a number of shifts in emphasis—the decline of cash assistance, for instance, and the increasing emphasis on work. This exemplary portrait of the nation's safety net will be an invaluable reference for anyone interested in American social policy.