NYU Furman Center Summer Speaker Series: Robert French
Please join the NYU Furman Center for a virtual lunchtime presentation:
Schools or Suitcases? Optimal Urban Economic Policy to Promote Upward Mobility
with
Robert French
PhD Candidate
Harvard Kennedy School
Tuesday, 7/19 @ 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. ET
Join on Zoom
Poverty and economic immobility are highly spatially concentrated in many US cities. Despite substantial research detailing the causes and consequences of concentrated disadvantage, as well as the effects of interventions to alleviate concentrated disadvantage, there is still significant disagreement among policy makers over the appropriate policy response. Robert and his co-authors consider whether governments should focus on providing opportunities for families to leave disadvantaged neighborhoods or whether they should focus on investing resources in these disadvantaged neighborhoods and their schools.
Using a quantitative spatial general equilibrium model, they show that, while policies such as housing choice vouchers that foster residential economic integration increase the average level of local amenities and public goods low-income households enjoy, they hinder the ability of regional governments to acquire revenues and target investments and transfers toward low-income households. They quantify the extent of this tradeoff by combining household-level survey data with administrative establishment-level business data housed at the US Census Bureau. They use these data to construct skill-specific labor demand shocks to within-city commuting destinations, permitting identification of preferences across income groups for hyper-local endogenous amenities.
About the Presenter: Robert French is a PhD student at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research interests span urban, public, and labor economics. He is particularly interested in questions related to local public finance and housing affordability. He holds a BA and MA in economics from the University of Toronto.
This event is open to members of the NYU community. Please register using this RSVP link.