Amanda Ross

The Impact of Housing Vouchers on Mobility and Neighborhood Attributes

This paper examines the effect of receiving a housing voucher on the mobility and neighborhood attributes of low-income households. Housing policy has shifted towards vouchers in lieu of public housing projects to allow households to move away from high poverty areas. We use administrative records collected from an experiment to examine this issue. We find that households moved immediately after receiving the subsidy, but did not relocate to lower poverty neighborhoods until several quarters later. Our findings suggest that recipients initially lease in nearby units to secure the subsidy, while continuing to search for housing in lower poverty neighborhoods.

Housing Vouchers and the Price of Rental Housing

We estimate the effect of increasing the supply of housing vouchers on rents using a panel of housing units in the American Housing Survey. We do not find that an increase in vouchers affected the overall price of rental housing, but do estimate differences in effects based on an individual units rent before the voucher expansion. Our results are consistent with voucher recipients renting more expensive units after receiving the subsidy. We also find that the largest price increases were for units near the maximum allowable voucher rent in cities with an inelastic housing supply.

Can State Tax Policies Be Used to Grow Small and Large Businesses

The existing literature studying the relationship between small business activity and U.S. state tax policy has focused primarily on a few measures of small business. We expand this literature by estimating the effect of state tax policy on small businesses by using a broader measures of small business activity using a longitudinal dataset for the U.S. states. We also estimate the relationship between state tax policy and large business activity. Results provide evidence that state tax policy can influence small business firm, establishment, payroll, and employment growth in important ways but provide limited evidence that such policy significantly influences large business growth.

DO CAPITAL TAX INCENTIVES ATTRACT NEW BUSINESSES? EVIDENCE ACROSS INDUSTRIES FROM THE NEW MARKETS TAX CREDIT

All levels of government pursue policies to attract new businesses with the hope that these enterprises will create local economic growth. In this paper, we use the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) to determine the effect of a capital tax credit on where firms in different types of industries locate. When estimating the impact of the NMTC on business location, there are likely to be unobservable local characteristics that are correlated with where businesses choose to open that would cause OLS estimates to be biased. To control for the endogenous selection, we use a plausibly exogenous eligibility cutoff and compare census tracts that are just eligible for the tax credit to those that are just ineligible. Using data from the Dun and Bradstreet MarketPlace Files, we find that in Metropolitan Statistical Areas, the NMTC incentivized new businesses to locate in tracts that were eligible for the tax credit in 2002 and 2004. However, we find that in 2006 the tax credit deterred new establishments. When we stratify the 2006 sample by industry, we find that this capital tax credit attracted more capital intensive industries, such as manufacturing, while deterring more labor intensive industries, such as services. Our results are important to policy makers, as we find that the type of tax credit offered causes a sorting of different industries across locations.

Do New Sports Facilities Attract New Businesses

We examine the impact of new sports facilities on new businesses, an unexplored topic in the literature. We use data from the Dunn and Bradstreet MarketPlace files to examine how new sports facilities affect nearby business activity in terms of the number of new businesses and workers. We find no evidence of increased new businesses openings after the opening of new sports facilities in 13 US cities in the 2000s; employment at new businesses near new facilities is larger than at new businesses elsewhere in the MSA; this increase cannot be linked to businesses in any specific industry.

THE IMPACT OF LOW-PRIORITY LAWS ON CRIMINAL ACTIVITY: EVIDENCE FROM CALIFORNIA

We examine the impact of low priority initiatives on criminal behavior. Low priority initiatives mandate that minor marijuana possession offenses be the lowest enforcement priority for police officers. Localities pass these laws because they believe if officers devote fewer resources towards minor marijuana crimes, more resources will be available to deter more serious crimes. Using data from California, we find that jurisdictions that adopted low priority laws experienced a reduction in arrests for misdemeanor marijuana offenses. However, we do not find a significant effect of enacting a low priority initiative on the crime rate or clearance rate of felony offenses.

Revisiting the Question "More Guns, Less Crime?" New Estimates Using Spatial Econometric Techniques

In a highly debated paper, Lott and Mustard (1997) found that allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced crime. Since then, numerous researchers have questioned the validity of the findings. In addition, ongoing work has shown there is an important spatial component to crime. In this paper, we use spatial econometric techniques to estimate the impact of adoption of concealed weapons laws by some states on crime rates across the U.S. We find there are spillover effects of concealed weapons laws and that spatial dependence plays an important role when estimating the effect of these laws on crime.

Police Incentives, Policy Spillovers, and the Enforcement of Drug Crimes

Abstract We consider the impact of a low priority initiative adopted in specific jurisdictions within Los Angeles (LA) County on police behavior. Low priority initiatives instruct police to make the enforcement of low level marijuana possession offenses their “lowest priority.” Using detailed data from the LA County Sheriff’s Department, a difference-in-differences strategy suggests that the mandate resulted in fewer arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession in adopting areas relative to non-adopting. However, the lower relative reduction in marijuana arrests appears to be driven by an increase in misdemeanor marijuana arrests in nearby areas not affected by the mandate rather than a reduction in adopting areas. We interpret this result as suggestive evidence of policy spillovers from the low priority initiative.