Research

Most studies focus on the construction of new transportation infrastructure in developing nations. In this paper, we analyze the maintenance of existing roads in the U.S. which avoids issues of endogeneity coming from the placement of new roads. We design a quasi-experiment to study local referendums introduced to renew road maintenance taxes, which are typically levied via property taxes. We compare housing sale prices between similar areas that narrowly pass or fail road tax levies and use satellite images to fine-tune an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model for classifying road quality. Our results show that local jurisdictions with close elections that decide to cut road taxes face an average loss of $163,547 (11%) in road maintenance funds, experience a 23% decline in road quality, and suffer a $15,350 (9%) drop in house prices over the course of 10 years relative to similar areas that renew funding. Heterogeneity analysis reveals a stronger percentage decline in urban areas and for expensive houses relative to rural areas and cheaper houses, along with evidence for dosage-response for larger tax cuts.

We examine whether reinvestment in single-family homes (SFHs) varies by housing tenure and by landlord size. Using micro-level parcel data from Minneapolis (2017–2024) and Charlotte (2004–2023), we link annual tax assessor records with publicly available building permit data to measure reinvestment. Rental properties are identified via homestead exemptions and mailing addresses, and large landlords are defined based on property-ownership thresholds. In Minneapolis, SFHs for renters file less building permits and invest less in permitted work than otherwise comparable owner-occupied units. Moreover, homes owned by large landlords in both cities file fewer permits and invest less than smaller landlords. Further, we find no statistical difference in plumbing permits, suggesting that landlords and large owners will forego proactive reinvestment, but not reactive reinvestment. Taken together, these findings suggest that the growing prevalence of rental occupancy and large-landlord ownership in the SFH market may lead to diminished reinvestment over time, thus increasing depreciation of the overall single-family housing stock.

We study the effect of urban local governance status on public goods provision in India. We develop a local fuzzy Regression discontinuity (RD) design by leveraging quasi-random variation coming from multi-threshold criteria for the classification of Census Towns (CTs) to identify areas close to the thresholds that are likely to obtain urban local governance in the form of statutory recognition as a town. Using this variation, we instrument for urban local governance status and identify the Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE). Our results show a strong first stage relationship between meeting the CT thresholds and statutory recognition. We find that urban local governance leads to an increase in public goods facilities such as the number of schools, healthcare facilities, financial institutions and community centers.

A large share of American homes change hands without a market. Using 144 million deed records covering the universe of recorded residential transfers from 2007 to 2023, this paper provides the first national deeds-based accounting of intra-family housing transfers. After stripping out trust retitling and same-person co-owner changes, families moved nearly 20 million homes between relatives over this period -- one family transfer for every 3.6 market sales -- almost always at a recorded price of zero. These transfers are not a staging step toward sale: three in five family transferred homes have not sold on the open market a decade later. A simple model shows that when heirs inherit a below-market property-tax assessment along with the house, as permitted by California's Propositions 13, 58, and 193, families keep homes that the market values more. California's Proposition 19, which abruptly ended assessment inheritance for non-occupant heirs in February 2021, provides a natural experiment to examine the effect of this tax wedge on family transfers. Family transfers surged 31% above counterfactual in the four months before the effective date and then fell to a new, persistently lower level: a donor-weighted synthetic control reveals a 2022-2023 decline of 33%, which decreases to 26% after adjusting for the elderly population. Net of California's own market-sale slump, the missing flow is roughly 58,000 deeds per year. The homes that exited the family channel have not yet surfaced as estate sales, indicating deferred successions rather than immediate listings. Our results suggest that family transfers are not outside the housing market but are one of its allocation mechanisms and property-tax rules can shift scarce homes from price-based matching to lineage-based retention.