-->

Research

Work in Progress

What Does Ecommerce Mean for Retail in Cities?
joint with Rachel Meltzer and Erica Moszkowski

Working Papers

Destruction, Policy, and the Evolving Consequences of Washington, DC’s 1968 Civil Disturbance
joint with Jonathan Rose and Stan Veuger
Revision submitted. Review of Economics and Statistics, January 2024.

The Perils and Promise of Living Together: Condominiums in the Urban Landscape
joint with Bryan Stuart and Lu Han

Retail on the Ground and on the Books: Vacancies and the (mis)Match between Retail Activity and Regulated Land Use
joint with Rachel Meltzer
Submitted February 2024. Online appendix

Academic Publications

Does Housing Growth in Washington, D.C. Reflect Land Use Policy Changes?
Cityscape, 2023.
joint with Jenny Schuetz
Figures 4 and 7 in the published paper are not correct. See corrections here: Figure 4 and Figure 7
Coverage on Axios, and podcast forthcoming on City Cast DC

Infrastructure Costs
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 15(2) April 2023.
joint with Zach Liscow
Media coverage: Bloomberg, Brookings, Pedestrian Observations, The Week, Construction Dive, Engineering News Record, Forbes, Bloomberg Opinion, Economist, Christian Science Monitor , Vox, George Will in the Washington Post, Claremont Review of Books, Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post, Reason Magazine, Ezra Klein's NY Times podcast.

What if You Build It and They Don't Come? How the Ghost of Transit Past Haunts Transit Present
Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2022.
joint with Genevieve Denoeux
Summary on Densely Speaking podcast

The Local Impact of Containerization
Journal of Urban Economics, 2021.
joint with Nicolas Gendron-Carrier and Gisela Rua

Can America Reduce Highway Spending? Evidence from the States
Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021.
joint with Zach Liscow

Vestiges of Transit: Urban Persistence at a Micro Scale
joint with Byron Lutz
Review of Economics and Statistics, 2019 101(3): 385-399.
Online supplementary materials.
Non-academic summaries in Long Dead Streetcars Still Shape LA Neighborhoods, Zocalo Public Square and in Curb Magazine, and in their blog.
Also covered in Curbed LA, Citymetric.com
Streetcar shapefiles: [shp]. Please cite. See data appendix for documentation.

From Today's City to Tomorrow's City: An Empirical Investigation of Urban Land Assembly
joint with Byron Lutz
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2016 8(3), 69-105.
Previously titled “Sclerosis of the City”
Written up in the Washington Post and on the American Economic Association website

Spending Within Limits: Evidence from Municipal Fiscal Restraints
joint with Yosh Halberstam and Justin Phillips
National Tax Journal, June 2016 69(2), 315-352.
Published as a Lincoln Institute for Land Policy Working Paper
Data and documentation are available here.
Article in Land Lines describing this for an audience of urban planners and other practitioners.
Article in State Tax Notes, November 16, 2009, describing findings for lawyers and tax professionals

Where does the Bucket Leak? Sending Money to the Poor via the Community Development Block Grant Program
Joint with Maxim Sinitsyn
Housing Policy Debate, 2014 24 (1), 119-171.

The Micro-Empirics of Collective Action: The Case of Business Improvement Districts
Joint with William Strange
Journal of Public Economics, 2011 95 (11-12), 1358-1372.

The Cabals of a Few or the Confusion of a Multitude: The Institutional Trade-off Between Representation and Governance
Joint with Maxim Sinitsyn and Justin Phillips
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2011 3 (1), 1-24.
Appendix

Does a Rising Tide Compensate for the Secession of the Successful? Illustrating the Effects of Business Improvement Districts on Municipal Coffers
Joint with Rachel Meltzer
in The Changing Landscape of Local Public Revenues, Cambridge: Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, 2010.

An Institutional Explanation for the Stickiness of Federal Grants
Joint with Justin Phillips
Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 2010 26 (1), 243-264.

Volunteering To Be Taxed: Business Improvement Districts and the Extra-Governmental Provision of Public Safety
Journal of Public Economics, 2008 92 (1-2), 388-406.
Appendix

Unveiling Hidden Districts: Assessing the Adoption Patterns of Business Improvement Districts in California
National Tax Journal, 2007 60 (1), 5-24.
Data and documentation for survey: [sas], [stata] and [csv]

Invited comments on Ingrid Ellen, et al, “The Impact of Business Improvement Districts on Property Values: Evidence from New York City”
Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs, 2007, 32-35.

Does Spatial Variation in Heterogeneity Matter? Assessing the Adoption Patterns of Business Improvement Districts
Review of Policy Research, 2006 23 (6), 1219-1233.

Other Writing

Working From Density
joint with Philip Hoxie and Stan Veuger
AEI Economic Perspectives, October 2023.

As LA Gentrifies, Who Gets Left Behind? June 12, 2015, Zocalo Public Square

Other Media

A discussion about “What Makes Transit Systems Work” June 10, 2016, NewsTalk on NewsChannel8, Washington, DC