CLOSUP Working Papers Series
The CLOSUP Working Paper Series is targeted toward academic audiences and informed policymakers and includes research papers that are complete and ready for public presentation. Any topic relevant to local, state, and/or urban policy issues is eligible for inclusion.
This Working Paper Series will be presented in a searchable database soon. Meanwhile, the first entries in the series are presented below.
Has Competition Led to Healthier Neighborhood Effects? A Study of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Projects Built by Three Sectors
Lan Deng
Abstract:
Using a difference-in-difference hedonic regression approach, this study examines the external neighborhood effects of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Projects built in Santa Clara County from 1987 to 2000. It finds that a majority of the LIHTC projects examined have generated significantly positive impacts on nearby property value. The impacts also vary by project size, neighborhood context, and type of developer. Low-income neighborhoods, for example, have benefited more from LIHTC developments than other types of neighborhoods. This study also finds that for-profit projects have delivered benefits similar to those of nonprofit projects, a result of both government incentives and market competition. Yet projects built by some of the largest nonprofits and the county housing authority have generated the greatest neighborhood impacts.
Do High School Exit Exams Influence Educational Attainment or Labor Market Performance?
Brian Jacob, Thomas Dee
Abstract:
State requirements that high school graduates pass exit exams were the leading edge of the movement towards standards-based reform and continue to be adopted and refined by states today. In this study, we present new empirical evidence on how exit exams influenced educational attainment and labor market experiences using data from the 2000 Census and the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data (CCD). Our results suggest that the effects of these reforms have been heterogeneous. For example, our analysis of the Census data suggests that exit exams significantly reduced the probability of completing high school, particularly for black students. Similarly, our analysis of grade-level dropout data from the CCD indicates that Minnesota's recent exit exam increased the dropout rate in urban and high-poverty school districts as well as in those with a relatively large concentration of minority students. This increased risk of dropping out was concentrated among 12th grade students. However, we also found that Minnesota's exit exam lowered the dropout rate in low-poverty and suburban school districts, particularly among students in the 10th and 11th grades. These results suggest that exit exams have the capacity to improve student and school performance but also appear to have exacerbated the inequality in educational attainment.
Test-Based Accountability and Student Achievement: An Investigation of Differential Performance on NAEP and State Assessments
Brian Jacob
Abstract:
This paper explores the phenomenon referred to as test score inflation, which occurs when achievement gains on "high-stakes" exams outpace improvements on "low-stakes" tests. The first part of the paper documents the extent to which student performance trends on state assessments differ from those on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I find evidence of considerable test score inflation in several different states, including those with quite different state testing systems. The second part of the paper is a case study of Texas that uses detailed item-level data from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) and the NAEP to explore why performance trends differed across these exams during the 1990s. I find that the differential improvement on the TAAS cannot be explained by several important differences across the exams (e.g., the NAEP includes open-response items, many NAEP multiple-choice items require/permit the use of calculators, rulers, protractors or other manipulative). I find that skill and format differences across exams explain the disproportionate improvement in the TAAS for fourth graders, although these differences cannot explain the time trends for eighth graders.
Is Gaining Access to Selective Elementary Schools Gaining Ground? Evidence from Randomized Lotteries
Brian Jacob, Julie Cullen
Abstract:
In this paper, we examine whether expanded access to sought-after schools can improve academic achievement. The setting we study is the "open enrollment" system in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). We use lottery data to avoid the critical issue of non-random selection of students into schools. Our analysis sample includes nearly 450 lotteries for kindergarten and first grade slots at 32 popular schools in 2000 and 2001. We track students for up to five years and examine outcomes such as standardized test scores, grade retention and special education placement. Comparing lottery winners and losers, we find that lottery winners attend higher quality schools as measured by both the average achievement level of peers in the school as well as by value-added indicators of the school's contribution to student learning. Yet, we do not find that winning a lottery systematically confers any evident academic benefits. We explore several possible explanations for our findings, including the possibility that the typical student may be choosing schools for non-academic reasons (e.g., safety, proximity) and/or may experience benefits along dimensions we are unable to measure, but find little evidence in favor of such explanations. Moreover, we separately examine effects for a variety of demographic subgroups, and for students whose application behavior suggests a strong preference for academics, but again find no significant effects.
The Persistence of Teacher-Induced Learning Gains
Brian Jacob, Lars Lefgren, David Sims
Abstract:
Educational interventions are often narrowly targeted and temporary, and evaluations often focus on the short-run impacts of the intervention. Insofar as the positive effects of educational interventions fadeout over time, however, such assessments may be misleading. In this paper, we develop a simple statistical framework to empirically assess the persistence of treatment effects in education. To begin, we present a simple model of student learning that incorporates permanent as well as transitory learning gains. Using this model, we demonstrate how the parameter of interest – the persistence of a particular measurable education input – can be recovered via instrumental variables as a particular local average treatment effect. We initially motivate this strategy in the context of teacher quality, but then generalize the model to consider educational interventions more generally. Using administrative data that links students and teachers, we construct measures of teacher effectiveness and then estimate the persistence of these teacher value-added measures on student test scores. We find that teacher-induced gains in math and reading achievement quickly erode. In most cases, our point estimates suggest a oneyear persistence of about one-fifth and rule out a one-year persistence rate higher than one-third.
The Effects of Housing Assistance on Labor Supply: Evidence from a Voucher Lottery
Brian Jacob, Jens Ludwig
Abstract:
This study estimates the effects of means-tested housing programs on labor supply using data from a randomized housing voucher wait-list lottery in Chicago. Evidence for the net effects of housing programs on labor supply is central to a wide range of policy decisions about how to provide housing assistance to the poor. Economic theory is ambiguous about the expected sign of any labor supply response. We find that among working-age, able-bodied adults, housing voucher use reduces quarterly labor force participation rates by 4 percentage points (6 percent of the control complier mean) and quarterly earnings by $285 (10 percent), and increases social program participation rates by 2 percentage points (16 percent of the control mean). These impacts are toward the lower end of the range of recent estimates from other studies of housing programs, but nonetheless do still imply that housing vouchers reduce labor supply.
Improving Educational Outcomes for Poor Children
Brian Jacob, Jens Ludwig
Abstract:
This review paper, prepared for the forthcoming Russell Sage volume Changing Poverty, considers the ability of different education policies to improve the learning outcomes of lowincome children in America. Disagreements on this question stem in part from different beliefs about the problems with our nation's public schools. In our view there is some empirical support for each of the general concerns that have been raised about public schools serving high-poverty student populations, including: the need for more funding for those school inputs where additional spending is likely to pass a benefit-cost test; limited capacity of many schools to substantially improve student learning by improving the quality of instruction on their own; and the need for improved incentives for both teachers and students, and for additional operational flexibility. Evidence suggests that the most productive changes to existing education policies are likely to come from increased investments in early childhood education for poor children, improving the design of the federal No Child Left Behind accountability system, providing educators with incentives to adopt practices with a compelling research base while expanding efforts to develop and identify effective instructional regimes, and continued support and evaluation of a variety of public school choice options.
The Effect of Grade Retention on High School Completion
Brian Jacob, Lars Lefgren
Abstract:
Low-achieving students in many school districts are retained in a grade in order to allow them to gain the academic or social skills that teachers believe are necessary to succeed academically. In this paper, we use plausibly exogenous variation in retention generated by a test-based promotion policy to assess the causal impact of grade retention on high school completion. We find that retention among younger students does not affect the likelihood of high school completion, but that retaining low-achieving eighth grade students in elementary school substantially increases the probability that these students will drop out of high school.
Can You Recognize an Effective Teacher When You Recruit One?
Brian Jacob, Thomas J. Kane, Jonah E. Rockoff, Douglas O. Staiger
Abstract:
Research on the relationship between teachers’ characteristics and teacher effectiveness has been underway for over a century, yet little progress has been made in linking teacher quality with factors observable at the time of hire. However, most research has examined a relatively small set of characteristics that are collected by school administrators in order to satisfy legal requirements and set salaries. To extend this literature, we administered an in-depth survey to new math teachers in New York City and collected information on a number of non-traditional predictors of effectiveness: teaching specific content knowledge, cognitive ability, personality traits, feelings of self-efficacy, and scores on a commercially available teacher selection instrument. We find that a number of these predictors have statistically and economically significant relationships with student and teacher outcomes. These results suggest that, while there may be no single factor that can predict success in teaching, using a broad set of measures can help schools improve the quality of their teachers.
Disposition of Publicly Owned Land in Cities: Learning from Cleveland and Detroit
Margaret Dewar
Abstract:
Cleveland and Detroit have had similar losses in employment and population and have the same poverty rates. Both have experienced property abandonment that resulted in each city’s owning thousands of parcels of tax-reverted land. The reputations of the two cities regarding their handling of such property differ greatly. Cleveland’s land bank is credited with facilitating redevelopment while Detroit’s disposition procedures are blamed for interfering with new development. What makes Cleveland’s system apparently more successful than Detroit’s in the context of similar demand for land? Cleveland had accurate data on its property inventory; received and conveyed property with clear title; had a predictable, stable, publicly known pricing system for land; could hold land for developers as they pulled their projects together; and worked under mayors who made property disposition for new housing construction a priority. Cleveland’s land disposition system is transparent and usually routine, and city and county officials and nonprofit developers work together to implement and improve land disposition.
The Pursuit of Responsible Development: Addressing Anticipated Benefits and Unwanted Burdens through Community Benefit Agreements
Larissa Larsen
Abstract:
Problem: Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) are efforts to address unjust development practices. Communities considering accepting a significant development project want mechanisms to ensure that existing residents benefit from the anticipated positive outcomes and are protected from undesirable burdens.
Purpose: Drawing from the environmental justice literature and the emerging literature on CBAs, I used case studies to propose a system of categorization for CBAs that is based upon their intended purpose. Secondly, I investigate the concern that CBAs are effective empowerment tools only for communities in strong real estate markets. The third purpose of this research is to evaluate whether the instigation of CBA negotiations is the result of bottomup community based mobilization efforts. The final purpose is to address the short term and long term implications for planning practice.
Methods: This research is based upon three case studies from Denver, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles. The case studies were purposely selected to represent a range of CBA applications and market conditions.
Results and Conclusions: The case studies reveal that CBAs are being used in two different ways. CBAs were used to ensure that affected communities were 1) connected to the anticipated benefits of development, or 2) compensated for an anticipated burden from a locally unwanted land use (LULU). The array and extent of community benefits was greater in the real estate market that was perceived as stronger compared with the weaker market. I would not categorize these CBAs as examples of bottomup self-determination, nor were they examples of top-down efforts. This second generation of CBAs represents a new type of mobilization that I call middle-insertion.
Assessing Changes in Neighborhoods Hosting the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Projects
Lan Deng
Abstract:
This study examines how neighborhoods hosting the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit projects in Miami-Dade County have changed from 1990 to 2000 and how these projects have affected their neighborhoods. The study applies a cluster analysis to identify the neighborhoods that are similar to LIHTC neighborhoods. It then compares changes in LIHTC neighborhoods with the median changes experienced by similar neighborhoods without the LIHTC.
The study finds that most of the LIHTC neighborhoods have experienced more positive changes than their control groups; however, the effects vary by neighborhood contexts. LIHTC invested in high-poverty neighborhoods is the most likely to generate positive impacts, while LIHTC invested in middle-class neighborhoods is the least likely to do so. The effects are more mixed in working-class neighborhoods. Further case-studies show that LIHTC is successful at promoting neighborhood revitalization when it is strategically concentrated and part of cumulative efforts. These case studies, however, also raise concerns about the overconcentration of LIHTC units in vulnerable suburban neighborhoods.
Incomplete Environmental
Regulation, Imperfect Competition, and Emissions Leakage
Meredith Fowlie
Abstract:
For political, jurisdictional and technical reasons, environmental regulation of industrial pollution is often incomplete: regulations apply to only a subset of facilities contributing to a pollution problem. Policymakers are increasingly concerned about the emissions leakage that may occur if unregulated production can be easily substituted for production at regulated firms. This paper analyzes emissions leakage in an incompletely regulated and imperfectly competitive industry. When regulated producers are less polluting than their unregulated counterparts, emissions under incomplete regulation can exceed the level of emissions that would have occurred in the absence of regulation. Conversely, when regulated firms are relatively more polluting, aggregate emissions under complete regulation can exceed aggregate emissions under incomplete regulation. In a straightforward application of the theory of the second best, I show that incomplete regulation can welfare dominate complete regulation of emissions from an asymmetric oligopoly. The model is used to simulate greenhouse gas emissions from California's electricity sector under a source-based cap-and-trade program. Incomplete regulation that exempts out-of-state producers achieves approximately a third of the emissions reductions achieved under complete regulation at more than twice the cost per ton of emissions abated.
The Unequal Geographic Burden of
Federal Taxation
David Albouy
Abstract:
In the United States, workers in cities offering above-average nominal wages – cities with high productivity, low quality-of-life, or inefficient housing sectors – pay 30 percent more in federal taxes than otherwise identical workers in cities offering below-average wages. According to simulation results, federal taxes lower long-run employment levels in high-wage areas by 15 percent and land and housing prices by 25 and 4 percent, leading to locational inefficiencies costing 0.28 percent of income, or $34 billion in 2005. Indexing taxes to local wage-levels eliminates these locational inefficiencies. Tax deductions index taxes partially to local cost-ofliving and improve locational efficiency.
Are Big Cities Really Bad Places to Live? Improving Quality-of-Life Estimates across Cities
David Albouy
Abstract:
The standard revealed-preference hedonic estimate of a city’s quality of life is proportional to that city’s cost-of-living relative to its wage-level. Adjusting the standard hedonic model to account for federal taxes, non-housing costs, and non-labor income produces quality-of-life estimates different from the existing literature. The adjusted model produces city rankings positively correlated with those in the popular literature, and predicts how housing costs rise with wage levels, controlling for amenities. Mild seasons, sunshine, and coastal location account for most quality-of-life differences; once these amenities are accounted for, quality of life does not depend on city size, contrary to previous findings.
What Helps or Hinders Nonprofit Developers in Reusing Vacant, Abandoned, and Contaminated Property? Findings from Detroit and Cleveland
Margaret Dewar
Abstract:
Many cities of the Northeast and Midwest have experienced loss of population and industry since the 1950s. The resulting drop in demand for land has led to owners’ abandonment of property and to vacant land after demolition of derelict structures. The result is large residential areas with vacant land and structures awaiting demolition, former retail strips with few buildings remaining, and large tracts of previously industrial property, often still occupied by vacant industrial buildings. Manufacturing, gas stations, dry cleaners, and various other uses left land contaminated.
Because nonprofit developers are such important actors in remaking abandoned areas of cities, they have a major role in the reuse vacant, abandoned, and contaminated property. Factors that help or hinder their reuse of such land are important in determining what such developers can accomplish. This paper investigates what causes nonprofit developers to succeed or fail in reusing this land. The first section of the paper explains the design of the research. The sections that follow discuss findings on reuse of land by nonprofit developers in Cleveland and Detroit and the reasons for the differences in the two cities’ experiences.
This study compares the experiences of nonprofit developers in Detroit and Cleveland, a useful comparison because indicators of demand for land are nearly identical, but nonprofit developers’ reuse of property is very different. The differences in the experiences of reuse of property can reveal institutional, legal, political, and social factors that affect reuse because the market is not the explanation.
Emissions Trading, Electricity Industry Restructuring, and Investment in Pollution Abatement
Meredith Fowlie
Abstract:
Policymakers are increasingly relying on emissions trading programs to address environmental problems caused by air pollution. If polluting firms in an emissions trading program face different economic regulations and investment incentives in their respective industries, emissions markets may fail to minimize the total cost of achieving pollution reductions. This paper analyzes an emissions trading program that was introduced to reduce smog-causing pollution from large stationary sources (primarily electricity generators) in 19 eastern states. I develop and estimate a random-coefficients discrete choice model of a plant's environmental compliance decision. Using variation in state-level electricity industry restructuring activity, I identify the effect of economic regulation on pollution permit market outcomes. There are two important findings. First, plants in states that have restructured electricity markets are less likely to adopt more capital intensive compliance options. Second, this economic regulation effect, together with a failure of the permit market to account for spatial variation in marginal damages from pollution, have resulted in increased health damages. Had permist been defined in terms of unites of damages instead of unites of emissions, more of the mandated emissions reductions would have occurred in restructured electricity markets, thereby avoiding on the order of hundreds of premature deaths per year.
The Effects on Cities of “Best Practice” in Tax Foreclosure: Evidence from Detroit and Flint
Margaret Dewar
Abstract:
Although property abandonment affects many cities, little is known about what becomes of that
property or what institutional differences lead to varied outcomes. More rapid tax foreclosure in
Michigan, touted as best practice nationally, offers the opportunity to investigate who loses
property and what property becomes after tax reversion. Two counties’ practices, using different
approaches to foreclosure prevention, revealed large differences in the numbers of owner
occupants who lost their homes. Use and condition of auctioned properties primarily reflected
use prior to foreclosure. However, other, more deliberate ways of selling tax-reverted property
enabled many more owner-occupants, next-door neighbors, and developers to purchase and reuse
property. The processes for sale of tax-reverted properties can thus determine productive reuse
of property with positive effects on surroundings.
The Effect of Gun Shows on Gun-Related Deaths: Evidence from California and Texas
Brian Jacob, Mark Duggan, and Randi Hjalmarsson
Abstract:
Thousands of gun shows take place in the U.S. each year. Gun control advocates argue that
because sales at gun shows are much less regulated than other sales, such shows make it easier
for potential criminals to obtain a gun. Similarly, one might be concerned that gun shows would
exacerbate suicide rates by providing individuals considering suicide with a more lethal means of
ending their lives. On the other hand, proponents argue that gun shows are innocuous since
potential criminals can acquire guns quite easily through other black market sales or theft. In
this paper, we use data from Gun and Knife Show Calendar combined with vital statistics data to
examine the effect of gun shows. We find no evidence that gun shows lead to substantial
increases in either gun homicides or suicides. In addition, tighter regulation of gun shows does
not appear to reduce the number of firearms-related deaths.
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