Publications Articles
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Article
Crime and Urban Flight Revisited: The Effect of the 1990s Drop in Crime on Cities PDF
For most of the twentieth century, concerns about safety and high crime rates have beset U.S. cities. Researchers and policymakers pointed to these high urban crime rates as one of the chief ‘urban blights’ from which middle class, mobile (and typically white) households fled during the post-War period, fueling suburbanization. But this picture changed dramatically in the 1990s, a decade during which the crime rate in the U.S. fell by a remarkable thirty percent, and crime rates in many U.S. cities declined even further. This paper builds on the ‘flight from blight’ literature, and considers what effect (if any) the 1990s drop in crime rates had on urban population changes.
Ingrid Ellen & Katherine O'Regan. Journal of Urban Economics. April 2010.
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Article
The High Cost of Segregation: Exploring Racial Disparities in High Cost Lending PDF
Research consistently has found evidence of significant racial disparities in the incidence
of subprime lending. This paper investigates the relationship between the residential
racial segregation in a metropolitan area and disparities in the share of loans members of
different racial groups in that area received that are subprime. Specifically, we evaluate
the impact that the extent of black-white and Hispanic-white segregation in each of about
200 of the country’s metropolitan areas has on the likelihood that a black or Hispanic
borrower in the area will receive a subprime loan. In addition, using data from New York
City, we examine how the concentration of different racial groups within a neighborhood
affects the probability that borrowers of all races living in the neighborhood will receive
subprime loans.Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Josiah Madar. Fordham Urban Law Journal. April 2009.
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Article
No Renters in My Suburban Backyard: Land Use Regulation and Rental Housing LINK
Academics and policymakers have argued that the ability of low- and moderate-income families to move into desirable suburban areas is constrained by the high cost of housing. Local zoning and other forms of land use regulation are believed to contribute to increased housing prices by reducing supply and increasing the size of new housing. Suburban restrictions on rental housing are particularly likely to reduce mobility for low-income families. In this paper, I employ an instrumental variables approach to examine the effects of zoning on the quantity and price of rental housing in Massachusetts, using historical municipal characteristics to instrument for current regulations. Results suggest that communities with more restrictive zoning issue significantly fewer building permits for multifamily housing but provide only weak evidence of the effects of regulations on rents. The lack of effects on rents may reflect the low level of multifamily development, while analysis is complicated by development of subsidized housing under the state’s affordable housing law.
Schuetz, Jenny. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. March 2009.
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Article
Tenants: Innocent Victims of the Nation’s Foreclosure Crisis PDF
Renters are innocent victims of the foreclosure crisis, losing their homes through no fault of their own when their landlord goes into foreclosure. Until lately, the national discussion on the foreclosure crisis largely focused on owner-occupied homes, but recent analysis reveals that the crisis is significantly impacting renters across the country. New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy found that in New York City, well over half of all foreclosure filings in 2007 were on two to four family or multi-family buildings, and a growing body of data and anecdotal evidence indicates that the problem is not isolated to New York City; heart wrenching stories of renters losing their homes have appeared in newspapers nationwide.
Vicki Been & Allegra Glashausser. 2 Alb. Gov't L. Rev. 1 (2009). February 2009.
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Article
Dynamics of School Demographic Change: Immigrant Students and New York City LINK
The authors use a rich data set on New York City public elementary schools to explore how changes in immigrant representation have played out at the school level, providing a set of stylistic facts about the magnitude and nature of demographic changes in urban schools.
Ellen, Ingrid Gould, Dylan Conger, and Katherine O'Regan. Education and Urban Society. December 2008.
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Article
Neighborhood Effects of Concentrated Mortgage Foreclosures LINK
As the national mortgage crisis has worsened, an increasing number of communities are facing declining housing prices and high rates of foreclosure. Central to the call for government intervention in this crisis is the claim that foreclosures not only hurt those who are losing their homes to foreclosure, but also harm neighbors by reducing the value of nearby properties and in turn, reducing local governments’ tax bases. The extent to which foreclosures do in fact drive down neighboring property values has become a crucial question for policy-makers. In this paper, we use a unique dataset on property sales and foreclosure filings in New York City from 2000 to 2005 to identify the effects of foreclosure starts on housing prices in the surrounding neighborhood. Regression results suggest that above some threshold, proximity to properties in foreclosure is associated with lower sales prices. The magnitude of the price discount increases with the number of properties in foreclosure, but not in a linear relationship. Working Paper
Schuetz, Jenny, Vicki Been and Ingrid Gould Ellen. Journal of Housing Economics . December 2008.
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Article
Neighbors and Neighborhoods LINK
The concept of neighborhood has long been a topic of popular discourse and a subject of academic interest. Despite this attention, there is little agreement on what the term ‘neighborhood’ means.
Ingrid Gould Ellen. The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. December 2008.
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Article
Supporting Integrative Choices LINK
The author draws on her research on racially integrated neighborhoods—and in particular neighborhoods shared by white and black households—in order to suggest a few policies that might help to promote racial integration.
Ingrid Gould Ellen. Poverty and Research Race Action Council Newsletter. September 2008.
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Article
Reversal of Fortunes? Low Income Neighborhoods in the 1990s LINK
Ellen, Ingrid Gould, Katherine O'Regan. Urban Studies 45(4), 2008: 845-869. April 2008.
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Article
Disentangling the Racial Test Score Gap in a Large Urban School District: The Contribution of School LINK
We examine the size and distribution of the gap in test scores across races within New York City public schools and the factors that explain these gaps. While gaps are partially explained by differences in student characteristics, such as poverty, differences in schools attended are also important. At the same time, substantial within-school gaps remain and are only partly explained by differences in academic preparation across students from different race groups. Controlling for differences in classrooms attended explains little of the remaining gap, suggesting little role for within-school inequities in resources. There is some evidence that school characteristics matter. Race gaps are negatively correlated with school size—implying small schools may be helpful. In addition, the trade-off between the size and experience of the teaching staff in urban schools may carry unintended consequences for within-school race gaps.
Ellen, Ingrid Gould, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Leanna Stiefel. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. December 2007.
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Article
Government Policies and Household Size: Evidence from New York LINK
What determines how many adults live in a house? How do people divide themselves up among households? Average household sizes vary substantially, both over time and in the cross-section. In this paper, we describe how a variety of government policies affect living arrangements, intentionally or not. Using data from a survey of households in New York City, we find that these incentives appear to have an impact. Specifically, households receiving these housing and income subsidies are smaller on average (measured by number of adults). The impacts appear to be considerably larger than those that would occur if the programs were lump-sum transfers. Small average household size can be extremely expensive in terms of physical and environmental resources, higher rents, and possibly homelessness. Thus, we encourage policymakers to pay greater heed to the provisions built into various social policies that favor smaller households.
Ellen, Ingrid Gould, Brendan O'Flaherty. Population Research and Policy Review. August 2007.
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Article
Comment on ‘Metropolitan Growth, Inequality, and Neighborhood Segregation by Income’ LINK
Over the last three decades, residential segregation by income has become an increasingly important feature of the U.S. metropolitan landscape. From 1970 to 2000, income sorting grew in large cities. In the 1980s almost all American metropolitan areas experienced a rise in segregation of the rich from the poor, though these changes were slightly offset by modest declines in segregation during the 1990s. More than 85 percent of the U.S. metropolitan population lived in an area that was more segregated by income in 2000 than in 1970. The time trend in residential segregation by income hints that income inequality may play an explanatory role.
Ingrid Gould Ellen. Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs . December 2006.
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Article
Nonprofit Housing and Neighborhood Spillovers PDF
Nonprofit organizations play a critical role in U.S. housing policy, a role typically justified by the claim that their housing investments produce significant neighborhood spillover benefits. However, little work has actually been done to measure these impacts on neighborhoods. This paper compares the neighborhood spillover effects of city-supported rehabilitation of rental housing undertaken by nonprofit and for-profit developers, using data from New York City.
Ellen, Ingrid Gould, Ioan Voicu. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 25(1). December 2005.
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Article
School Finance Court Cases and Disparate Racial Impact LINK
Although analyses of state school finance systems rarely focus on the distribution of funds to students of different races, the advent of racial discrimination as an issue in school finance court cases may change that situation. In this article, we describe the background, analyses, and results of plaintiffs’ testimony regarding racial discrimination in Campaign for Fiscal Equity Inc. v. State of New York. Plaintiffs employed multiple regression and public finance literature to show that New York State’s school finance system had a disparate racial impact on New York City students. We review the legal basis for disparate racial impact claims, with particular emphasis on the role of quantitative statistical work, and then describe the model we developed and estimated for the court case. Finally, we discuss the defendants’rebuttal, the Court’s decision, and conclude with observations about the role of analysis in judicial decision making in school finance.
Schwartz, Amy Ellen, Leanna Stiefel, Robert Berne, and Colin Chellman. Education and Urban Society, 37(2), pp 151-173. January 2005.
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Article
Impact Fees and Housing Affordability PDF
The increasing use of impact fees and the costs that they may add to the development process raises serious concerns about the effect using impact fees to fund infrastructure will have on the affordability of housing.
Been, Vicki. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 8(1), pp. 139-185. December 2004.
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Article
Comment on ‘The Effects of Affordable and Multifamily Housing on Market Values of Nearby Homes LINK
Advocates of growth management and smart growth often propose policies that raise housing prices, thereby making housing less affordable to many households trying to buy or rent homes. Such policies include urban growth boundaries, zoning restrictions on multi-family housing, utility district lines, building permit caps, and even construction moratoria. Does this mean there is an inherent conflict between growth management and smart growth on the one hand, and creating more affordable housing on the other? Or can growth management and smart growth promote policies that help increase the supply of affordable housing?
Ingrid Gould Ellen. Growth Management and Affordable Housing: Do They Conflict? . December 2004.
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Article
What’s Happened to the Price of College? Quality Adjusted Net Price Indices for 4 Year College LINK
In this paper we estimate hedonic models of the (consumer) price of college to construct quality-adjusted net price indexes for U.S. four-year colleges, where the net price of college is defined as tuition and fees minus financial aid. For academic years 1990–91 to 1994–95, we find adjusting for financial aid leads to a 22 percent decline in the estimated price index for all four year colleges, while quality adjusting the results leads to a further, albeit smaller, decline. Nevertheless, public comprehensive colleges, perhaps an important gateway to college for students from low-income backgrounds, experienced the largest net price increases.
Schwartz, Amy Ellen and Benjamin P. Scafidi. Journal of Human Resources, 39(3), pp. 723-745. May 2004.
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Article
The Impact of School Reform on Student Performance LINK
This paper evaluates the impact of the New York Networks for School Renewal Project, a whole school reform initiated by the Annenberg Foundation as part of a nationwide reform strategy. It uses data on students in randomly chosen control schools to estimate impacts on student achievement, using an intent-to-treat design. After controlling for student demographic, mobility, and school characteristics, the authors find positive impacts for students attending reform schools in the fourth Grade, mixed evidence for fifth Grade, and slight to no evidence for sixth Grade. On average, there is a small positive impact. The paper illustrates how relatively inexpensive administrative data can be used to evaluate education reforms.
Schwartz, Amy Ellen, Leanna Stiefel, and Dae Yeop Kim. Journal of Human Resources, 39(2), pp. 500-522. February 2004.
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Article
Immigrants and the Distribution of Resources within an Urban School District LINK
In New York City, where almost 14% of elementary school pupils are foreign-born and roughly half of these are “recent immigrants,” the impact of immigrant students on school resources may be important. While immigrant advocates worry about inequitable treatment of immigrant students, others worry that immigrants drain resources from native-born students. In this article, we explore the variation in school resources and the relationship to the representation of immigrant students. To what extent are variations in school resources explained by the presence of immigrants per se rather than by differences in student educational needs, such as poverty or language skills, or differences in other characteristics, such as race?
Schwartz, Amy Ellen and Leanna Stiefel. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 26(4), pp. 303 - 327. December 2003.
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Article
Housing Production Subsidies and Neighborhood Revitalization: New York City’s Ten Year Capital LINK
A perennial question in housing policy concerns the form that housing assistance should take. Although some argue that housing assistance should be thought of as a form of income support and advocate direct cash grants to needy households, others favor earmarked assistance—but they differ over whether subsidies should be given to the recipients as vouchers or to developers as production subsidies.
Ingrid Gould Ellen, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Michael Schill, and Ioan Voicu. Economic Policy Review (Federal Reserve Bank of New York). June 2003.
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