Colin Williams

I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in economics at the University of Virginia. My research interests include urban and public economics. You can find my CV here, or you can read about my current projects below.

Working Papers and Work in Progress

The Long and Short of Residential Sorting: Evidence from School Bond Elections

I analyze the consequences of local education investments on increasing segregation by income across Texas school districts. Over the two decades between 1999 and 2019, the average real face value of approved bonds per student increased by 78% and residential segregation by income increased by 24%. I argue that these trends are connected: as the level of bond spending increases, households are more likely to relocate in response to local policy changes. I exploit variation in capital spending due to school bond elections to show that shocks to school investment affect the composition of both local households and firms. My results suggest that endogenous location amenities, generated through local political processes and consumption spillovers, can amplify trends in residential sorting, and may be an important mechanism behind rising income segregation.

Who’s Impacted by Impact Fees? Estimating the Incidence of Development Impact Fees

This paper estimates the incidence of development impact fees on the welfare of households, urban landowners, and rural landowners. I develop a spatial equilibrium model that features imperfectly mobile households and costly land development. Households can be inframarginal in their location choices due to differences in idiosyncratic location-specific preferences. I use the reduced-form effects of impact fee changes to identify and estimate the incidence. In contrast to the theoretical literature, I find that households bear a substantial share of development impact fees. Urban landowners, who supply an untaxed substitute, derive modest benefits. My results rationalize the persistent popularity of impact fees locally, where urban landowners have substantial political influence, and their relative unpopularity at the state and federal levels, where households are better represented.