I am a sixth-year PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Virginia.
My research in urban and public economics examines how state and federal policies affect local governments and the
interactions between local fiscal and land use policies. My work has been supported by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
You can find my CV here,
or you can read about my current projects below.
Local land use regulations shape not only how much housing is built but its composition. At municipal boundaries, the mobile home share of detached homes more than triples from roughly 2% to over 8%, suggesting that regulations within cities restrict mobile homes. Consistent with this interpretation, quality-adjusted prices of mobile homes decline by roughly $7,700 at the same boundaries even as site-built home prices evolve continuously, further evidence that regulation burdens mobile homes relative to site-built housing. I develop a sufficient statistics framework to assess these distortions to the composition of the housing stock. The framework leverages a CES demand model over differentiated housing varieties in which municipal zoning enters as a differential implicit tax on mobile homes. I map the two reduced-form statistics to two structural parameters: the implicit regulatory tax and the elasticity of substitution between mobile and site-built homes. The model implies a high elasticity of substitution between the two types conditional on size, vintage, and lot size. The high substitutability means that even a modest regulatory tax reduces the share of mobile homes in cities by more than 60% relative to its counterfactual level, suggesting that municipal land use regulations, not household sorting, drive both the ruralization and small market shares of mobile homes.
State Law, Local Finances, and Housing Markets: The Uneven Effects of Flat Fees
The average size of new single-family homes grew by over 40% between 1985 and 2014. I argue that this trend is explained by land use regulations which act as fixed costs for developers. Because small homes are relatively less profitable, increasing regulation differentially affects the development decision, increasing the average size of the remaining projects. Using variation in fixed costs from development impact fees, I confirm these predictions and find that fees alone can explain roughly 15% of the increase in average sizes over the period.
When Can Government Regulate Itself? Tax Earmarks and the Composition of Government Spending
States impose earmarking requirements on local governments that restrict how revenue from certain taxes can be spent. I show that such earmarks are highly effective at raising spending on the designated category even when earmarked revenues are small, violating standard models of government and voter behavior that assume tax revenues are fungible. I argue that bargaining between government agencies is responsible for the effectiveness of earmarks. In support of this theory, I show that earmarks have the largest effects in large, county governments with greater scope for conflict between interest groups.
Retailer Congestion and The Timing of Transfer Payments
We use granular geolocation data and multiple empirical strategies to document that congestion is a pervasive feature of brick-and-mortar retail. Retailers do not adjust prices to reduce congestion. Instead, they invest in extra capacity in order to meet demand during the busiest periods, furthering urban sprawl.
Municipal Zoning and the Geography of Mobile Homes (Job Market Paper)
