Job Market Paper

• Equilibrium Effects of Neighborhood Schools
  (with Clemence Idoux)
  Abstract

  Many public school districts allow families to enroll in schools outside their neighborhood. At the cost of higher transportation spending, choice programs aim to decouple educational opportunity from residential geography. This paper evaluates the impact of a return to neighborhood-based assignment following Seattle’s re-introduction of neighborhood schools in 2010. We quantify the aggregate and distributional consequences of neighborhood assignment using an equilibrium model of joint residential and enrollment choices. Residential relocation responses limit the welfare costs of neighborhood assignment, reducing aggregate losses by roughly half. Lower housing costs fully offset welfare losses from restricted choice for low-income renters. Neighborhood assignment does not increase racial segregation or reduce the quality of schools attended by low-income families.

Work in Progress

• The Cost of Choice: Public School Choice and Segregation
  Abstract

  Public school choice policies are often promoted as tools for integration, yet their effects on segregation are strongly debated. This project combines theory and evidence to show that choice can deepen segregation even when families prefer the same schools. Using a stylized model of residential and school choice I show that when attending a non-neighborhood school carries a cost, choice can exacerbate segregation despite uniform preferences. I corroborate this prediction using administrative student data on applications and enrollments from Seattle and New York City. In both cities, white and Asian families disproportionately opt out of neighborhood schools in areas zoned to predominantly minority schools. Counterfactual analysis suggests that a return to neighborhood assignment would integrate elementary schools in both cities. Leveraging variation across New York City's 32 community school districts, I demonstrate that the effect of choice on segregation turns on the spatial configuration of residential segregation: choice integrates schools only in districts where minority and majority households live in close geographic proximity.

• Private Scholarships: Access and Impact
  (with Joshua Angrist, Maggie Liu, Jack Mountjoy, and Andrew Whitten)
  Abstract

  Private scholarship programs are a substantial source of college financial aid, but the impacts of these programs have not been rigorously evaluated. This project evaluates the impacts of over 100 unique programs that collectively awarded a total of over a quarter of a billion dollars through Scholarship America, the nation’s largest distributor of private scholarships. To identify causal impacts, we leverage detailed data on scholarship applications and qualification cutoffs used by Scholarship America to assign awards to applicants. By linking applicants to administrative data on college enrollments and tax returns, this work will provide the first large-scale causal evidence on whether private scholarships effectively expand college opportunity and economic mobility.