Working Papers

Segregation, Spillovers, and the Locus of Racial Change
(with Donald Davis and Matthew Easton)
NBER Working Paper, September 2025

Abstract

We use a discrete choice framework to provide the first nesting of Thomas C. Schelling’s canonical models of racial segregation amenable to empirical examination. Using U.S. Census data from 1970–2000, we demonstrate a central role for spatial racial spillovers in shaping racial clustering, patterns of racial shares and housing prices at the boundary of racial clusters, and the locus of racial change. Our results on the locus of racial change conflict strongly with prominent prior results on racial tipping. Our theory provides a foundation for spatially stratified regressions. The strongest spatial effects in the prior work are not tipping, but the distinct biased White suburbanization. Tipping effects in urban areas remote from Minority clusters are small or insignificant. In urban areas proximate to Minority clusters they average less than half those reported in prior pooled results. Policies promoting racial integration must thus attend to the heterogeneous fragility of neighborhoods.

Work in Progress

Weather Forecasts and Projected Mortality from Climate Change
(with Jeffrey Shrader, Laura Bakkensen, Derek Lemoine, and Manuel Linsenmeier)

Long-Term Health Impacts of Air Pollution Exposure on the London Underground
(with Adam Dennett, Pia Hardelid, Laura Horsfall, John Hurst, Calum Kennedy, Matthew Loxham, Nicola Shelton, Jemima Stockton, and Jonathan Taylor)

Public Transportation Pricing and Labor Monopsony Power
(with Johannes Brinkmann)

Predoctoral Research

Flood impacts on urban transit and accessibility — A case study of Kinshasa
(with Yiyi He, Paolo Avner, and Jun Rentschler)
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2021

Gender Dimensions of Disaster Risk and Resilience: Existing Evidence
(with Alvina Erman, Sophie Anne de Vries Robbe, Kayenat Kabir, and Mirai Maruo)
World Bank Report, 2021

Floods and their Impacts on Firms: Evidence from Tanzania
(with Jun Rentschler, Ella Jisun Kim, Sophie Anne De Vries Robbe, and Alvina Erman)
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 2021

Household Level Effects of Flooding. Evidence from Thailand
(with Zhuldyz Ashikbayeva, Marei Fürstenberg, Timo Kapelari and Albert Pierres)
TVSEP Working Paper, 2020

A Gini approach to spatial CO2 emissions
(with Bin Zhou, Ramana Gudipudi, Matthias Lüdeke, Jürgen Kropp, and Diego Rybski)
PLOS ONE, 2020