Essays on Urban Economics

Abstract

This thesis contributes with empirical evidence on policies that attempt to reduce spatial inequalities and also studying the drivers of residential segregation. Specifically, the second chapter assesses the impact on neighborhood population dynamics of a major urban renewal policy implemented in Catalonia (Spain) between 2004 and 2010. The results suggest that the urban renewal projects had little (if any) effects on population dynamics, suggesting that substantial investment in deprived neighborhoods is insufficient to attract natives and/or high income households. Interestingly, the sole exception were the interventions made in Barcelona’s historic districts, where the policy seems to have augmented ongoing processes of urban revival into its most deprived neighborhoods furthering processes of gentrification. The third chapter provides a new empirical test of one-sided tipping models in the population composition of neighborhoods using an infrequent set of events in Spain. In the immigration boom period, 2001-2009, neighborhoods with high minority shares in 2001 received larger inflows of immigrants and experienced outflows in native population. In the immigration freeze period, 2010-2015, the neighborhoods that received large immigrant influxes in the 2001-2009 period kept loosing native population, despite the fact that these neighborhoods were actually experiencing slight losses of immigrant population. Results are consistent with tipping behavior. The fourth chapter studies the external effects of tax benefits given to residential developers in Uruguay on both house prices and crime records. Clear evidence of spillovers is found: house prices increase by around 12% in the period 2014-2016 in a 400-meter wide band in the subsidized border area. Using a continuous but endogenous treatment measure, IV estimates show an elasticity of .035 with respect to housing prices. An examination of crime records shows that the property crime rate seems to decrease at the border, but there is no evidence of a decrease in the non-property crime rate.