Hector Blanco

A caveat of our results is that we focus on **highly localized** effects, where demand effects dominate, while regenerations may still contribute (albeit modestly) to city-wide affordability through broader supply effects. 9/9

Implications:
1️⃣ Conversion to mixed-income housing while preserving the public housing stock can mitigate the negative effects of traditional public housing on neighborhoods
2️⃣ By improving amenities, it can also make housing less affordable in the **very local** vicinity.
8/9

Interestingly, we find that regenerations that add more market-rate housing actually see larger local price increases. This suggests that (in our context) demand effects from incoming higher-income HHs outweigh local supply effects from additional market-rate units. 7/9

Mechanisms:
- Eyesore removal: half of price effects occur within 50m of walking distance.
- Socioeconomic shifts: higher-income HHs move in, no evidence of decrease in low-income HHs
- Crime: drops up to 8% near regenerations, can explain at most 1/3 of price increase
6/9

By comparing housing units near the regenerations to units located farther away, we show that:
- Prices (+14%) & rents (8%) go up substantially within 100m of regenerated estates
- Effects fade with distance and disappear beyond 300m.
5/9

Theory is ambiguous:
- Supply effect: more market-rate housing could lower nearby prices.
- Demand effect: removing an eyesore, attracting higher-income households, and reducing crime could raise them by improving amenities.
4/9

These regenerations on average roughly preserved the number of public housing units but added a similar number of market-rate units on-site (⬆️housing supply).

*Did this approach improve neighborhoods, and what happens to nearby house prices and rents?* 3/9

Like in the US, large public housing "estates" in the UK had been associated with poor conditions, high crime rates, and low housing values.

In response, London started a wave of estate "regenerations” in the 2000s, replacing old estates with new mixed-income developments. 2/9

🚨 Excited to share that my work w/ @loreneri.bsky.social, “Knocking it Down and Mixing it Up: The Impact of Public Housing Regenerations” found a home at @restatjournal.bsky.social.

We study the impact of converting distressed public housing into mixed-income housing on local housing markets. 🧵👇1/9

Knocking It Down and Mixing It Up: The Impact of Public Housing Regenerations Abstract. Partly due to their negative effects on surrounding neighborhoods, some countries have been replacing distressed public housing developments with mixed-income housing. We study the impact of such policies on local housing markets in London, U.K., where several public housing developments were demolished and rebuilt while adding market-rate units on-site. We show that these ‘regenerations’ increase nearby house prices and rents, consistent with strong demand effects outweighing supply effects from additional market-rate housing in the immediate vicinity. We provide suggestive evidence that these effects are driven by regenerations removing an eyesore, attracting higher-income households, and reducing nearby crime.

Replacing distressed public housing with mixed-income housing raises local prices and improves local amenities. Just Accepted new paper by Hector Blanco and Lorenzo Neri Bluesky: @hectorblanco.bsky.social @loreneri.bsky.social zurl.co/dAvES

🎓 Say hello to our newest network member, @hectorblanco.bsky.social from Rutgers University!

📈Learn more about his work in Public Economics and Urban Economics: hector-blanco.github.io
📑More Details: www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/ne...

Call for papers for NBER-Sloan conference on Transport Networks and the Spatial Distribution of Economic Activity: www.princeton.edu/~reddings/Ca... Deadline: June 30, 2025. Organized with Myrto Kalouptsidi. @nber.org @treballen.bsky.social @jintlecon.bsky.social @indorgsociety.bsky.social

Next week, I will be in Munich visiting @cesifo.org (thank you for the opportunity!). If you are around and want to hang out, let me know!

📢New WP w/ @borusyak.bsky.social

We derive the most powerful recentered IVs for formula treatments & propose an algorithm for approximating them

This approach yields *huge* power gains, relative to conventional simulated IV, when estimating Medicaid crowdout effects

Check it out! t.co/UPg2XQBefN

Working on a new R package. Looking for applications that do two things:

1. DID with y to show an effect
2. DID with X to show a possible “mechanism” of why treatment changed y

This could be a published paper or a paper you're working on (that I might help make "fancier" / cooler !!)

Which top 5 Econ journals (excluding AER) are open to short papers? @jpolecon.bsky.social @qjeharvard.bsky.social @reveconstudies.bsky.social @ecmaeditors.bsky.social

🧑‍🎄time! Our @cepr_org @LSEGeography @CEP_LSE
DP #PrimeLocations is forthcoming at AER: Insights.🍾 Our🎁4u: PL shapefiles and employment by sector at micro-geographic grid-level for 381 MSAs and 125 global cities. All free to download from primelocations.ahlfeldt.com Use it wisely!😀

Happy to share that my and @cconlon.bsky.social's micro BLP paper was just accepted at the Journal of Econometrics! jeffgortmaker.com/files/Incorp...

It's our 2nd tied to our PyBLP software, so here's a thread on surprising (to me) benefits of combining methods research with open source work. 1/6

Research Assistant/Sr. Research Assistant (Hybrid) Company Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Job Description Summary Research assistants (RAs) at the Philadelphia Fed play a key role in the Economic Research Department. Whether they are helping eco...

I’m recruiting a research assistant to work on projects spanning neighborhood change, housing investment, highways, and innovation. Starting Summer 2025 or earlier. GIS+coding experience preferred. Please mention in your cover letter if you’re specifically interested in working with me. Job posting:

Just under two weeks till the submission deadline for our @urbaneconomics.bsky.social Berlin conference. Please submit your papers or session proposals. Details here: urbaneconomics.org/meetings/emu... #EconConf

Man I cannot endorse this abstract more

Falta de vivienda pública en España: los inmuebles de las entidades públicas son solo el 1%: 257.000

Más de 1.152 organismos públicos tienen más de 10 viviendas

Pero solo una tiene más del 20%: ni Vivienda ni Hacienda han podido aclarar qué organismo posee 50.000 www.eldiario.es/economia/100...

R code to import all years of county-level building permit data and lightly clean R code to import all years of county-level building permit data and lightly clean - permits-import.r

If you want to download the 1990-2023 county-level Census Building Permits data...

(I'll probably have a blog post about this at some point)

h/t @kjhealy.co for the `rvest` code

#SEA2024

On my way to SEA. I am excited to present some joint work with Jaehee Song on discrimination in online rental markets. Lucky to be on a panel with such amazing researchers in this space. If you’re around, let’s catch up!

Specialised courts and the reporting of intimate partner violence: Evidence from Spain This paper assesses the effect of the creation of specialised intimate partner violence (IPV) courts on the reporting of IPV, and the incidence of IPV…

📜 Just published in the Journal of Public Economics 📜

"Specialised courts and the reporting of intimate partner violence: Evidence from Spain"

I am lucky to have worked with @martammatute.bsky.social and @jorgeghombrados in this paper and thankful for all I learned from them. Thread below!

Después del feliz desembarco de estos dias, ya casi llegamos a 150.

No están todos los que son, pero son todos los que están.

Encantado de añadirte si acabas de llegar y quieres formar parte de la comunidad.

go.bsky.app/8tkeVED

Grad students: Read everything Jesse Shapiro posts at scholar.harvard.edu/shapiro/note.... Office meetings and student talks are often just me reciting "write an aspirational intro", "Your audience does not care about your topic", or "No one wants to see your underwear".

Economics Conferences (Compiled by Anne M. Burton and Barton Willage)

Quick econ tip: here's a list of over 100 economics conferences: docs.google.com/spreadsheets.... Curated by @anne-m-burton.bsky.social and @bartonwillage.com.